Talk:Total Olympics medal count

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[edit] Wikipedia:Olympic conventions

  • All previous conversations and discussion up to February 22, 2006 have been archived. Current issues dealing with Olympic conventions and medal charts should be taken to Wikipedia:Olympic conventions. Until users and contributors reach a concensus on Olympic conventions, Wikipedia:Olympic conventions will serve as the appropriate venue for debates and discussions. I repeat, please post there until these matters are resolved. --Caponer 02:51, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Total Medal Count Turns Reality Upside Down: US Bias Makes US Look Better Than USSR etc.

Apparently a bunch of US patriots is determined to make the US look much better than it deserves. In fact, a recent total medal count makes the US look twice as good as the USSR and other rarely participating nations, exploiting the fact that the US has been a single political entity since the first Olympics in 1896, while the USSR never participated before 1952 and does not even exist any more. However, the USSR beat the US almost every time both nations participated (Winter total medal count victories: USSR vs USA 9:0, Summer: 6:2, Total: 15:2).

Actually: Summer games would be 7:2 If you include the Unified Team which is basically USSR under a different name.

This ridiculous US bias overturns conventional wisdom about the athletic prowess of nations. One preliminary way of improving this would be to insert an extra column listing how often the various political entities really took part in the games, to make clear that such tables are really comparing apples and oranges. In addition, there should be a separate table stating the number of medal count victories per nation in relation to how often they participated. Medalstats 10:32, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

The paragraph on "US bias" is way too combative, and the overuse of bold makes it look like plain ranting. It doesn't even fit Wikipedia style since the "Criticism of misleading US bias" should be a subject heading but instead it's just a sentence fragment in bold. Then the "Don't delete this" in parentheses is jarring. You could tone the paragraph way down, but, even if you did that, this page isn't about documenting which nations are "better" than others: it's just about tallying the total medal count. That's it. And it's doing that. Anything comparisons you make between two nations is your own busineess. I don't see any reason to include a "Don't let the numbers fool you: the USSR totally rules the US" section. You could make another article where you compare those medal counts, and your ideas of making newer tables that take smaller, more related windows of data is of merit, but I'd suggest putting those on new articles and linking to them from here, but keep the "Total Olympics medal count" article to just that: the total Olympics medal count. These is just plain, raw data: no US bias went into compiling it. Paulb42 12:41, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

To Medalstats, I have taken it out again and expect not to see it again unless you come up with sources that are official and that back up your criticism. This is a list for Pete's sake and yes, the US is leading it, o well... it happens. This page is not the place to state a paragraph as you have written it. It was not designed to do anything and was not written by a "bunch of US patriots". I take great offense at your tone of language. If anyone has a bias it is you and I suggest you take it elsewhere.--Kalsermar 15:15, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Kalsermar, take it easy, I think Medalstats is right in principle, and something like what he's suggesting should be inserted, otherwise you really get a very misleading US POV picture. Them medals 08:52, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

What about dividing by the number of games the country has participated in? i.e. 'medals per each Olympic games' CoolGuy 14:19, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Support! I just came to this page "total olympics medal count" following a link from the winter olympics medal count, and decided to participate in the discussion. I believe this "total olympics medal count" is one of the most misleading examples of spin doctoring at Wikipedia. Obviously one must state how often sombody participated before you state how many medals they won. The idea of pairwise medal count scores is great. Wintermetal 21:34, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Let's Create a Table Providing the Medal Count Scores For All Pairs of Nations

The ideal, much more informative and interesting solution would be a table with all nations listed on both dimensions, for each pair of nations providing the score: how often did one beat the other in the total medal count when both participated? For example, the score for USSR vs USA would be 15:2. The score for USA vs East Germany would be 4:7. But the table would also provide many other interesting scores such as France vs UK etc. Former fragments of nations that split up or united should be listed separately, but their combined scores should also be given, since many are interested in this type of information. Similar tables should be created for pure gold counts and for scores restricted to Summer and Winter Games. Anybody feeling up to the challenge? Medalstats 10:32, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Great idea, but a lot of work! Them medals 08:55, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Support! I just came to this page "total olympics medal count" following a link from the winter olympics medal count, and decided to participate in the discussion. I believe this "total olympics medal count" is one of the most misleading examples of spin doctoring at Wikipedia. Obviously one must state how often sombody participated before you state how many medals they won. The idea of pairwise medal count scores is great. Wintermetal 21:34, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


