Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Olympics/Archive 2

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Categories for multiple Olympic gold medalists

I've noticed, that Wallie just created the category Category:Multiple Olympic gold medalists. While I think, it's a very good idea to have something like that, I have doubts, whether it's current name is appropriate. May be a better choice would be "Two-time Olympic champions", "Three-time Olympic champions", etc.? What do you think, folks? Cmapm 16:08, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

We two currently agreed, that this name is probably right and that future subcategories of that category, like "Two-time Olympic Champions", "Three-time Olympic Champions", etc., "have a right" to appear there. Any comments and critical objections would be appreciated. Cmapm 16:41, 22 April 2006 (UTC)

2006 Winter Paralympics

Many articles about Country X at the 2006 Winter Paralympics are outdated with regards to medal tallies - for example, Austria at the 2006 Winter Paralympics gives a medal tally of 2 gold, 2 silver and 4 bronze, whereas the main article 2006 Winter Paralympics gives 3, 4 and 7 respectively. Just something for anyone with a spare hour or two. Andjam 04:18, 23 April 2006 (UTC)

Winter Olympic Games needs your help!

I have recently restructured this page in hopes for it to become a featured article. Currently, I'm trying to get pictures onto the page, but in the meantime, some minor work may need to be done to the page before a nomination can go in for FA. I suggest to anyone that wants to help to please look at the talk page and edit history, where you can find more info. Thanks for your help! → J@red  18:23, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Summer Olympic Games FARC

Summer Olympic Games has been nominated for removal from featured article status. Discussion on removal is at Wikipedia:Featured article removal candidates/Summer Olympic Games. Let's fix it up, shall we? -- Jonel | Speak 00:35, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree. I was just recently tring to get The Winter Games up to featured status, and I, too, noticed that the Summer page was falling into dismay. I think that with a little time, it can be fixed up. → J@red  19:38, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

{{user WikiProject Olympics}}

This template has recently had it's 5 ring image removed on "fair use" and outside of main namespace grounds. Anyone any idea what we could use instead. :: Kevinalewis : ^{(Talk Page)}/_(Desk) 14:17, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

I've edited the UBX, using the three gold, silver, bronze images and editing the background colors. Feel free to edit my work, but I think what I did looks pretty good. → J@red  19:25, 10 May 2006 (UTC)

Article on peer review - Rugby

Hi, Rugby union at the Summer Olympics is on peer review. I recently rewrote it, I thought I would leave this message, as I'm not sure if the tables/linking and use of the word Olympics/presentation etc etc is done correctly. Any suggestions would be great. See (Wikipedia:Peer review#Rugby union at the Summer Olympics) Cvene64 09:45, 15 May 2006 (UTC)

Sports Categories

This may be more applicable to the Summer Olympic discussion page, but it appears that this discussion page gets more traffic. Anyway, my proposal is to change the sport catagory of Canoeing to Canoe/Kayak. In many of the various summer olympic pages, Canoeing is used, such as the 1996 Summer Olympics. I think it would be a much better description if it was changed to Canoe/Kayak since it is also used in the official Olympic website. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 136.168.101.15 (talk • contribs) 14:06, May 22, 2006

I believe that you have reason. It would make sense, but I think that other peoples' opinions on this are needed first. I'll link to this discussion from other pages. → J@red  19:13, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Accuracy is good. I'd say go for it. -- Jonel | Speak 00:49, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Now, we would have to decide how to write it. Here are the possibilities:

Canoeing/Kayaking at the...

Canoeing / Kayaking ...

Canoe/Kayak ...

Canoe / Kayak ...

or all of the "K"'s could be lowercase

I'm partial to either the first or the third. The first makes the most sense, and almost all of the pages currently say "Canoeing." The third one, though, is what's listed on the IOC page. I don't know. Probably the first. Opinions? → J@red  01:01, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

The first looks good although perhaps use and instead of a slash? Also I wouldn't mind if only one of the terms were used (against IOC convention), as we don't use Rowing/Sculling do we?Blnguyen | Have your say!!! - review me 01:05, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I think we could use "and" rather than the slash. As for the "ing", the IOC doesn't use it. As for rowing/sculling, the IOC lists "Rowing", and, indeed our article on rowing says that sculling is a form of rowing (also, sculling is a redirect to sport rowing). On the other hand, kayaks are distinct from canoes. (Source for IOC usage: Olympic.org). -- Jonel | Speak 01:17, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

If we are all in agreement with using "and", are we going to go "Canoe and Kayak" or "Canoeing and Kayaking?" The first, now, looks better cause its shorter. and it looks better. → J@red  01:39, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree. The "and" is fine instead of a slash. I would go for Canoe and Kayak since it is shorter.

I'm in agreement with using "and" instead of the "/". However, I'm conflicted about whether it should be "Canoe and kayak" or "Canoeing and kayaking". Sue Anne 17:22, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

Me, too. I'm up to suggestions. And also to whether the second word should be "Kayak(ing)" (capital) or "kayak(ing)" (lowercase). Too many decisions! Canoeing and kayaking at the 2008 Summer Olympics looks the best for me, I think. Compair to Sailing, rowing, Weightlifting, etc. Also, the second word, I think, should not be capitilized. → J@red  19:40, 23 May 2006 (UTC)

It should definitely be kayak or kayaking (with a lowercase k). Sue Anne 19:54, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, I would just have it as Canoe and kayak without the "ing's" since that is used in the Olympic website.

• Ok. Did a little background check and found that the sport was indeed called Canoeing up to 1992. From the 1996 Atlanta games forward, the name Canoe/Kayak was used. Doesn't really matter much, since the Canoeing pages from most of the Olympics haven't even been created yet. Anyway, I think it would be nice to have that little bit of information on each Canoeing and then the Canoe/Kayak (yes, I know the exact wording is still up for debate) pages, letting people know about the name change. BTW, if anyone hasn't already been [| to this very cool site], you should check it out. It has ALL the official reports of all the games from 2002 on back. Talk about a treasure trove of information.

WikiProject Badminton

Over WikiProject Badminton we are curious about how sports WikiProjects interact with this project. Any experiences would be useful.--Commander Keane 09:44, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking. If you want to know how other sports WikiProjects communicate with the Olympics project, then I'm not too sure. I think mostly, unless members of this project are members of other projects, we stay to ourselves unless we need the help from others, in which case, we would just use the talk page. I hope that helps. → J@red  19:08, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

Australian Olympic medalists in Swimming

Hello Everybosy. I've put this up for featured list at WP:FLC. Please come and comment. Regards, Blnguyen | Have your say!!! 08:57, 25 May 2006 (UTC).

Ok, I've had a second go at it - Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/Australian Olympic medalists in Swimming 2

U.S. Olympic Festival

I noticed there's no article for U.S. Olympic Festival or Olympic Festival. I don't know if this was just a U.S. thing or international, nor if these are the "official" titles for these events. If an article exists in some form, could you please tell me? Thanks. --Fang Aili ^talk 21:00, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

Just noticed the same, and that the various "Youth Olympic Festivals" (European, Australian and others) are missing too.

I assume that all 'Olympic' whatever is under IOC's flag somehow (otherwise IOC would sue their sorry behinds) so it makes sense to add them under Olympics. Hdw 13:31, 30 June 2006 (UTC)

How many future Olympics pages should there be?

There seems to be some subtle debate going on as to how far WP should go when it comes to making pages for future Olympics. Looking as Template:Olympic Games, you can see that the summer games have 4 future games pages (2008, 2012, 2016, 2020), but there are still 2 other pages not on the template (2024, which seems notable; and 2028, which I nominated for SD [too far in advance]).

For the Winter pages, we have 4 as well (2010, 2014, 2018, 2022 [which I speedied]]), with no others not on the template.

