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[edit] Medals of nations that have since split up (USSR) or united (West/East Germany) should be redistributed.
The outcome of this debate is:
Oppose.
based on the consensus of 0/21/0.
- Oppose. I am strongly opposed to this because these individual countries won these medals by individually, not as the nation they are now. Yes, their rank will continue to receed because they are no longer participating, but there is no way it is right to do this. --Jared [T]/[+] 23:35, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
- Question. What argument is there to support this?--Josilot 00:01, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
- Comment. View the talk pages of various olympic medals pages and you will see that many people believe that by redistributing the medals of, say, the USSR, the ranks of countries that no longer exist will go down because they are no longer contributing to their totals. See the pages for further clarification. --Jared [T]/[+] 00:05, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
- Oppose. As I have discussed in depth in Talk:Total Olympics medal count, I feel that countries that have participated in the Olympic Games such as the USSR should be included in medal counts as USSR. On all-time counts, it should be counted separately from Russia and its various other descendant republics. The USSR and Russia are completely different geographical and political entities and it would not be appropriate to lump the two together when doing an all-time count of medals. On that same note, West Germany and East Germany should not have their medal totals added together from the games where they participated as separate entities. For the years that the two countries competed in a single team "United Team of Germany" (1956, 1960, and 1964), it is appropriate to add that total to Germany's all-time medal total. As I stated before, for a more in-depth discussion of this issue, please refer to Talk:Total Olympics medal count. --Caponer 00:19, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
- Comment. Also, The 1992 United Team cannot technically be added with the USSR or Russia because Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania competed independently from it in the 1992 Summer Olympics and the United Team only consisted of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan at the 1992 Winter Olympics. Therefore, the United Team is technically its own entity from the USSR and Russia and is counted separately in the Total Olympics medal count. To become even more technical, the United Teams in the Winter and Summer Olympic Games are both different entities, which may call for making them separate on the Total Olympics medal count. --Caponer 00:45, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
- Comment. This is getting so confusing! For the sake of Wikipedia, why can't these countries just stay together?! --Jared [T]/[+] 00:58, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
- Question. Does this include the splitting of Great Britain and Ireland in the 1920's? --Mais oui! 00:21, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
- Comment. Could you elaborate more? I think it would include that though. --Jared [T]/[+] 00:28, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
- Comment. Great Britain and Ireland are counted separately from Great Britain and Northern Ireland in the all-time medal totals as is shown on the Total Olympics medal count. It is also termed as Great Britain and Ireland in the games where it participated as Great Britain and Ireland. So yes, to answer your question, Great Britain already adheres to this policy. --Caponer 00:32, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
- Oppose. Thanks for the very swift answer. In that case: Oppose. It would be very difficult, if not impossible, to split many of the medals, especially the team ones.--Mais oui! 01:00, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
- Oppose. Historically that is how the countries won medals, I don't see why it would be worth the effort to break up into the modern countries. I don't see an value in it. --Omnieiunium 03:31, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
- Oppose. - Keep historical teams separate. Including the Unified Team of Germany, Bohemia, GB&I, 1992 Unified Team, etc. -- Jonel | Speak 03:38, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
- Oppose. - We have to keep historical teams seperate. The USSR is not the same as Russia in any entity, including sport --Anderal 04:47, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
- Oppose. It is better because it keeps the essence of history. Hohohob 06:27, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
- Oppose. - Flies in the face of a historical reference. Also this could become a nightmare to maintain correctly. An athlete that lives in one location, with certain nationality can move. Do we then reassign their medals, no of course we don't. Same thing should be true of nation unification, nation division, and nation re"branding" (i.e. flag changes). We should report the history as it was then. I would say that we could make annotations to the changes in the text of footnotes. :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page) 12:00, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
- Comment. - New though particularly true of team sports, two countries get more shots at the target than one, so slewing the results. Keep to the historical position, and then do NOT compare country medals across years. Means nothing! :: Kevinalewis : (Talk Page) 14:47, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
- Comment. - What's wrong with including the number of participations per country for the all time tables?
