Template talk:Country IOC alias GBR

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[edit] name of this NOC

I have reverted this template back to simply "Great Britain" for three reasons:

1. The British Olympic organization [1] uses "Great Britain". They use "Team GB" for the shorthand name of the team. One section I found on their website says: 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. There are many other examples, but it is clear that they simply use "Great Britain" as the common name for their team & NOC.
2. The IOC [2] uses "Great Britain". If you search their website for "Great Britain and Northern Ireland", you get a single hit, to a United Nations document that mentions the "United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland". This, of course, is the full and correct name of the nation, but it is NOT the name used by their National Olympic Committee. If you search the IOC website for "Great Britain", you get 155 hits.
3. This specific template is just used as a parameter for the {{flagIOC}} template, which is primarily used in medal and results tables. In that context, "Great Britain and Northern Ireland" is too verbose, and causes aesthetic problems. Some editors have taken to replacing instances of the template with inline wiki code using strings such as "Great Britain", or even worse "GB + NI". Also, the template generates a wikilink to the nation's page for each Games, and while Great Britain at the 2004 Summer Olympics is already a long page name, it is still vastly preferable to Great Britain and Northern Ireland at the 2004 Summer Olympics.

I know this topic has been debated in a different context, but I believe the right thing to do is restore this template to "Great Britain". The right place to use a longer nation name is not in a medal table or page name, but in the introductory text of the "Great Britain at the xxx Olympics" article, such as:

Great Britain (the name under which the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland competes at the Olympics Games) sent 270 athletes to the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece. Athletes from Northern Ireland were generally free to participate for either this team or the Ireland team under a long-standing settlement between the British Olympic Association and the Olympic Council of Ireland.

Andrwsc 17:10, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

This has been argued before, and the arguments presented above were thrown at as rubbish (with the exception of (3), which didn't apply). The IOC's official name for the United Kingdom's team is 'Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. See this entry form for British gymnasts, this submission to Parliament and this one too, this article in the Irish Examiner, this press release by the BOA, this list of selection criteria, or any one of many other links provided in this debate elsewhere. In fact, under the Olympic Charter (Article 31, subsection II), 'Great Britain' is not a legitimate name for the BOA to adopt, as it does not reflect the territorial extent of its jurisdiction.

The reason the page is at 'Great Britain and Northern Ireland at the ... Olympics' is that that is clearly the name of the team and of the association. To help navigation, there are redirects from 'Great Britain...' and 'United Kingdom...' for all such pages. The suggestion that it ought to be changed to a title that is incorrect simply to make the top line of an article shorter is absurd, particularly as 'Great Britain' is an inherently POV name. Yes, 'Great Britain and Northern Ireland' is a long name, but only a smidgeon longer than Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and nobody claims that it should be abbreviated to 'Saint Vincent'! However, if you want the name to be shorter for medals tables and the like, feel free to abbreviate to 'United Kingdom', because that's the short version of the country's name and the name of the country for which the BOA is the NOC. 'Great Britain' is misleading and just silly. Bastin 18:06, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

Your links are clear, so thanks for that. I had not been able to find any references that used the full name. I still feel that using "Great Britain" in the context of this template is vastly superior to "Great Britain and Northern Ireland". In the same situation (tables & article names), we use "China", not "People's Republic of China". We use "United States", not "United States of America". I am astounded at the pedantic stubbornness that surrounds the GBR NOC on Wikipedia. When every official games report from 1896 to 2002 refers to the NOC as simply "Great Britain", I see that as common sense, not some POV issue where Wikipedia needs to re-educate the world. I won't revert your change, but I'm also going to give up on fixing wikilinks for GBR articles, since that is apparently wasted effort. Andrwsc 19:05, 17 July 2006 (UTC)

We use 'United States' and 'China' because those are the names under which they compete at the Olympics. Similarly, we use 'Republic of China' for the Taiwanese entries until 1972, and 'Chinese Taipei' since 1984, as those were the names under which they compete(d) at those respective games. Other instances use the same rule (South Korea under the name 'Korea'; Republic of Ireland under the name 'Ireland'; FR Germany under the name 'West Germany'; former Soviet Union under the name 'Unified Team'). The underlying policy is that we use the official name, which (in the context) can never be POV if accepted by so many countries. It's really quite simple.

In case you're unaware as to why I call it POV, it's because there's clearly a political debate over the situation in Northern Ireland. The OCI argues that it represents all of the island of Ireland, whereas the BOA argues that it represents all of the United Kingdom. Since the IOC supports the BOA's position, as do all other NOCs, that is the position that Wikipedia ought to take to be of a NPOV (as long as the note that is currently in the 2004 entry remains).