My question is...How many is too many. WP is not a fortune teller, so why should we have strictly potential bids for 20 years in advance? It's illogical. I suggest we have at maximum 4 future games pages. I strive for 3, but I'm sure some of these pages have sufficient info to she that these bids may be for real. I would appreciate anyone's comments or suggestions, as this may be getting out of hand. → J@red  15:52, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

I suggest that articles on future Olympic Games should be created when there is "beef" to put in them. Definitely Games in the next 9 years should be in, since the host city is selected or the process for selecting the host city is allready underway. It makes sense to add another Olympic cycle as potential bidding cities are normally announcing their intention to bid. Beyond that, it's usually mere speculation. For example, I see no "beef" in the article on 2022 Winter Olympics. There's only a list of cities which are said to intend to bid, but none of them is verified.--Nitsansh 01:38, 24 May 2006 (UTC)

I suggest allowing all cities officially chosen for a games (2008, 2010, 2012); if there are bids currently being taken or have been submitted for approval and voting, allow those years (2014); and allow one year's worth of speculations, as the first year of spec.s would be somewhat encyclopedic (2016, 2018). By these standards, the following pages would be deleted:

• • • 2020 Summer Olympics
    • 2022 Winter Olympics
    • 2024 Summer Olympics

I'd like someone to give their opinion on this. It seems reasonable. If no one responds soon, I'll AfD them. → J@red  17:49, 16 June 2006 (UTC)

Some very heavy editing needs to be done to get the pages sourced and not just filled with assumptions and poorly written unsourced statements, but I found at least one sourceable comment about the 2022 Winter Olympics [1] and the 2024 Summer Olympics. [2]

To prevent future pages from being created, we may want to create a page for future Olympic bids, which could contain information on the Olympics that are more than 20 years out. Once there was enough information, it could roll into a new page. Sue Anne 20:39, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

That actually seems like a good idea. Maybe I'll get to that! About your sources, though, I have no doubt that they are credible, but the idea of having pages listing potential bids for games 20 years in the future is outrageous because who knows if the country will follow through? It is just speculation on the country's part. I'll see what I can do, though. Thanks! → JARED ^(t)  21:31, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

I don't think it's that outrageous. If you read the two articles, at least one of them (I can't remember which one) talks about how cities have to start planning 20-30 years in advance if they realistically want to make a bid for a future Olympics. Sue Anne 00:26, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Any time there is a verifiable source that discusses potential bids for a particular Games, we should cover it. -- Jonel | Speak 19:09, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Re: Boycott section of 2008 Summer Olympics

The text in this section has been debated over the past few weeks. The people there have finally created a working section, and are voting on it now. They plan to create a sub page further detailing potential boycotts of those games, however. On this WikiProject, there is nothing set out to create a subpage for boycotts of the games, and it seems unneeded anyway. It is quite minor, though. Please voice your opinions on the page by voting in the straw poll or writing comments. Thanks. → J@red  19:36, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

I doubt that these boycotts are significant enough to require a separate page a la American-led boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics, but if there is enough verifiable relevant information (and no doubt more such information will appear in the next 2 years) that the boycott section would become too large to be included in the 2008 Summer Olympics page, a separate page would be appropriate. -- Jonel | Speak 19:14, 18 June 2006 (UTC)

Fair Use Images

So the Olympic Logos (Image:Olympic rings.svg & Image:Olympic-rings.png), are Fair Use images. As such, we're not allowed at Wikipedia to include them on any templates, such as userboxes, stubs, etc. (See Fair Use Policy - #9), and our use of them is generally very restricted. What I'd like to do is replace these logos with a free image that we can include on templates, etc. I haven't been able to find any yet, but I think that the most appropriate thing would be an crown of olive leaves. Does anyone know where I might find such an image? tiZom_(2¢) 21:45, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

Barnstar/award.

A discussion was recently started for the creation of an award presented by members of this WikiProject. Here's my slightly simplistic rendition of an Olympics award for WP:OLYMPICS, in an award box. Please feel free to critique/edit it. (I used an Olympic torch, self made, as the alternative to using the fair use Olympic rings.) → JARED ^(t)  19:51, 22 June 2006 (UTC):

[[File::Olympic Torch award.png|40px|alt=A Barnstar!]]

The Olympics Barnstar {{{1}}}

Oh, I had asked Sango123 to make one yesterday. She's made a few official barnstars before

That torch doesn't look self made. In fact, it looks a lot like this one straight off the IOC website, just rotated. Somehow I doubt that image is any more GFDL-eligible than Image:Friendlies All.jpg. -- Jonel | Speak 04:31, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Are you rudely referencing my inability to choose the correct licence?! Haha. No, I'm sorry I don't really know how to do it. I guess I'm just thinking that if I made it, it's self-made. The name of the licence is really a misnomer; but yes, the torch part was from that site. I thought that that site was free use, but, again, I don't know where I got that idea! → JARED ^(t)  13:11, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm referencing your tendency to violate copyrights and plagiarise other people's work, claiming it as your own "self-created" work. And you certainly didn't get the notion that the site was free use from the notice at the bottom of the IOC website Torino 2006 page which reads © IOC 2006. All rights reserved. -- Jonel | Speak 23:04, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Jared, not to pile on, but this isn't the first time that you've claimed something as GFDL that was really just a compilation of fair use or copyright images. You did the same thing with the Friendlies image from Beijing 2006. If you don't know about the licenses, there's plenty of information on Wikipedia about the various license types and descriptions. Sue Anne 23:26, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

OlympicBStar1.png

Here's a barnstar draft based on the torch concept. Thoughts? Sango123 17:10, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

That looks nice. Let me see if I can make any changes. Where can I find the barnstar image that you placed under it? → JARED ^(t)  17:34, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

The blank star can be found here. Sango123 20:05, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

File:OlympicBStar2.png

OlympicBStar2.png

Here's my rendition. I do like yours though. This one uses a legal torch...I found an image on the web and free handed a drawing. haha. → JARED ^(t)  20:56, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I prefer Sango's version. Your torch, whether hand-drawn or not, looks too similar to the Torino torch. I also prefer that in Sango's version you can see more of the star. Sue Anne 23:26, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Well I prefer the Sango rendition. Should we take it to the approval place to see what the general community thinks?Blnguyen | rant-line 02:46, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

I've added a proposal for the Olympics Barnstar at Wikipedia:Barnstar and award proposals/New Proposals#Olympics Barnstar. Feel free to comment on or add to it as you'd like. Thanks, Sango123 20:44, 4 July 2006 (UTC)

It's been approved now.

The Olympics Barnstar Here

.Blnguyen | rant-line 05:27, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Scott Goldblatt, Olympic gold medallist edits WP

Hi there, User:Sgoldblatt, a 200m freestyle swimmer for the US in 2000 and 2004 with gold and silver in the 4x200m free relay has joined us.Blnguyen | rant-line 00:21, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

And he has started his own biography - Scott Goldblatt.Blnguyen | rant-line 03:47, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Blnguyen, I don't know if you want to contact him about writing his own biography on the site. It's somewhat taboo. Also, parts of his writing style are uncyclopaedic. I think it's great that he's become a wikipedian. Sue Anne 04:26, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

I would like someone else to if they could, because when I first saw his username I welcomed him and asked him to declare if he was Scott Goldblatt, which he did so by creating his userpage and his article. I have put the "notable wikipedian" template on Talk:Scott Goldblatt so that people are aware however. I was in a similar situation when I went to Jade Edmistone's website and forum in order to try and recruit more writers. Her brother, who was the webmaster, User:AussieLakerFan then made some rather POV additions to Jade Edmistone which User:Attilios eventually cleaned up. Blnguyen | rant-line 04:33, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

Scott Goldblatt contains some impressive use of somewhat esoteric templates for a new contributor. Now, just need to work on the NPOV... -- Jonel | Speak 04:48, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

2014 Winter Olympics bids

Will this article have [detailed] subarticles on each bids, as with 2012 Summer Olympics bids? Juast asking. Circeus 16:04, 25 June 2006 (UTC)

I think that if someone finds enough information to make separate pages, then, yes, they should eventually be made; probably sometime after the bid is announced. As of now, though, there isn't enough information period, let alone on the page, to make separate articles. → JARED ^(t)  16:03, 26 June 2006 (UTC)

Khashbaatar Tsagaanbaatar

This article about an olympic medalist is missing its medalist box. Could someone slap one on there? I don't know how. :( Aelfthrytha 03:27, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

'Tis done. The box is fairly simple after you learn how it's done (though certainly looks intimidating at first glance); if you'd like to learn, you can check out Template talk:MedalTop (especially the example) or leave a message on my talk page and I'd be glad to help you with it. -- Jonel | Speak 03:56, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

"Ladies" vs. "Women" in Pair skating and Ice dancing articles

This has been discussed several times before, but is currently under debate again at Talk:Pair skating. I am moving the discussion here in an attempt to get (another) consensus, because Dr.frog (talk · contribs) insists that "ladies" be used, rather than "women". I am reiterating the main points here, but for a fuller discussion, please see Talk:Pair skating, the first decision, second debate, and the archived original debate.