- Comment. It's not necessarily comparing them, though. I think the sole perpose of these tables is to relay the medal count of the Olympic games. Yes, along the way it may show some discrepancy because some countries have more people than others, but so what. I saw a suggestion somewhere that we could put a "medal per participant" column...a single column to make the people who are opposed to the tables happy. It would work like this: if the U.S. had 25 medals and contributed 204 participants to the games, their "rank" would be 0.123. This isn't a bad idea. Comments? --Jared [T]/[+] 14:58, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
- Comment. First of all: the original IOC charta forbade medal counts. Those who insist on counting medals cannot claim that one way of doing so has more formal justification than any other - none of them has any! So in many ways this is a mute discussion. You may say: but this source is doing it this way, and this source is doing it another way, but in the end it all comes down to personal opinion, which should be reflected by Wikipedia. I guess almost all of the opposing votes below are from the US, whose all time medal standings tremendously profit from the US having been a single entity since the beginning of the Olympics. It is well-known that the USSR beat the US almost every time both nations participated (Total medal counts - Summer: USSR/GUS 7, USA 2; Winter: USSR 9, USA 0), but since the USSR started participating in 1952 and does not exist any more, the all time medal counts are heavily biased towards the US, making the US look much better than it deserves, just because it participated so frequently, and some US patriots just want to keep it this way. I'd say: at the very least the all time tables should include the number of participations per country, to give a more meaningful picture.
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- Concerning redistributions of medals of split / reunited nations: most major non-US media view Russia as the heir of the USSR / GUS medals, and Germany as the heir of East / West / Nazi Germany. Hence their total medal counts combine the contributions of the relevant former political entities / fragments. As an example I offer the all time medal count of the leading European weekly magazine Der Spiegel: http://www.spiegel.de/sport/wintersport/0,1518,398073,00.html And this is just one of many examples where it's being done this way. To summarize: since there is no official way of counting medals, any way is as good as any other. Therefore Wikipedia probably should respect or at least include the views of the hundreds of millions who do it this way. (Unsigned comment belongs to User:Medalstats)
- Comment. I missed the main debate on this, so if someone wants to move this comment off of this page and onto the page where the debate occurred, go ahead. But, the way I see it, Wikipedia should strive to be as informative as possible, and having a list that reflects the dynamic status of many countries throughout Olympic history seems to provide a lot more information than having a rigid list that doesn't care about how geographies have changed, and countried have separated or merged together. If a person using this information wanted to sum up, for example, all medals awarded to Germany, East Germany, and West Germany for their own use, then there is no reason that they couldn't take 2 minutes to do that. But if a person wanted to know how many medals were won by East Germany and West Germany during the time of their separation, it would not be so easy to do this if the countries had been combined. Personal opinions about your country being ranked lower on the list because of its dynamic nature should be the last thing to consider when making the most informative list possible.--Josilot 16:24, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
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- Comment. Medalstats' post was originally posted in this category but the specific discussion it relates to was started in Talk:Total Olympics medal count. His viewpoint is understandable. However, I agree with Josilot that it is not appropriate to modify national team counts to satisfy personal wishes. We cannot rewrite history to pump up the numbers for the descendant republics of the Soviet bloc. I can definitely see how it may seem unfair as East Germany, West Germany, Czechoslovakia, the United Team, and the USSR will slowly drop in the all-time medals count because they no longer exist as participating teams, but they are political and athletic team entities that are defunct. To lump them with current participant teams because you want to beef up the current participating teams' (Russia and Germany) numbers and not let the former teams' (West and East Germanies and the USSR) medal counts "slip in the rankings" so to speak is not acceptable. The medals of the USSR cannot be divided, as they were medals won by the participating USSR team and the sames goes for West and East Germanies. I have no qualms including the United Team of Germany that participated in the Olympic Games of the 1950s and 1960s with the totals for Germany because West and East Germany competed as a united team that represented the current boundaries of Germany. --Caponer 16:58, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
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- Comment. I think, in the interest of providing as much information as possible, that the United Team of Germany should be listed as a separate entity from the other Germany-related entities. Again, any user who wanted a sum of all German-related olympic medals could add this to the count themselves with no problem. But any user who wanted to know how many medals the United Team of Germany won when East and West Germany combined would be out of luck. Although, if this is a concession that people are unwilling to make, I am flexible on this point.--Josilot 17:07, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
- Oppose. See my comment above.--Josilot 16:24, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
- Comment. Why should Wikipedia rank countries, which are not comparable??? It makes sense to say how many medals the US had won, or East Germany or Germany or Russia- but it makes no sense to say US ranks number one ... I would list the countries with their medals alphabetical!!! without a rank (by the way - that also the soul of the Olympic - it don't won't to say - this or this ist the best. Or why do you want to say the US is the first (the best) - in the winter games the US was always among the best but never "the" best. -Thomas (East) Germany