Although the number of times used informally hardly matters, for the record, the Olympic reports use all sorts of terms, and (it seems that) they make the decision on a Games-by-Games basis. The London 1908 report refers to 'Great Britain' 46 times, 'Great Britain and Ireland' 8 times, and 'United Kingdom' 896 times; the Melbourne 1956 report refers to ‘United Kingdom’ twice, ‘Great Britain’ 71 times, and ‘Great Britain and Northern Ireland’ 257 times. Bastin 17:17, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

The Association of National Olympic Committees uses "Great Britain" and "United States of America" ([3]). The International Olympic Committee also uses "Great Britain" in its list of European NOCs ([4]). The Official Reports use "Great Britain" in their lists of NOCS (Sydney 2000, Atlanta 1996, Barcelona 1992, for examples, all have a list of NOCs near the beginning which uses "Great Britain", "United States of America", and "Saint Vincent and the Grenadines"). The gymnastics entry form uses "the Great Britain Olympic delegation" (p. 1), "as a representative of Great Britain" (p. 7), "promoting Great Britain's participation" and "the Great Britain Olympic Team" (p. 8). The first submission to Parliament is rife with the use of "Great Britain" by itself. The Irish Examiner actually indicates that "Great Britain" is the name used by BOA statutes, with such wording as "OCI was not prepared to allow the statutes of the British Olympic Association (BOA) to have Northern Ireland included in the title" suggesting that Northern Ireland is not currently in the title. The press release doesn't indicate official title either way, unless the OCI-represented team's title is "All-Ireland".

In sum, it's not really all that clear that GB&NI is the correct formulation of the name, and the official lists suggest otherwise. I'm all for using "Great Britain", "People's Republic of China", "United States of America", "Saint Vincent and the Grenadines", and "Russian Federation" in all of our titles. I'm also for alphabetizing Chinese Taipei between Tajikistan and the United Republic of Tanzania. -- Jonel | Speak 04:17, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm reluctant to use the full, official names within tables, as it is really detrimental to readability of the page. For example, take a look at what happened to Hockey at the Summer Olympics because some editor found another solution to the appearances of the long name of Great Britain and Northern Ireland within the medal table. I would be willing to compromise on using the common usage names ("Great Britain", "China", "United States", "Iran", etc.) within table entries and the associated wikilinks, but use the full country names within page names (if necessary). Redirection pages can be used to reconcile the template link with the actual page. For example, I want to see this: Great Britain in medal tables etc. — and if the link redirects to Great Britain and Northern Ireland at the 2004 Summer Olympics for pedantic reasons (as it currently does), then so be it. But to force the full name in the table instead of the common usage name, well, that's very ugly. Andrwsc 05:46, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

If the only reason is to shorten the name, you already know an acceptable name: United Kingdom. It's short and not at all misleading. Bastin 17:17, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

It's extremely misleading in the Olympic context. When the IOC code is "GBR", when every official document from past Olympics uses the name "Great Britain" and when every current website (including the IOC and BOA) uses "Great Britain" as the short-hand form (including all the references you cite), then using "United Kingdom" would be confusing to say the least.

You bring the POV issue into the argument, yet I would claim that your POV is clouding this topic. You want to "correct" a century of Olympic history by over-riding a commonly used name with a politically-correct substitute that is inappropriate in the Olympic context. Please consider that part of my argument — in no way am I suggesting that "Great Britain" be used in any other part of Wikipedia other than Olympic-related pages, and even then, only as a shorthand form in results tables. Usage in the prose part of the articles can continue to use longer names if necessary.

Your position here reminds me of a similar debate about the usage of "Ladies" versus "Women" in figure skating articles. I agree that "ladies" is a poor word to use in most contexts, but the common usage within that sport is still to use the term. Wimbledon tennis is another example — the events are labelled "Gentlemen's" and "Ladies", and you don't see any tennis fans trying to replace that usage with "Men's" and "Women's".

Do you see my point? I feel that history and context need to be maintained. Trying to change a sport's terminology to fit other sensibilities is inappropriate for Wikipedia.

Andrwsc 18:50, 18 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not trying to 'correct' anything except your own edits. 'United Kingdom' is a compromise position between the need for accuracy regarding geography, jurisdiction, and representation and the need for brevity. However, the proper name is 'Great Britain and Northern Ireland', and I'm happy with using that. Your insistence that it be 'Great Britain' is asserting that sloppy short-hand, which is used to support the POV of the OCI over that of the international sporting community, is preferable. Not only is it misleading from a sporting perspective (in that it's not the name of the team), it's wrong geographically, jurisdictionally, representatively, and politically. Furthermore, it's farcical to put a 'Great Britain' tag next to a Northern Irish athlete (not so often in the Olympics, although Alan Campbell does come to mind: more like Eddie Irvine and Darren Clarke).