Arguments for using "Ladies" put forth by Dr.frog:

Please point me at the specific places on the ISU web site where they use the term "women" to refer to female pair skaters, or indeed, female figure skaters in any discipline. Certainly the ISU regulations (see the link above in my first note in this topic where I pointed you at rule 302) use only "ladies".

Of course I understand that Wikipedia operates by consensus. But, more importantly, Wikipedia has three fundamental policies which "are non-negotiable and cannot be superseded by any other guidelines, or by editors' consensus":

• Wikipedia:Verifiability: "The burden of evidence lies with the editors who have made an edit or wish an edit to remain."

• Wikipedia:Neutral point of view: "Let the facts speak for themselves."

• Wikipedia:No original research: "All articles on Wikipedia should be based on information collected from published primary and secondary sources."

In addition to the ISU regulations (primary source), I can point you at these secondary sources where the use of the term "lady" in figure skating is discussed:

• Abigail M. Feder's essay "A Radiant Smile from the Lovely Lady", in Women on Ice, ISBN 0-415-91151-6.

• Ellyn Kestnbaum, Culture on Ice, ISBN 0-8195-6642-X.

Again: if you want to argue that "women" is the correct and official terminology of figure skating, please cite some credible sources. Dr.frog 04:17, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Fang Aili conveniently edited out several critical points I made in the previous discussion when she dragged it over here.

First of all, the URL where the ISU Regulations is [3]. These are not just "a few PDFs of ISU regulations online"; these are the complete and official rules of the IOC-recognized international governing body for the sport. Some of the key places where "Lady" is used include:

• Rule 133 of the General Regulations, which lists the official titles for winners of the ISU Championships, such as "Lady World Figure Skating Champion".

• Rule 302 paragraph 5 of the Special Regulations Single & Pair Skating, which says "The composition of a pair must be one lady and one man."

• Rule 310, which sets out the requirements for the short program for "Ladies".

• Rule 313 paragraph 5, which describes the various required elements in the short program for pair skating in terms of the actions of the "lady" and "man".

• Rule 321, which does likewise for pairs free skating.

• Rule 400, covering entries for the Olympic Winter Games, which begins by saying "The maximum number of entries for the Olympic Winter Games is thirty (30) for Ladies and Men...."

• In the Special Regulations Ice Dancing, Rule 500 paragraph 5 b says "The composition of an Ice Dance couple must be one lady and one man."

• Rule 505 discusses dance holds in terms of the positions of the "lady" and the "man".

• Rule 701 in the Special Regulations Synchronized Skating says "A Synchronized Skating team ... may include both ladies and men".

I also believe that if you Google the ISU web site, you will not find any instances of "women's figure skating" outside of the unofficial bulletin board area. The official ISU Communications and press releases always use "ladies".

Regardless of what conventional terminology you folks want to use when writing about the Olympics, when writing about general Figure Skating topics one should use the official terminology for this particular sport, which has a very active competitive circuit outside of the Olympic Winter Games.

Finally, I'd like to point out these additional relevant quotes from Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Identity:

• "Where known, use terminology that subjects use for themselves (self-identification)."

• "Do not assume that any one term is the most inclusive or accurate."

I agree that in general use, female athletes should be referred to as "women" rather than "ladies". But where "Ladies" is the official name of the event, or used in a technical way in the rulebook to designate the roles of the pair or dance partners as well as their gender, Wikipedia will be more accurate if we use that term. Dr.frog 22:26, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Arguments for "women" put forth by Fang Aili:

• It should be sufficient to include a sentence regarding the terminology used in the ISU's regulations. We need not be confined to any particular terminology, especially when the ISU's website also uses "women". In addition, if we set a precedent for "ladies" in pair skating and ice dancing articles, we involve ourselves in the quagmire of having to update or maintain these articles to reflect "correct" terminology. And I am not convinced that "ladies" is official terminology just because that's what's in a few PDFs of ISU regulations online.

• "Lady" is anachronistic, and its tone is certainly non-encyclopedic.

• Regarding concerns that using "non-official" terminology is creating a bias (an argument of Dr.frog's), one could also argue that using "lady" is biased because that term has connotations beyond sex, whereas "woman" just indicates female.

Please express your opinion as to what terminology should be used. I am really quite tired of this debate and wish to come to a consensus one way or another for the last time. Thank you.

Use "ladies"

I agree with Dr. frog for all the reasons listed.

The PDFs on the ISU website are not to be discounted. They are communications of the official rules, regardless of the media of how they are published. Furthermore, "lady" is as much an artifact of figure skating terminology as "figure" in "figure skating". Both terms have vestigial connotations of the original term, but they're still part of offical usage and terminology today. Lastly, if anyone wants to nitpick about loaded meanings and connotations beyond sex, the term "women" would be just as faulty because it has the connotation that the skater is an adult, which would be wholly inaccurate to describe a sport with many teen competitors such as Kimmie Meissner, Mao Asada, Yu-Na Kim, Elene Gedevanishvili, and Emily Hughes among others. --MuskMelon 01:00, 11 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm in agreement that "ladies" is the proper terminology, however, I don't feel that using "women" is incorrect in all cases. But official record keeping should use the ISU mandated "ladies". At the very least, acknowledge the correct terminology in writing if you plan to use "women". —Pelladon 00:09, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Then we are in agreement. I certainly think the official term "Ladies' singles" should be used. I also agree that we should note the ISU's terminology. But we do not have to use "lady" and "ladies" in all instances (as is currently the case at Pair skating). --Fang Aili ^talk 13:27, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be easier just to add a disclaimer within the beginning of the text body, like:

(officially recognized as ladies according to ISU)

Seems easier that way. Avoids a lot of rewrites. —Pelladon 20:42, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes. That's what I'd like to do. That's how it is already done at Figure_skating#Disciplines. --Fang Aili ^talk 20:50, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Absolutely! It just makes common sense to add an explanatory note like this. On a related topic, I wish we had added a similar sort of note at the beginning of all the "Great Britain at the xxx Olympics" articles instead of renaming them all to the very cumbersome "Great Britain and Northern Ireland at the xxx Olympics". In both cases, the right thing to do is to use the commonly used terminology within the sport and add explanatory notes for folks who are unfamiliar with the situation and question why it's different from common usage outside the sport. Andrwsc 20:56, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Yes. And here I believe that within the sport does not just mean what's in the ISU rulebooks; it's what the skaters call themselves, what they call eachother, what the announcers use, etc. I am sure the women don't call themselves "ladies" all the time just because that's what the ISU rules call them (not to mention terms in other languages). So a note on the "official" English-language terminology would be completely sufficient, in my mind. --Fang Aili ^talk 21:23, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Use "women"

Comments

• For the record, I did not "edit out" anything. I specifically notified Dr.frog of this post, and welcomed him to edit his arguments because they were spread out over many comments at Talk:Pair skating. --Fang Aili ^talk 23:03, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Andrwsc's Recent Changes

Andrwsc has been going through a bunch of the Olympic pages and making similar changes. Some of which I agree with, some of which I'm iffy about. I thought I would bring the discussion here. (I'm also going to be putting a note on his talk page.)

First, he's created a template for the medal summary that's at the top of most of the Country at xx Olympic Pages. Other than those medal icons that I absolutely abhor, I think it's great.

Second, and this is a change I don't necessarily agree with but don't feel 100% against, is he's removing the flag image from the page. Now, he has added the flag into the medal summary box.[4] But, for countries that didn't win any medals, there is no flag image on the page. And, even for countries that did win medals, the flag image is small in comparison.

One other issue this may have created for some people is that the templating of the medal summary elminates another use of the Olympic flag on an Olympic page. I know that some people have strong feelings about it, so I wanted to mention it. The whole issue of the IOC and fair use is really affecting what we can do.

(I just wanted to say, I brought this all up because I know not everyone has the individual Olympic pages on their watchlist and may not have seen the changes being made.) Sue Anne 19:09, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

• Well, my two cents would be that I like having the medal summary template for each country in each addition of the games. I agree that the medal icons look tacky (I would have thought by now that someone would have "made" better ones) Although, I would also like to see each countries' flag as well. I mean, having a large version of the flag as well as a tiny icon flag inside the summary box is fine. Adds color to the page. Perakhantu 19:59, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

• • Having made a similar template ({{MedalsBox}}) back in June and having placed it on all the 1896 pages, I'd say I'm in favor of the idea of the template. I do think the large flag should be included as well. -- Jonel | Speak 21:09, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Andrwsc's reply

First, let me say that my main motivations for these edits (as they are for all my edits on Wikipedia), are to improve consistency, accuracy, maintainability, readability, and aesthetics. Please consider my comments in context of those factors.