- Oppose. The only reason I can see to do this is if the total medals won table is viewed as some uber-Olympics competition. No such recognized competition exists. There are no specific rules governing such a competition and no governing body that recognizes it or has authority over it. Let the table simply state what is true. Russia, for example, is not the USSR and thus should be listed separately on the table.--Don Sowell 20:00, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
- Oppose. - Don't alter history. Reports the results according to the teams as they were structured at the time. Crunch 23:18, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
- Oppose. - The medal might not have been won if the countries were seperated.--thepangelinanpost 19:48, 21 February 2006 (EST)
- Comment. This is also relevant in this dicussion (I'm too tired to go through and read to check if we have already mentioned it): the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) and South Korea will be participating in the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing as a unified team, which means that it, too, shall be listed completely separate from the medal counts for both North and South Koreas. --Caponer 03:16, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
- Oppose. Mbisanz 06:36, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
- Comment. I was initially for combining the tally, but these 2 facts arise: First, there are instances where in TEAM competition, both West and East Germany won medals, enabling an unfair advantage and second, each country is allowed to qualify only a certain amount of contestants. By allowing both West and East to compete simultaneously gave them an unfair advantage on the number of contestants participating. With Russia we do not have this problem as each entity competed separately.Rickywiki 08:46, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
- Comment. @Rickywiki - it's realy interestint that you only pick up the one fact of my argumentation below ("Countries should be ranked in alphabetical order, not regarding rank at all") which you like and the other facts which shows clearly the nonesense of the ranking not. By the way - in this case there would be also an other option. Add Germany and West Germany and only make East Germany seperate - because the state-system of today Germany is the same of West Germany - it even has the same name (Bundesrepublik Deutschland - BRD) - but I don't want to say that this would be the best way to do. - Thomas
- Comment. Actually THomas I came upon that idea independently, without seeing your post. Also, I actually agree with your West Germany-Germany scenario. I often considered them one in the same also. But as for me still being against alphabetical, its not hard to see your pent up bias in your comments. I clearly have a more open, non ideoligical mind about it. The fact is, the success of a nation depends on MANY things: athletics, money, geography, population and even politics. The fact that the US has been able, through the Olympic years, to stay a stable complete country (as have MOST countries in the world have) does have a mitigating factor to the total. Why deny it. I'm sorry, but in a totals count. SOMEONE has to be number 1. I'm sorry you find it so aggregious that it is the US. I find this less a US patriotic issue than ou being a US basher. Sorry, taht jsut does not play in my book of logic, As for the years of Soviet dominance, you clearly can see that if you visit each seperate Olympics total.
One last note on the alphabet, you who propose this are being English-centric. IF we want to play all fair, do you realize differenet languages have different alphabets and different alphabetical order. In English, some countries would be in a certain order, in Spanish, these countries would be in a whole other oredre. Which is fair?Rickywiki 10:35, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
- Comment. Well - I think you got me wrong - I'am definitaly no US basher - in fact I have often defended the US against Antiamericanism. But yes - it has to do with logic for me. A rank- system have to compare camparable stuff. It may be good for the US that it was able to stay a stable politic - that an important information - but it has nothing to do with success in sport. That there is no oficial list by the IOC has good reason. I stay with my arguments to compare 7 participations of East Germany in a list with 43 participations of the US without the information of the number of participations is realy stupid - why should someone do this. Then you can also compare the economy-power of US-January with the France-hole year economy. By the way, then you have also to divide Germany after 1990 and Nazi-Germany - because both have not relay much in commone - at least not politics - I and at least 95% of the Germans disassociate strongly from Nazi Germany. West Germany and Germany today do not differ in fact. And whats your problem to add under the ranking list an critic - to say for example that the USSR had nearly always beaten the US (15:2), which you can not see in the ranking- that also only an information. But well, because it seems that the most people here want such a list I have to accept it. But I still think it's nonsense. "I clearly have a more open, non ideoligical mind about it." ;-) Thomas
- Oppose. There is no practical way of doing this. How do we redistribute the medal won by a team of ice hockey players from different states of the Soviet Union? It could perhaps be interesting to do it in a "what if" way, but even so, what goes where? John Anderson 01:51, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
- Oppose. --Jugalator 23:13, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
- Oppose. --Emc² (Contact me ) 23:48, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
- Oppose. --Andrwsc 00:03, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
- Oppose. --John Anderson 01:10, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
- Oppose. --Sue Anne 01:16, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
- Oppose. — CJewell (talk to me) 01:43, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
- Oppose. Medals for these countries should be included separately under USSR, East Germany, West Germany, etc. Nick C 17:46, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
This debate is archived. Please do not edit the text in this box. To make comments on this debate, go to this page.
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