[edit] ZZX

Under the 1904 games a Mixed Team (ZZX) is listed as having a gold and silver, but they aren't on this chart, where should they go Mbisanz 06:37, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Currently, the Summer, Winter, and total Olympics medal count pages show the actual teams who won the mixed medals, rather than crediting them to ZZX. They don't give them to those countries' individual ranks, but rather to new entities which represent the various mixed teams, and lists which countries were involved in each. That is why there are things in the table such as "Australia/New Zealand" and "Ireland/United States." There is currently a propostion to use NOCs (National Olympic Committees) as the only criteria for medal tables. By doing this, Mixed Team (ZZX) would show up on the tables instead of things such as "Ireland/U.S." Olympic conventions/topics is the page where that propostion is located, so please check it out if you would like to comment. King nothing 2 05:27, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Alexandros

The numbers for the Greek gold medals don't seem to add up with those from the records of the individual games. There seems to be an 18-medal discrepancy.

Actually, there is a 55 medal discrepancy from my counting. I only came up with 103 medals total.

[edit] Deletion

Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on 16 February 2006. The result of the discussion was keep.

└UkPaolo/talk┐ 15:12, 23 February 2006 (UTC)


Restart deletion debate! This so-called debate concerning the deletion of the entire article was over way to fast, I think. Very few participated, apparently all from the US. Such bias seems unacceptable. Now that this topic has attracted the attention of a broader audience due to the finished Winter Games, the deletion debate must be re-opened again! Wintermetal 09:57, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Number Tallies Audit

Would anyone else be interested in assisting me with recounting each and every one of these totals, I corrected them using the all-time medal counts for the Winter and Summer Olympic Games, but they still do not seem to add up. With a couple of people we could have this done in no time! It needs a good audit. --Caponer 15:53, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Ceylon/Sri Lanka

Should Ceylon and Sri Lanka not be considered one and the same? Only the name and form of government of the country changed, for all other intents and purposes it is one, continuously existing, entity.--Kalsermar 18:48, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Criticism of bias section

It looks like to me that section has just as much of a POV as is claimed for the list. Maybe it'd be best to add a column that has the number of Olympics each country has participated in. That way you don't have the "this country dominates this other county" type of text but you'd still get a sense of the levels of participation. Rx StrangeLove 19:00, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

This is somewhat unecesarry table I agree, Basically, not all countries participates in every olympics, this gives advantage to the nation who participates in almost every olympic games like the United States. The Soviet Union did not even compete until 1952 and they are no longer after 1992. I am not being Anti-American but I really find this table bais if not just completely unecesarry. I really think the madal table per Olympic Games are the ones that are important.

Well, as long as this survived AFD, it's here for now so let's not edit war over it. It seems like a pretty basic type list to me, a list of total medals. If there are concerns about some countries being lower on the list because of a lower level participation it won't be fixed by singling only a few of them. To be fair we should be able to judge the effect this has on all countries. So I think a separate column listing the number of appearances each has will allow readers to judge for themselves. Rx StrangeLove 03:03, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Agree with RxStrangeLove. Any presentation of statistical data has an inherent framework bias, this one is no exception. Providing data to help understand that bias is far more helpful than providing no information whatsoever. --Joe Decker 17:08, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I agree. But as long as there is no extra column with the number of participations per country, some toned-down form of the criticism of bias seems necessary. It can be removed as soon as the extra column is ready. Wintermetal 22:13, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

As long as there is no extra column, we should insert something like this (I edited the old version of the criticism):