I think there are three things you've brought up:

1. Use of new template to replace inline table. I hope all agree this is a vast improvement over having to adjust (potentially) hundreds of pages. As for the ugly medal icons, I'm not sure I like them either, but the point is that (once I'm done putting the template everywhere) we can remove or replace the icons from all pages with only a single edit... The same comment applies to the Olympic rings. I removed them from the template to be consistent with the removal elsewhere because of WP:FU policy, but it is a single edit to add it back again if the policy changes. Jonel, I didn't know you had done something similar, but we should certainly use one or the other but not both!
2. Removing the medal table for countries that didn't win any. I remember bringing this up in the "Olympic conventions" page a few months ago (but can't find the discussion now). My opinion is that this section is superfluous unless it is reporting medal counts. We don't need clutter - these articles should be crisp. In my edits, I noticed that some country pages had already removed empty medal tables, so we already had an inconsistency.
3. Removing the flag from each page. Again, I fail to see the value that the flag brings to the page, and again, it had already been removed by a previous editor on some country pages, so there is already an inconsistency. I think a picture of the flag is perfectly appropriate for the page for each specific country, but how does it help by also including it on up to about 50 pages each for the "at the xxx Olympics" pages (several hundred pages total). Is it just to add some color to those pages? That's not a great reason. On almost all of those pages, that was the only image, so I ask is it really the best image to accompany a "Country at the Olympics" article? It seems to me that the flag is only a token image to add some "spice" to the page, but that makes it just a superfluous decoration, not directly relevant to the article. I ask you to ask yourself why you like it (if you do), and then ask yourself if your reason adds encyclopedic value to the article or not. However, if there is overwhelming objection to these edits, I will stop. I'm not a vandal. (On the contrary, a lot of my time is spent in combat with one...)

In the bigger scheme of things, I'm trying to convert a lot of things to use templates. The biggest improvement is that I added an additional argument to the {{flagIOC}} template so that the country name links to a (parameterized) "Country at the xxxx Olympics" page. Actually, it was while replacing {{flagIOC-2006} that I decided to create the {{MedalSummary}} template. Please take a look at some of the other edits that use the new flagIOC template and hopefully usage will spread. Thanks for your consideration of my points. Andrwsc 00:07, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

1. I created the MedalsBox template for much the same reason as you created yours (fair use concerns over the rings). I agree that only one is necessary; I'm not really particular which so I'll leave to everyone else to figure out which one (or a merged combination of the two, whatever) to use.
2. I'm ambivalent about medal tables for countries without any medals. On the one hand, I like the consistency of having them on every page and the notation that the nation actually did not win any rather than we just haven't got around to putting the box on. On the other, though, the articles do already have a lot of tables and lists and another table full of 0s is of questionable value.
3. On the flags, I would argue that the nation's flag is the single best visual representation of the country's participation in the Olympic Games in most cases. The team's athletes march under it, it's hoisted whenever a nation wins a gold medal, visual media sources use the flags heavily to identify team affiliation of competitors.
4. {{FlagIOC}} and other such templates are aggravating. Beyond being nested, esoteric templates, they often give inaccurate output for early Games, as nation names and flags are subject to change. -- Jonel | Speak 00:31, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for your reply, Jonel.

• For point #2, I would say that it would be sufficient and appropriate to have a sentence or phrase in the introductory paragraph instead of adding a table with zeros. Something like, "No athletes from Country won medals at these Games."
• For point #3, you know my position, but I won't fight it too strenuously. My only request is (you guessed it), consistency. Many of the pages have tiny thumbnail flags in the corner, surrounded by vast areas of whitespace, which kind of defeats the purpose. If we have flags, then all pages need them, and they should all be the same size.
• For point #4, I think they are WAY less aggravating than the alternative — which is to put the onus on an editor to ensure that the inline image code is correct, the wikilink is correct, etc. The fact that they are "esoteric" templates to create is irrelevant to the user of the template — the resultant markup is SO much easier to write and maintain! Even if you cut & paste a lot, I can't see how you would prefer to type [[Image:Flag of the United States.svg|20px|United States]] [[United States at the 2006 Winter Olympics|United States]] than to type {{flagIOC|USA|2006 Winter}} As for the problem of obsolete flags or nation names, that's very easy to correct. Instead of "USA" as the second parameter, you would use "USA-1912" for example, and then Template:Country_flag_IOC_alias_USA-1912 would point to Image:US_flag_48_stars.svg. Trust me: adding a couple of dozen historic flag and nation name templates is going to be significantly simpler than avoiding the {{FlagIOC}} template for that reason... Andrwsc 01:13, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

• Just to comment on the medal template. I much rather prefer Jonel's template. The images used look much more professional and less tacky than the current medal icons. If no one objects, I'll go about making the appropriate changes. Perakhantu 09:17, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

ADD: hmm.. well, I guess I bit off more than I can chew. Just ignore my above post. -.- Perakhantu 16:15, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

At the risk of appearing to have "not invented here syndrome", I'm not sure I like the miniature photos of the medals in ({{MedalsBox}}). That photo should be included on 1896 Summer Olympics at full size (and perhaps on 1896 Summer Olympics medal count), but at 25x25 pixels, you can't immediately tell what the image is. At that size, something really needs to be purpose-built as an icon, not a scaled down photo. (Fortunately, most flags have minimal detail, so they do scale down to icon size neatly.) Also, their table cell looks odd because of the maroon background in the image and grey background in the rest of the cell. I removed the images from ({{MedalSummary}}), so perhaps you can comment on those. Andrwsc 16:24, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

The image is not a good one, I just didn't have a better one to replace the fair use rings in mind. Perhaps the olive branch that is on {{olympic-stub}}? -- Jonel | Speak 17:22, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, maybe... I'm not sure we absolutely need to have an icon there. If so, it should be something that adds value rather than just a decoration, in my opinion. But the 1896 medal photo is a great image for other usage — I've already added it to 1896 Summer Olympics and I think it looks great there. That was a good find. Andrwsc 18:29, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Great Britain

Nearly completely random side note: Does anyone have a good source for the team's official name being "Great Britain and Northern Ireland" rather than "Great Britain"? The IOC website seems to consistently use "Great Britain". -- Jonel | Speak 22:11, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, my fault for the off-topic side note! But to add to your comment, Jonel, I have looked through every official report for all Games (located here), and they almost always use just "Great Britain". Andrwsc 22:55, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Moved this digression to a new section of its own. -- Jonel | Speak 23:29, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I'd looked through them too. I really can't find a definitive source anywhere that states "Great Britain and Northern Ireland" is the correct official name, and most of the lists of nations that seem to be using official names use "Great Britain". The GB&NI formulation seems to be the received wisdom and I've certainly used it myself, but I'm beginning to doubt its accuracy. Can anyone provide a source, or should we discuss moving all the pages to "Great Britain" without the Northern Ireland part? -- Jonel | Speak 23:32, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

See British Isles (terminology). Dr.frog 23:47, 13 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, yes, I know and understand all of those different names. What's important here is that the British Olympic Association use names like "Team GB" and the "Great Britain Olympic Team". For example, I found this paragraph on their website:

Great Britain is one of only five countries, which has never failed to be represented at the Olympic Games since 1896: Australia, France, Greece and Switzerland being the others. Of these, only France, Great Britain and Switzerland have also been present at all Olympic Winter Games.

Note the usage of "Great Britain" (only) in their own words! My perception is that some folks who aren't familiar with the history of the usage of this name in the Olympic context got offended when they came across Wikipedia Olympics articles with "Great Britain" in the name. That's when the debates began to change the page names to "United Kingdom at the xxx Olympics" etc., and resulted in "and Northern Ireland" being added to the page names as a compromise (but now incorrect!) solution. I think this should have been easily solved by continuing to use "Great Britain" in the context of the Olympic team because comments in the introductory paragraph of the appropriate articles help clarify the situation. Look at the first sections of Great Britain and Northern Ireland at the 2004 Summer Olympics and Great Britain and Northern Ireland at the 2006 Winter Olympics (especially) for some pretty good examples (not exactly right, but close enough).