Your analogy is entirely misleading. I'm arguing in favour of using the official name; in your analogy, 'Great Britain and Northern Ireland' ought to be "Ladies'". You're arguing that the term to be used ought to be incorrect ('people without beards' or 'people that can't play longer than three hours'), and not fully reflect all situations, just for convenience. What sort of encyclopaedia is deliberately inaccurate for convenience's sake? Bastin 12:35, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Woah, woah, woah. The IOC consistently uses "Great Britain". Consistently. In all of its medals tables (such as [5]), in its "country of the host city" datapoint in its Games pages for 1908 and 1948 ([6], [7]), in its list of European NOCs ([8]), as well as in the links I posted above and in most of the links you posted. "Great Britain" is not a "sloppy shorthand", and it's not "support[ing] the POV of the OCI over that of the international sporting community"—it is the term used by the International Olympic Committee and the Association of National Olympic Committees. -- Jonel | Speak 13:27, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

Consistently? 904 references in the 1908 report and 259 references in the 1956 report say otherwise. Only naivety or desperation could lead one to conclude that such website as you have now produced would necessarily refer to the team by its proper name. The BOA is recognised by the IOC under the name 'Great Britain and Northern Ireland' (as already established by the submissions to the Select Committee linked above), so whatever a lazy webmaster or chronicler writes is rather irrelevant. Bastin 14:10, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

This is the same "lazy webmaster or chronicler" who uses the full names "United States of America", "Republic of Moldova", "Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia", "Lao People's Democratic Republic", and "Libyan Arab Jamahiriya"? The 1908 report certainly is a good source for the contention that the name of the team used to be Great Britain and Ireland, but then again, sailing was "yachting" and the Netherlands was "Holland". Is 1956 the most recent usage you can find? -- Jonel | Speak 14:44, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Jonel is spot-on. Bastin8 is the only person bringing POV into this issue. The Olympic community has been using "Great Britain" for more than a century without problem. Bastin8 also fails to address my question, which is to consider the Olympic context when commenting on the use of that term. Bastin8 clearly has geographical, jurisdictional, representative and/or political points to make here, and is disrupting the Olympic Wikiproject to make them. Andrwsc 16:30, 19 July 2006 (UTC)

I'm not disrupting anything. I'm stopping you from disrupting it. The geographic, jurisdictional, and representative points are all directly related to the Olympic Wikiproject. Furthermore, whether you like it or not, the use of 'Great Britain', particularly in an environment in which the word 'Ireland' is used (albeit justifiably) to refer to the Republic of Ireland, is bound to become a politicised issue. Finally, and (of course), most importantly, the name is 'Great Britain and Northern Ireland', which comes back to the matter at hand. Bastin 14:10, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Do you or do you not view the list of NOCs provided by the Association of National Olympic Committees here as a list of official names? -- Jonel | Speak 14:44, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Why would one view a website navigation page as any sort of definitive source? The only sources that have any standing whatsoever are the ones that I posted: the submissions to Parliament and the team member agreements, which clearly state the official name as being 'Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. If you don't believe that, maybe you'd like to contact the BOA for yourself. Bastin 15:00, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

That page is the full, formal list of National Olympic Committees provided by an arm of the International Olympic Committee. The names in that last are the ones that the IOC calls its member NOCs. The BOA may call itself the Great Britain and Northern Ireland team (sometimes, sometimes not; also note that the team member agreements and submissions to Parliament use "Great Britain" quite frequently), and may have jurisdiction over Northern Ireland (shared with the OCI), but the IOC calls the team organized by the BOA "Great Britain". -- Jonel | Speak 16:02, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

That page is not the full and formal list. It is a list of external links on the website of the organisation that coincidentally manages the full and formal list. If you want to really find out what the IOC calls the BOA, ask them for yourself, and you'll find out exactly what I did.

By comparison, the BOA's submissions to Parliament clearly state that the BOA represents 'Great Britain and Northern Ireland' and that the team is called the same. Subsequent use of the term 'Great Britain' (in that dated December 2000) is done in passing, as short-hand, and not in reference to the official duties and responsibilities of the BOA; the only meaningful reference (i.e. reference made to officially confirm the BOA's jurisidiction and recognition) is to 'Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. Also note that the most recent one (dated 25 October 2005), submitted after the disagreement with the OCI, doesn't refer to 'Great Britain' once, but does confirm that it is the NOC for 'Great Britain and Northern Ireland'.