Ongoing debate. Currently it is being debated (see discussion pages) whether this page should be deleted or whether the table below should at least include a column listing how often the various nations really participated in the Olympics. This would help to clarify why the USA is in the top spot although both the USSR and East Germany usually beat the USA whenever they participated (Winter total medal count: USSR vs USA 9:0, Summer: 6:2, Total: 15:2). It would also explain the unexpected low rankings of many other nations. This site including this note should not be deleted until the matter is resolved. Wintermetal 22:43, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

I was going to copy this over to the talk page (from the article) but I see it's here already. Comments about the editing process don't belong on the main article page. Rx StrangeLove 22:55, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
Also, this article as survived a deletion debate (there's a AFD notice up the page a little)...so the only debate is if another column should be added. To me it makes sense for another one to be added but if there isn't consensus for it then there's not much to be done I guess. An alternative wold be another list with the totals displayed another way. Whether that would get past a AFD nomination is anyones guess. Rx StrangeLove 23:10, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

Restart deletion debate! This so-called debate concerning the deletion of the entire article was over way to fast, I think. Very few participated, apparently all from the US. Such bias seems unacceptable. Now that this topic has attracted the attention of a broader audience due to the finished Winter Games, it must be re-opened again! Wintermetal 09:56, 27 February 2006 (UTC)

Ignore. If i understand english well enough the answer is in the title ..."total medal count". why you cant simply COUNT the (in real world existing) medals? Ok, it is because it gets Americans on the top and some of them can be really embarrasing with their overacted patriotism ... but then ignore "total medal count" page, not try to delete it. It is true to its title.

Lamka (Czecho)

Add a column of participations. The discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Sports_Olympics/Olympic_conventions#Total_Medal_Counts_Must_Include_Info_on_How_Often_Nations_Participated so far is in favor of this (14/10 currently). I think, that it should be included here, all the more that some states are defunct and ranking by medal count seems to be biased for such states. So far I added only years of USSR's participation. Cmapm 11:02, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

Actually, if you count valid contributor's votes it is about 9/9 but the quality of the arguments (I say, but then again I may be biased) is heavily against the proposal. I'll state again, there is nothing biased about a simple addition of numbers. The years in brackets you did for the USSR would be fine and by looking at the years (1952-1988 in this case) readers can already see how often the country participated. Are you going to add these to all countries? --Kalsermar 20:50, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Unlike total medal count pages for SO/WO, this one has not direct links to any country's "participations page" at Olympics, which still makes me feel, that the column would be appropriate here, while probably would not in SO/WO pages. As for years for other countries, I am not going to add them, because I don't have enough information. However, for me, USSR's case is the most irritating the eyes, mostly due to its high rank, late Olympic entry and defunct nature. Perhaps they should also be necessary for other defunct states. So, I think, that either years would stay there and be added for other defunct states, or appropriate note(s) added. Cmapm 22:07, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
Well, I went and added years for W/E Germany's, I took them from IOC's medal page for Munich Olympics, please, correct me if I'm not right. Two more defunct teams - United Team of Germany and Unified Team have direct links to their "participations pages". Cmapm 22:18, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re: 1906 Intercalated games

I would like to inform any person willing to do this that the 1906 intercalated games medals should be removed from this page and the summer medals page, per the consensus of the Wikipedia community, which can be viewed here. This shouldn't be a big project, and I would appreciate any person willing to do this. If you really feel helpful, mayber make sure that all of the numbers on these pages are correct. Thanks for your help! --Jared [T]/[+] 21:14, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Adding Medals of the EU

This debate was removed from this page because of its absurdity and lack of evidence to support it. It should not be replaced for any reason.