Given the history of this topic, I'm half afraid to open the discussion again, but I strongly feel that we ought to use just "Great Britain" in the page names and for all athlete & team listings. It is the correct name in the Olympic context. When I read some of the past debate comments, I didn't get the impression that many of the "voters" understood that distinction. (And that's also what I perceived is now happening in the figure skating debate — the people who understand the sport, it's terminology and tradition, want to say "Ladies" and folks who don't see the right context want to change the way Wikipedia presents information about that sport.) Andrwsc 00:13, 14 July 2006 (UTC)

Further discussion is ongoing at Template talk:Country IOC alias GBR. -- Jonel | Speak 14:16, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

{{Olympic-stub}} split

This stub type is getting very large, and I've proposed that it be split. If anyone has any comments to make in support, opposition, ammendment or addition, please feel free. Or if you'd like to help split them up... Alai 23:01, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

I agree completely. How far are you thinking about splitting it? tiZom_(2¢) 13:27, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I would think having things like "Olympic Athlete stubs", "Olympic Games stubs", etc. because right there, it would probably split it in two, but I havn't really looked at the page so this is just a blind suggestion. → JARED ^(t)  18:33, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

Participant order

I have noticed on many of the Olympic game pages that the order of countries (participants) changes. In one particular game, Greece is first and then is alphabetical, and then the host is last [1]. In other editions I have seen it purely alphabetical [2], while still other editions have the list as how the countries enter the stadium for the opening ceremonies [3]. The games in Turin, for example, had the countries enter the stadium in alphabetical order but used the Italian language to spell the countries' names (the order for countries on the [2006 Winter Olympics] page does not reflect this, but actually took place). I don't like this practice, since it depends too much on how other countries spell each other names. Since this is an English version of wikipedia and in the spirit of consistency, I propose that all pages be purely alphabetical (English) without regard to how the countries entered the stadium. Perakhantu 17:58, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

First, yes, it is according to the IOC that Greece enters first (having to do with the origins of the Olympics), followed by the Nations in Alphabetical order of the host country's latin-based alphaber, followed by the host country. I believe that it is alphabetical because it gives a sense of diversity throughout the world; that scores of diverse nations come together under one idea of Olympic unity. I we tried to make each host country use Spanish Alphabetical order, we would be forcing them to use something that is, well, foreign to them. That said, I'm not sure what you are proposing. Where on WP do you find these lists of nations in the order you say they're in? → JARED ^(t)  18:47, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Ah, sorry. I was editing my own post at the time that you posted yours. I put up a few links as examples. I'm not really good at expressing my proposal the first time, so I'll try to clear it up. I'm not forcing a way of thinking on other people at all. I just want the pages to look consistent. If the German version of wikipedia wants to list the countries in THEIR alphabetical order, go ahead. I was just thinking that since this is an English version of Wikipedia, I propose having all the Olympic pages reflect that. I agree with you on diversity and bringing nations together, but to the casual reader, they will probably find it odd that the order of nations keep changing around. Perakhantu 19:00, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

For the examples you gave, I agree with you 100% that the list should be in pure English alphabetical order (see here for a more current example). What I thought you were refering to initially were actual lists on Wikipedia showing the parade of nations order (as shown here), where Host alph order would be the only way to go. I think that that would be great if you could fix all of these "Participating NOCs" lists to reflect pure english alph order, using 2006 Winter Olympics as a guide. Thanks. → JARED ^(t)  19:17, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Will do! Perakhantu 19:21, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Olympic Flame

Olympic Flame is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 23:56, 29 July 2006 (UTC)

Olympics years (links, etc)

Did you know that for a bunch of winter olympics (e.g. 1952, 1956), all links to countries points to the 2002 winter olympics instead? Also the map in 1952 is actually the 2002 map. I will fix this particular case, but there may be many more. Please consider checking all olympics articles. -- Ynhockey ^(Talk) 11:10, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

• Clean up in under way. Thanks for pointing it out. Perakhantu 19:53, 1 August 2006 (UTC)

USSR, or Soviet Union?

Did we ever decide what the common name should be used? For example, do we want article names like USSR at the 1980 Summer Olympics or Soviet Union at the 1980 Summer Olympics? Do we want to see results table that show " Soviet Union" or " Soviet Union"? One thing I do NOT want to see is Union of Soviet Socialist Republics at the 1980 Summer Olympics and/or " Soviet Union"....
Right now there is a mixture of articles that use "USSR" or "Societ Union", and it's certainly easy to create additional redirects for the "other" name, but obviously we should be consistent about what we use. Any preferences? Andrwsc 04:19, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

PS - on a related note, I've seen a small amount of usage for "United States of America" (e.g. United States of America at the 1908 Summer Olympics. Please tell me that is not what we're going to do for all the USA articles... Andrwsc 04:19, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

In the IOC records, they have it listed as USSR with the IOC code of URS. We've tried to stick as close to that as possible unless overly cumbersome.

As far as "United States" versus "United States of America", I prefer the shorter version. Sue Anne 05:20, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

As far as USSR vs. Soviet Union goes, I'll go with the IOC. I believe they have the final say (so to speak) on most of the content in the Olympic articles. Just the short "United States" is fine. I've mentioned this before concerning names of countries. The full names of Iran or North Korea take up to much room and I believe isn't necessary to have when listing countries. Perakhantu 05:37, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I couldn't agree more. There is a place to say "Islamic Republic of Iran", "Democratic People's Republic of Korea", etc., but that is in the first paragraph of the country's article on a specific Games, not as part of the article name itself, and not in every results table.

With respect to the Soviet Union/USSR issue, I think both names are relatively common, which is why I asked the question, but you both make a good case that the IOC uses "USSR". Therefore, we should start renaming "Soviet Union at the xxx Olympics" articles when we can. Thanks for the quick replies! Andrwsc 07:34, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

I don't really care, but let's please be consistent--it should be either "Islamic Republic of Iran" and "United States of America" or "Iran" and "United States". As for the Soviets, I'd prefer to avoid abbreviations in article titles, but the IOC does use "USSR" (indeed, often near "Democratic People's Republic of Korea" and "United States of America") so I don't really care that much one way or the other on that. And please, let's drop the damn "& Northern Ireland" from Great Britain -- the IOC has been referring to it as simply "Great Britain" since at least 1960. -- Jonel | Speak 14:08, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

As you know, I have been working hard to standardize on common formats and styles for Olympic pages, especially using templates to assist with that standardization. Through the use of the {{flagIOC}}, {{flagIOCteam}}, {{flagIOCathlete}} and {{flagIOCmedalist}} templates, we've started to make some good progress. Recently I've been working on fixing up the woefully inadequate "Olympic medalists in sport" pages (linked from here), and some other editors have joined the effort, using the new templates with great results.

Through this work, I've noticed some inconsistencies in our naming conventions, which is why I ask about URS (and GBR a couple of weeks ago). Of the couple of hundred NOCs, there are 16 for which we are using a short name that differs from the official name:

China (CHN)	People's Republic of China
Democratic Republic of the Congo (COD)	Democratic Republic of the Congo
Great Britain (GBR)	Great Britain and Northern Ireland (although I would claim "Great Britain" is the name used by the IOC, but that's another debate...)
Iran (IRI)	Islamic Republic of Iran
Laos (LAO)	Lao People's Democratic Republic
Libya (LBA)	Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
Moldova (MDA)	Republic of Moldova
Macedonia (MKD)	Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia
North Korea (PRK)	Democratic People's Republic of Korea
Russia (RUS)	Russian Federation
Syria (SYR)	Syrian Arab Republic
Tanzania (TAN)	United Republic of Tanzania
United States (USA)	United States of America
British West Indies (BWI)	British West Indies Federation
East Germany (GDR)	German Democratic Republic
West Germany (FRG)	Federal Republic of Germany

I'd like for us to reach consensus on the names currently used by the template code and standardize on them. The only one I'm not 100% convinced on is "DPR Korea" vs. "North Korea", but I do not want to use "South Korea" for KOR, so I think that's why I'm leaning towards "DPR Korea" for PRK.

What do you all think? Can we agree to the names on the left side of the table? Remember, I'm suggesting that those names be used for the "<country> at the <year> Olympics" article names, and used in results tables. These names can easily be overridden if necessary for display purposes (e.g. {{flagIOC|GBR|name=Great Britain and Northern Ireland}}) but the idea is that they usually aren't. Andrwsc 17:21, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Deletion discussions

Two Olympic-related deletion discussions, if anyone wants to comment.

• Template:2000 Summer Olympics medal count
• Axel Andersson

-- Jonel | Speak 23:53, 3 August 2006 (UTC)

Art competitions at the Olympic Games

Art competitions at the Olympic Games is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy 19:12, 6 August 2006 (UTC)

Cat Question

• In my wikignoming, I had a question about Category:Competitors at the 1912 Summer Olympics and its subcategory Category:Athletes at the 1912 Summer Olympics. My first reaction was to move any people out of Competitors and into Atheletes (which looks like it was setup if they didn't fall into one of the other subcats, Rowers, Gymnasts, etc). So I figured I'd pop in here and see if there was a concensus about the preferred method. Thx. — MrDolomite | Talk 01:20, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

There should, in the end, be no actual articles in the Competitors category. Each competitor should be categorized by sport - those who competed in gymnastics should be in the Gymnasts at... category, those who competed in swimming should be in the Swimmers at... category, and so on. The Athletes at... category is for those who competed in the sport called athletics (see Athletics at the 1912 Summer Olympics) or what Americans call track & field. The four in the category at the moment would go in Category:Footballers at the 1912 Summer Olympics (Anderson and the two Nielsens) and Category:Modern pentathletes at the 1912 Summer Olympics (Patton). -- Jonel | Speak 03:42, 7 August 2006 (UTC)

Modern Pentathlon vs Modern pentathlon

I'm inclined towards the latter, but I just wanted to make sure that this was the general consensus as I've seen the former in a few places. --Bedders 09:26, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Answering my own query, I'm going with modern pentathlon, as the trend seems to be all lower case with other sports --Bedders 13:49, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Bedders, I definitely agree that it should be modern pentathlon. --Sue Anne 21:55, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Template categorization

Should templates be placed in Category:Olympics templates and not its parents: Category:Sports navigational boxes and Category:Sports templates? Personally I think that the latter two categories can be merged, but can we start with this at least? Dafoeberezin3494 21:53, 24 August 2006 (UTC)

Athletics at the 1992 Summer Olympics result lists

Hello. Is it right by me to edit the results of the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona.

SndrAndrss August 26, 2006 21:07 (UTC)

Athletics at the 1992 Summer Olympics reduced format

What is the rationale for deleting the results in all the Olympic pages for athletics? Unlike many Olympic sports the distance, time and heights are fundamental to appreciating the results. As they are currently formatted for place only they are a shadow of what they could be. I understand that the long term plan is for each event to have its own subpage with ALL the information (qualifiing times for ALL competitors, reaction times wind readings etc.), but that does not seem like a very good reason to remove the medals winning performances. Has there ever been a discussion about this? David D. (Talk) 03:28, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

David, The goal was to standardize the medal results for all sports on all the Olympic pages. But, I can understand your concern that "timed results" are more important in a sport like Athletics than scores would be in something like Volleyball. I would recommend creating a subset of Template:MedalistTable that could be used for Athletics and putting that up for review. --Sue Anne 17:43, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I'll do that, as I think this really reduces the utility fo these pages in wikipedia. To have the results being one click away makes it inferior to every other repository of this kind of data on the web and in text books. David D. (Talk) 18:53, 29 August 2006 (UTC)

I reformatted the 1992 page, so I'll address this issue. I had felt that listing performances on these summary tables would be redundant and add to the clutter, although I can see the argument the other way. I guess my main concern is that the width of the table might get too big to render nicely. Also, the intent is to have individual pages for each event, and that's where performance information is best kept, but again, I can see the argument the other way for years in which we do not have complete event details but we do have times for the medal winners only.

To fix the problem, I have added an parameter to the existing {{MedalistTable}} template, so you just add columns=2 to the table heading, and you have to make sure that every line has another column (even if empty). I have also edited Athletics at the 1992 Summer Olympics to use the new parameter so you can see how it works, although I don't see the what the big issue was since the times were only shown for only 6 of 43 events... If anyone cares to dig up the 1992 results and add them, the page will look that much better!! Andrwsc 20:51, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

The big issue was that I was not going to waste time adding results since sondre ( SndrAndrss ) kept deleting them in other pages (1984 1988). At the time i was trying to encourage Sondre to add results, I now see he is doing that due to the constructive input from this talk page. David D. (Talk) 20:49, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I've also just reformatted Athletics at the 1996 Summer Olympics using the improved table format, comments appreciated. Andrwsc 23:55, 30 August 2006 (UTC)

I have now finished off the Athletics_at_the_2004_Summer_Olympics page using what i think is the correct format. Note that I also changed the order of the events using what i believe is the IAAF standard order. Possibly we can work with the 2004 page to iron out any other format issues before trying to standardise the other pages. Clearly this is going to be a lot of tedious work so it would be excellent to confirm that what is currently on the 2004 page is the gold standard. David D. (Talk) 20:55, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Ah, that's interesting - I didn't even realize there was a standard order. I had been working on these pages using this order: 1. track (running) 2. track (hurdling) 3. track (relays) 4. road (running) 5. road (walking) 6. jumping events (in order of high/long/triple/pole vault) 7. throwing events (in order of shot/discus/javelin/hammer) 8. combination. I totally agree that the order ought to be consistent, so if there is an official order, by all means we should use it. What is your reference for that?

The other thing that needs to be standardized on is the event name as rendered in the table, and as named on the linked event article. I had been following the lead on previously completed pages (e.g. Athletics at the 1964 Summer Olympics or Athletics at the 1908 Summer Olympics. This means things like "metres" spelled in full, lower case punctuation for event names (not proper nouns) - but first character of event name in upper case capitalized in table rendering, no use of comma in name for events 1500 metres and higher, etc. To be honest, I don't think 2004 is a gold standard yet. I think what I did for Athletics at the 1996 Summer Olympics may be closest. Andrwsc 22:30, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree it has not reached the gold standard but i think if we can work on it and get it to a point that people here are happy with the page we can then continue to use that as a reference to fix all the other pages. At present it is not clear how the project wishes these pages to look. I think it is important that we have a reference to make sure we are all on the same page with respect to the details. it takes so long to do these pages that it would be nice to get it correct first time.

My reference for the order is the IAAF results pages. You can see one here (2005 IAAF WC ). I have seen this order at other results pages too. I am not sure how important it is to using the IAAF order (I am indifferent), but it is important that all the wikipedia pages are consistent. I have seen several different orders on various pages including mixing the mens and womens results.

With regard to spelling out events in the first column: I'm not sure this is a good idea for space reasons. But I think we can try out different versions on the 2004 page and see how it fits. David D. (Talk) 23:22, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, interesting. It's unusual (IMO) that they put the relay events after the field events and not at the end of the track events section. Also see here for another ordering of events. Not sure how to resolve this - I think we both agree that a standard order is 100% necessary, just not what that standard order should be. Note that I strongly believe that we should have separate tables for men and women instead of mingling them together. It makes it much easier to find a result, and has the benefit of removing the "Men's" or "Women's" string from the first column of the table, making it more readable and making room for "metres". The only event that has a long name with this format is the steeplechase, so I just put a break between "3000 metre" and "steeplechase". Andrwsc 23:37, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I am not wedded to any particular order. But I do think we need to decide what is the order that wikipedia will use. At present even that is not clear. I agree we should keep men and women seperate. I agree that hurdles and steeple should be together rather than been associated with related distance i.e. 100 m/110 mH or 400 m/400 mH. I think HJ and PV should be together. LJ and TJ together and all the throws. Multievents should probably bring up the rear. You are correct the relays are strange. When i did the 2004 page i did not seperate them from other running/walking events. I just looked at the Bejing pdf and i think the way they have ordered the events is pretty good. It makes some sense grouping the road events together David D. (Talk) 23:42, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

OK, well let's leave some time for some other editors to weigh in with their opinions, but your suggestions sound good to me. Basically, we would be standardizing on the order shown on that 2008 reference above, with one exception - moving the road events between track & field. To summarize: 1. track running 2. track hurdling (incl. steeplechase) 3. track relays. 4. road races, walks before Marathon (and for older Games, this is where the cross-country events should go) 5. jumps (vertical before horizontal, so high/vault/long/triple) 6. throws (shot/discus/hammer/javelin) 7. combined. Andrwsc 23:52, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. David D. (Talk) 00:23, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Meters and records in athletics table

Hi Andrwsc, i was looking through your edits on the Athletics at the 1996 Summer Olympics page. i have a couple of questions regarding the format. In the HJ example below:

Event	Gold		Silver		Bronze
High jump	Charles Austin  United States	2.39 m (OR)	Artur Partyka  Poland	2.37 m	Steve Smith  Great Britain	2.35 m
WR world record | AR area record | CR championship record | GR games record | NR national record | OR Olympic record | PB personal best | SB season best | WL world leading (in a given season)

Should we be adding the small m after the measurements? It seems self evident. With regard to the WR and OR should these be in brackets and small ( (OR) ) or italicised and small ( OR ) or itlaicised and normal size ( OR ) ? It might also be a good idea to use the Sports record codes template or similar at the bottom of each table, as viewed above. David D. (Talk) 21:14, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. As for the "m" for metres, I don't have a strong opinion either way, but there is one place where it is extremely useful. For older games, when distances were measured in feet and inches, I think the best format to display is the actual result of the games on the top line followed by a metric conversion on the second line (in reduced font size). Check out what Athletics at the 1972 Summer Olympics looks like. (Note that I am NOT advocating putting Imperial equivalents for pages where the official results were in metric - the only pages that should have both are for Games prior to metric adoption.) So, because of that situation, the "m" has a lot more value, and that would imply that we always use it, for consistency reasons.