[edit] Incorrect data

These is obviously something wrong with the data on the 3 totals pages, as I was just checking the US totals to see if they add up and they don't: 218+2190=2408, not 2539. And the issue of whether or not someone has taken out the 1906 intercalated games is still a factor. I don't want to list this as unfactual information, but I might eventually have to so that someone will take up the job of retallying the medals. Its a big job, so I would appreciate anyone who would do it, or atleast part of it. Thanks. --J@red [T]/[+] 19:52, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

Adding up the toals for the USA on the individual medalcount pages for each olympics minus the 1906 games yields 2437 total medals. InformationPlease.com agrees with this.--Kalsermar 20:23, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
Ok, so maybe just the total counts need to be re-adjusted. If all of the smaller tables are right, then the problem is probably that there are adding mistakes, inclusion of the 1906 games, etc. I don't know... --J@red [T]/[+] 21:27, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

I have gone through all the medal tables from olympic.org, matched them to the tables we have on Wikipedia, and adjusted this page to match the totals. They should all add up cleanly now. Andrwsc 21:09, 28 March 2006 (UTC)

Hmm, well I just added them up myself, using a pretty foolproof method, and got different totals for the USA Summer medals. I'm pretty sure mine are right because I copy and pasted the entire table for each year (using the IOC site's tables), and then used a spreadsheet function to add all of the USA numbers. I got 896 golds, 692 silvers, and 603 bronzes (Summer Olympics). King nothing 2 01:04, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
That's exactly the process I used, so one of us must have cut&pasted wrong! :) I've updated United States at the Summer Olympics to show all the medal totals from my spreadsheet, so please let me know if you see the discrepancies. I did see a couple of mismatches in Wikipedia when I was re-checking the US totals. The top 10 table at 1900 Summer Olympics did not match the full table at 1900 Summer Olympics medal count, and ditto for 2004 Summer Olympics and 2004 Summer Olympics medal count. They all match the IOC totals now -- as far as I can tell! Andrwsc 04:48, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Your 1904 numbers seem to be wrong (as do Wikipedia's). King nothing 2 05:02, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
Well, so they are! I wonder if the table at the IOC website was updated recently, because that's where I got the data for my spreadsheet a few weeks ago. I shall update the appropriate Wikipedia pages (including the 1904 pages). Thanks! Andrwsc 05:32, 29 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Hong Kong

Well, i think in light of the edit war we see regarding the HK entry I'll best put in my 2 cents before making any changes. I think according to the convention that's been established is that there is one entry per NOC. Now, on the table it lists "Hong Kong, China" and this is the name it use on placards only since the 2000 Olympics. In 1996 it was simply just "Hong Kong". In my opinion they are two distinct NOCs and deserves two separate entries with two different flags. One gold medal for "Hong Kong" and one silver medal for "Hong Kong, China". So this is what i'm proposing to clarify the fact that the medals were won under different flags and political administrations. --Kvasir 09:32, 6 April 2006 (UTC)

I support this move for this special case.--Kalsermar 13:53, 6 April 2006 (UTC)
I think this is an extremely bad idea. The NOC known as HKG (Amateur Sports Federation & Olympic Committee of Hong Kong) remained the same through the transition of Hong Kong but merely changed their name (see IOC site and HKG site).
I think the wrong way to resolve POV edit wars is to submit and accept inaccurate data. I think this idea opens up a huge can of worms, paving the way for editors with German or Russian POV to start combining totals of FRG, GDR, EUA and GER or URS, EUN and RUS respectively, to name a couple of concrete examples. Take a look at the excessive and out of context detail that ended up in Ice hockey at the Olympic Games because of a similar edit war.
I think one problem on the Wikipedia Olympic pages right now is that we don't do a good job explaining the differences between countries and NOCs. One solution to the edit war here might be to add a column to this table to identify the NOC (i.e. HKG) for each row and not just use the current name designation. Also, I am in the middle of a re-write of List of IOC country codes which will list each of the designations used for each code. I have also been planning on writing an article to help explain various situations (perhaps called National participation in the Olympic Games).
In the meantime, I strongly suggest that this recent change for HKG is reverted. Andrwsc 21:07, 19 July 2006 (UTC)
Well I did let well over 3 months passed since the last comment presented itself regarding the HKG issue. It would be silly to revert changes every time a different opinion comes along, THEN will we have edit wars. I suggest a vote or more discussion of some sort to come to a conclusion.
I do think the handover was more than just a simple name change. And there is no inaccurate data presented in the most recent edits. If anything, combining the counts is misleading, as if combining East German and West German count under the Unified German team. I would like to point out the current chart reflects clearly of the changes pre- and post- unification with the 4 German nations' entries in the table. This is not dissimilar to the case in the HKG handover. --Kvasir 00:31, 20 July 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, I didn't see the talk page discussion — I just noticed the edit history on the article, and saw your changes from a few days ago. I agree that more discussion is probably needed. Consider my comments the second or third bit of feedback on this issue.
As for the "name change", I was referring to the NOC, not Hong Kong itself. Reading their website leads me to believe that the NOC had full continuity while the territory switched jurisdiction. They consider themselves now to be the same organization that was founded in 1950. This is why I think it is quite unlike other situations, such as when GDR and FRG had independent NOCs, independent teams, etc., and this is why I believe it makes perfect sense to include the 1996 medal and the 2004 medal as both won by athletes from the same NOC. Andrwsc 01:22, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Germany divided ???

Why are the German medals tables divided in the way they are now - four seperate categories ???, its absolutely illogical and misleading. I can understand seperating the medals of East Germany into its own category but there is no logical reason what so ever to seperate "West Germany" and possibly "the unified German team" from the main Germany category. West Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is the exact same country as the Germany that has competed in the Olympics since 1990 (just with more territory) and has the same olympic commitee - it is also the successor state (legally and officially) of the three German "states" before 1945 (Third Reich, Weimar Republic, Imperial Germany). I understand East Germany should be seperated because it would be unfair to count both German states that existed between 1949 and 1990 as there were for much of this period two teams (excluding unified team period) allowing double the chances of success but West Germany and the main Germany category need to be merged as is done with World Cup results on Wikipedia, where East Germany (GDR) is seperated from the main listing for German results. Right now the seperation of Germany into the current categories make about as much sense as splitting the US into different categories/countries to represent the inclusion of new states, i.e US (50 states) -- medals US (49 states) -- medals US (40 states) -- medals. Or is you accept the current division you might as well make a category for Third Reich Germany, Weimar German, Imperial Germany as well (come on!)

West Germany and Germany need to be merged, possibly with the unified team as well but I am not sure about the status of its Olympic commitee! Otherwise there needs to be an additional (fifth) ranking for all German teams, excluding possibly the GDR. But I would be glad to hear other opinions on this. --62.245.143.34 12:23, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

I understand your concerns and confusion, but we've had this discussion before, and the decision was to be as unambiguous as possible on Wikipedia, only using totals by the IOC country code. In Germany's case, four different codes were used: GER up to 1936, EUA for the United Team of Germany for 1956-1964, FRG and GDR for the two teams from 1968-1988, and GER once again after re-unification. That is why four totals appear on this list. It's not a political decision made by Wikipedia editors; we're just using the IOC NOC codes.
I fully defend this decision for several important reasons. Basically, we want to avoid any POV that could be introduced by combining medal totals based on some other criteria. Similar situations exist for the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, and others. Can you think of any way to combine URS totals with any pre- or post- Soviet nation and not offend someone? I can't.
In Germany's case, the one thing I have personally been puzzled by is the use of EUA to refer to the United Team, instead of continuing to use GER for the single team. However, the IOC database is our primary source, and therefore, EUA should still be used here. I'd like to change that, but I won't. Consistency and NPOV is more important.
With respect to the main article, I think the best approach would be to add some footnotes to the article to help explain the situation, and perhaps add the NOC codes to the list for clarity, but not to combine medals from different NOC codes. I will work on that. Andrwsc 17:02, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Total number of medals

suggestion: I feel it would be right that there be a ranking by total number of medals (gold and silver and bronze) and not just by gold. Perhaps there could be two rankings alongside each other, as its not really only the gold that counts. Daniel Montin 11:35, 9 December 2006 (UTC)

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