As for the record codes, I just felt that the smaller font on line 2 made for less clutter. I am very conscious of the need for these tables to render nicely on smaller windows (1024x768 is a good benchmark), and adding the extra columns is going to stress that a bit, so I prefer to add the additional information on line 2 if we can, just to ensure that the results column width does not grow excessively. I don't have a very strong opinion on the use of parentheses or italics or not, but I chose the format I did because I thought it looked good.

Also, I do not think that the standard {{Sports record codes}} template makes sense to use on these "home" pages for athletics, since I think the only abbreviations we should ever see are "WR" and "OR". Things like "AR" or "NR" are fine for the detailed event page, but not the summary "Athletics at the year Summer Olympics" page.

Thanks for the comments, and I'm thrilled to see this kind of activity taking place to clean up some sorely neglected pages that had such wild variations in formatting! Andrwsc 22:50, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

To address your points in order:

First, I believe the events at the Olympics have always been measured in metric. The imperial measurements are due to the US converting distances into their own language of imperial. Thus, my guess is that a US author wrote the 1972 page as well as the 1984 page that was soley imperial the first time i saw it. Given the distances have always been measured in metric, I would say the metric distance should get priority with the imperial (if already present in the table) being relegated to brackets. This has been discussed before, I will try and find the relevant page.

Second, i am fine with small font and brackets, if others agree.

Third, i was not really recommending {{Sports record codes}} template, it is too long for one. But an olympic version, that is only on one line, might be useful if we are going to include the WR, OR, PB etc. terminology. David D. (Talk) 23:04, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

With respect to imperial. I think what i have done below might be a good way to go (taken from the 1972 result page). David D. (Talk) 23:14, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Event	Gold		Silver		Bronze
Long jump	Randy Williams  United States	8.24 (27'0¼")	Hans Baumgartner  West Germany	8.18 (26'10")	Arnie Robinson  United States	8.03 ( 26'4")

I think it is important to leave the imperial in there if someone took the effort to do all the conversions. There is also no doubt that most people in the US think in feet and have no feel for the metric distances. David D. (Talk) 23:14, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I guess I just assumed that some official results were presented in Imperial only for older Games, so that's why I presrved them in my re-formatting edits, but looking back as far as 1908, results were shown in both. I'm inclined to go with metric only for clarity reasons. Also, that reserves line 2 for possible WR or OR usage. Andrwsc 23:24, 31 August 2006 (UTC)\

(PS: there was another comment I added above w.r.t. order of events and event names; you might have missed it because I put it after that discussion point before the next topic came up.)

Just answered the order of events points you made above, i had missed it first time through. With regard to metric/imperial since the French started the modern olympics they used metric for everything (Note the 1500m was always the Olympic event, never the mile). As far as i am aware, all the imperial results that are seen are due to the British and Americans converting the metric to numbers that they were/are more comfortable. David D. (Talk) 23:32, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Just to add my 2 cents. I would like to see "m" for meters and "sec" for seconds added to the template. I know that it is fairly self explainatory, but it would be that much clearer if the respective abbrevations were added as well. Also for the decathlon and heptathlon, I think it would be a good idea to have "pts" for points used as well. Perakhantu 04:05, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

What about the longer events with mixed units? At present the marathon time is presented in the form of 2:02:02. A 10,000 is currently 26:26.26, again units are problematic here. Would we leave these with no units and just use sec where appropriate? Oh the banes of a mixed based timing system. David D. (Talk) 16:18, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

Order of sections on "Sport at the Olympics" pages

In my recent editing binge for these pages, I have been following the common convention of putting the medal table first, followed by the event summary. This looks good for "small" sports, but when addressing some recent athletics pages, the medal table can be 40+ countries long. The reader has to scroll down quite a bit to get to the event table. Also, I think the medal table is secondary to the individual winners, and shouldn't be the first thing we show on the page. Therefore, I propose that the medal table go after the medal summary. Check out Athletics at the 1996 Summer Olympics for an example with the medal table after, and Athletics at the 1976 Summer Olympics or Athletics at the 1980 Summer Olympics for examples of where it is before. Unless there are strong objections, I would like to start putting the medal tables after the event tables for future pages I get to, and will probably re-work the ones already completed.

On a related topic, what is our convention for the order of the pair of navigation boxes for these pages? I have seen examples of both "Events at the xxx Olympics" first, followed by "Sport at the Olympics", and vice versa. I think I prefer to see the events nav box first, but I want to make sure we have a consistent format. Andrwsc 23:00, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

I strongly agree that the medals table should be after the medals summary. I also favor the events (as in the 100, 200 etc.) template first. David D. (Talk) 23:06, 31 August 2006 (UTC)

Is the Template:AthleticsAt2004SummerOlympics even useful on the 2004 olympic page? It seems redundant with the medal summary table. I also wonder if the template Template:EventsAt2004SummerOlympics should not be titled SportsAt2004SummerOlympics? David D. (Talk) 04:07, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

I agree with you one the first part. Having such a template on page that ALREADY lists the events and has links to each event page seems redundant to me. As for the second template, I would keep it as "events". The whole is it a sport? discipline? event? makes my head hurt. I think most of the pages have used "events" as part of the template and that's fine by me. Perakhantu 04:21, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

If events is the standard being used it works for me. It's meaning is self evident when the list is seen. David D. (Talk) 04:27, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

Wow, I guess I couldn't even see the forest for the trees with respect to the navigation bozes, but yeah, "Events at the ..." isn't exactly what they are. They should really be "Sports at the ...", where each sport usually has the specific events. (Of course, to be pedantically correct, we have been breaking up the sport of aquatics into the multiple disciplines for those templates, as we have also done for skating and skiing in the Winter templates, but calling them all "Sports" is close enough!!) I have been contemplating converting all of those templates to use {{NavigationBox}} (look at the two nav boxes at the end of Greece at the 1896 Summer Olympics as a good example of what that style looks like), and I could easily make them all say "Sports" instead of "Events", unless there is massive objection of course. Andrwsc 20:32, 1 September 2006 (UTC)

What do you mean "converting all of those templates"? As side from the whole "events" or "sports" issue, I like how the event of.... template looks already. I don't think changing it is necessary. Perakhantu 04:40, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the visual appearance of the navigation boxes that use the {{NavigationBox}} template is much cleaner than the style we use for the Events navigation boxes. Some time ago, I noticed that someone had changed {{USA-Summer-Olympics}} to use this format. At first I was annoyed, since it was inconsistent with all the other NOC navigation boxes, but the style grew on me, so I have been changing most of the others, so that once again, they are all consistent. I have also been using it for some of the "NOCinxxxOlympics" navigation boxes, and the effect is very nice when they appear together. The vertical spacing is much better than before. Again, take a look at the bottom of the Greece at the 1896 Summer Olympics page and let me know what you think.

I don't know if anybody has noticed, but I also changed {{NOCin2006WinterOlympics}} and {{NOCin2004SummerOlympics}} to use a variation on that format, the {{Dynamic navigation box}}, which gives the abilt to show or hide the contents. This is very useful for long lists of NOCs, like the 2004 box.

So, based on these results, I had been contemplating using the consistent style for the "Events" navigation boxes too. Basing them on the standard {{NavigationBox}} is a good idea, in my opinion. It is in widespread use throughout Wikipedia, and I love consistency. But I seek feedback. (I am surprised nobody has commented on the dynamic boxes yet...) Andrwsc 08:48, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

I think the NavBox template is a better look as well. I started creating new templates (a couple NOC-Summer-Olympics ones, I think) with that format a while back, so there are a couple out there already. -- Jonel | Speak 16:25, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

A couple of weeks ago I updated most (but not yet all) of these to the NavBox format (see Category:Olympics by country templates). I also added the flag before the country name, and I think they look pretty good! Andrwsc 17:20, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I am saying that I think this:

looks better than this:

Ok, I see what you are saying now. I agree that those square dots do look beter than just a line in between the years or events, but I wonder about the size of the text. Isn't that a bit small? I know having a small size text makes it look more compact, but I wonder if some users would find it harder to read by having the text so small. Perakhantu 07:08, 3 September 2006 (UTC)

• (indent reset) The dots look nicer than the pipes. A suggestion may be to increase the size of the text, but then to keep the boxes from becoming too large on a given page, incorporate the show/hide feature like on {{US Presidents}} — MrDolomite | Talk 13:45, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
  • The show/hide feature is built into the {{Dynamic navigation box}} template which I used for some of the larger Olympic navigation boxes, such as: {{NOCin2004SummerOlympics}}. My opinion is that it's only needed if the navigation box exceeds 3 or 4 lines. Andrwsc 19:12, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Sorting Category:Olympic gold medalists

The Olympic medalist categories are starting to grow as we work on more and more athlete pages. I'd like some input whether we should sort them via country or event -- or both. Some sorting has already begin (see Category:Olympic gold medalists for Australia). --Sue Anne 23:45, 2 September 2006 (UTC)

Hi Sue Anne. If you look at the parent Category:Olympic medalists, you'll see that we already have three ways to categorize medalists: by sport, by nation, and by medal. I agree that the "by medal" method is going to be VERY large if there are only three children, so I like the idea of subcategorizing that by nation too. In the end, ALL medalists should only appear in the "branch level" categories like Category:Olympic gold medalists for Australia, and those categories would be placed in two parent categories (as that one currently is placed now), like Category:Olympic gold medalists and Category:Olympic medalists for Australia — both of which should ultimately contain NO individual athlete articles.

The other thing that needs to happen is Category:Olympic medalists by sport should be populated with subcategories (e.g. Category:Olympic medalists in athletics), each of which has the set of athlete articles for that sport. That way, an article like Cathy Freeman would appear in both Category:Olympic gold medalists for Australia and Category:Olympic medalists in athletics. Right now, Category:Olympic medalists by sport is only populated with the complete set of "Olympic medalists in sport" pages, but those should be moved to be the main articles for the subcategories when they are created.

Finally, I question the need for Category:Summer Olympics medalists and Category:Winter Olympics medalists once we have all the "Olympic medalists in sport" categories created.

Andrwsc 12:30, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I oppose the recategorization Sue Anne has already been doing. We already have more than enough "by country" categories; what we need is some where we can find a person without knowing which country that person was from. It doesn't matter if it is a huge category--put the alphabet navigation tools on top. Gene Nygaard 22:31, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Wilma Rudolph

The Wilma Rudolph article is lacking and I was thoroughly disapointed with it as it did not do her service. I do not know much about her and I was hoping someone could focus on it. Much obliged.--207.230.48.73 01:53, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

More Templates

I think this has been discussed before, but I don't think anything was resolved. Anyway, I have noticed that there have been event templates added to the bottom of various pages that already list the events. Example: Swimming at the 2004 Summer Olympics. You'll notice that the events are already linked inside the medal summary boxes but, at the bottom of the page there is an event template. Isn't it redundant to have a template that lists the events on a page that already lists the events? I propose just deleting those particular templates from the main sports page from each edition of the Olympic games. Other examples are: Swimming at the 1992 Summer Olympics and Athletics at the 1964 Summer Olympics.

Truthfully, I don't think it matters. It just is there to provide extra navigation, so it really doesn't matter. → JARED ^(t)  19:27, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

ok, well, I guess I'll start deleting them then. If someone starts screaming either here or at my own page, then I'll know I'm doing something wrong. heh. Perakhantu 19:30, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

WP:BOLD is always the best policy! Go for it. Andrwsc 20:00, 26 September 2006 (UTC)

Lists of Olympic Nations - discrepancies and omissions

There are discrepancies between the list of Olympic Committees under National Olympic Committee and the list in the Category:National Olympic committees category. I suggest that the former is redundant, since all NOCs should be included in the category listing. Furthermore, both lists are far from complete - many more nations are listed in the categories Category:Nations at the Summer Olympics and Category:Nations at the Winter Olympics. Cleanup is needed.Rodparkes 08:04, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

Competitor country information

Hello all. There is currently a discussion about adding the country of competition to the medal tables on biography pages at Template talk:MedalTop#Competitor country, and I would be grateful for further comments on the discussion. Thanks, mattbr³⁰ 14:38, 7 October 2006 (UTC)

Nations competing in sports

I have noticed some pages where there has been an attempt to list all the countries that have competeted in certain Olympic sports. Example: Swimming at the Summer Olympics. Scrolling down, you'll notice that a table has been started to create such a list. I do NOT think this a good idea. This table would be excessively long, and I fail to see how it would add benefit to the page. I propose that ONLY for sports that inherently team oriented such as Ice hockey at the Winter Olympics or Baseball at the Summer Olympics should such tables exist. Andrwsc has created certain tables where one can see how each team did over the years and the medals won. I think this is an excellent table but for teams only. Perakhantu 06:02, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

I totally agree. I think a "Participating nations" section on the overall "Sport at the Olympics" page only makes sense for team sports (as I have done for Ice hockey at the Olympic Games). I think the page for a specific Games could have a participating nations section for most sports. I would prefer to see the number of competitors for each nation in each table cell, rather than just an "X". But back to your point, sports like swimming or especially athletics have attracted at least one competitor from almost every country, so those tables will be pushing 200 rows long on the overall "Sport at the Olympics" page! That's a lot of data for the reader to wade through. Andrwsc 06:27, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

What is an Olympic stub?

A question: how much information should be on a "Country at the year Olympics" page for it not to be considered a stub anymore? I see four levels of completion:

1. page just shows that the nation participated, showing medal counts, but not much else
2. as above, but also shows the list of medalists
3. as above, plus the "Results by event" section is partially completed
4. the results section is complete

Obviously #4 is not a stub. I would argue that #2 and #3 should also be removed from stub states (i.e. {{Olympic-stub}} or {{Winter-Olympic-stub}} is removed from the page). Certainly the page is incomplete, but is it really a stub? I would prefer to put {{listdev}} in the partially complete "Results by event" section instead. I propose that we use the stub status for level #1 only. Comments? Andrwsc 06:35, 14 October 2006 (UTC)

Germany in 1952

There doesn't seem to be a lot of activity here lately, but I'll ask a new question anyway. Does anybody have a good source for the status of Germany at the 1952 Games (both summer & winter)? On the IOC website, they use "EUA" for 1956-1964 (as expected), and both "FRG" and "GDR" for 1968-1988 (as expected), and then a combined "GER" again for 1992-current (as expected). However, 1952 is strange. For the summer Games, the IOC website uses "GER". On our page at 1952 Summer Olympics, we call it "West Germany" and use "FRG" in the medal count. The official report for Helsinki just calls the nation Germany (and of course, country codes were not used at that time). What should we use? FRG, or GER?

For the 1952 Winter Olympics, it's even wierder. The IOC site shows two bobsleigh medals for "FRG" and five other medals (Mirl Buchner and Ossi Reichert in alpine skiing, and Ria & Paul Falk in figure skating) for "GER"!! I cannot tell why that is not a single total of 7 medals. Also, we claim that both FRG and GDR competed independently at those Games. The official report shows a single Germany (Tyskland), mentions a "German Olympic Committee" (singular), etc. I'm inclined to think that was just a West German team, but I think we need a reference that shows East Germany competed. Any help on both these Games would be greatly appreciated. Andrwsc 19:08, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Question

I'm likely to help in Olympic sports, but somehow i'm confuse whether can use other WikiProject template like {{footballbox}} to edit the match score in this Olympic sports, and somehow this project, isi't it cover the report of qualification round also? Can someone give me the answer? --Aleenf1 06:41, 22 October 2006 (UTC)

Lottie Dod

Lottie Dod is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy (Talk) 16:54, 24 October 2006 (UTC)