The BOA does not share jurisdiction over Northern Ireland at all. The OCI claims to have full, unshared sovereignty, whilst the BOA claims to do the same (a claim that the IOC supports, and, indeed, must support, under the Olympic charter). However, the two came to an agreement, in 2004, that British citizens in Northern Ireland would be able to compete for either, mirroring the Belfast Agreement 1998. Bastin 16:35, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Incorrect. The page is the full and formal list, which helpfully has links to the websites of the NOCs in question. In addition, your suggestion of asking the BOA is unverifiable. -- Jonel | Speak 17:59, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

What the heck makes you think that it's 'the 'full and formal' list? Does it state as such? No. So, would it necessitate that they would actually ensure its accuracy? No. Thus, is it necessarily correct? No. On the other hand, the submissions to Select Committees must be correct. I could point out several errors in that list, as I'm sure that you could. For example, it claims that it one of its members competes under the name of the 'People's Republic of China'; as you should know (because you were the one that made the change to China at the 2004 Summer Olympics in the first place), the official IOC name is China, and has been since PR China (the polity) joined the IOC. In addition, for some unknown reason, whoever wrote it thinks that 'Chinese Taipei' (or 'Taipei' or 'Taiwan') comes between 'Tajikistan' and 'Tanzania' in the alphabet. If that's 'formal', I'd prefer to flaunt that particular convention.

At the time I made that change, I also thought GB&NI was correct. I have since been convinced that that was incorrect--the IOC uses "People's Republic of China" to refer to the team. As for the Chinese Taipei point, that is an artifact of the political status of China - the ROC and PRC teams are not placed immediately next to each other by the IOC, in opening ceremony marching order or NOC lists . -- Jonel | Speak 19:36, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

On the second point, you fundamentally misunderstand the principle of verifiability. It is verifiable, because there are many sources (linked above) that verify it. There is no Wikipedia:Undisputed or Wikipedia:Facts must be corroborated by every website on the Internet. That you stretch credulity to undermine a very simple factual comment is what the policies of Wikipedia are supposed to oppose. Bastin 19:04, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Private e-mail correspondence is not verifiable. Please do not misrepresent my statements. -- Jonel | Speak 19:36, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

I think the discussion is moving slightly off point. Suppose we agree that "Great Britain and Northern Ireland" is the correct full name of the team represented by the BOA. (I don't care either way.) My argument is that we need to use a common shorthand name for NOCs to create Olympic results tables that are aesthetically pleasing and not prone to non-standard editing because of having to deal with unwieldly names. (This is why this discussion is happening on this talk page, for the {{FlagIOC}} template parameter.) My question to Bastin8 is: why do you have such a problem with "Great Britain" being the common shorthand name for the NOC when there is such a vast history of that particular usage — including within some of the documents you have presented to make your point? Nobody seems to mind that "United States" is used as shorthand for "United States of America". Nobody seems to mind that "China" is used as shorthand for "People's Republic of China" — and God knows that many Chinese Wikipedians are extremely conscious of POV issues. Why are you so insistent that the century-old, commonly-used shorthand name be abandoned by Wikipedia when so many other major organizations have no problems? Andrwsc 16:43, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

That's entirely wrong. 'United States' is an officially-endorsed abbreviated for the country ('the United States' is used frequently throughout the Constitution, yet 'Great Britain' is not used to describe the United Kingdom in the Act of Union 1800 or the Royal and Parliamentary Titles Act 1927), and it may well be the IOC name (in that case, I've never bothered to find out). 'China' is used for PR China because that's the name under which is belongs to the IOC (see above), whereas 'Chinese Taipei' is used despite everyone (including sports fans and commentators) knowing it as 'Taiwan'. The former is a case of the name being conveniently shorter, allowing one to limit the length of the title; the latter is a case of the opposite, yet nobody argues that the article should be at 'Taiwan at the ... Olympics'.

Alternatively, see Template:Country IOC alias MKD; every English language commentator calls FYROM 'Macedonia', despite that not being the name under which it's registered with the IOC (which is 'Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia'). If you tried to change that template to 'FYROM', you'd probably have some luck (in the same way as I wouldn't oppose GB & NI), but changing it to 'Macedonia' would be indefensible. Of course, worse than seeing an athlete from Thessaloniki not competing under the Sun of Vergina would be seeing an athlete from Northern Ireland competing for a team erroneously called 'Great Britain'. Bastin 19:04, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

restart indentation for readability

Please stay on topic. We're talking about the Olympic context only. How many times must I repeat this? The US Constitution and and the Act of Union are irrelevant. The only organizations that apply here are the IOC, the various NOCs, and the past and present organizing committees for each Games.

You mention MKD — I just haven't gotten around to that yet. I will probably change the template for that to "FYR Macedonia". Hopefully there is no significant objection to that! I will also change the PRK template to read "DPR Korea" for similar reasons. If someone wants to change CHN's template from "China" to "PR China", I would not mind — but I would strenuously object if someone wanted to see "People's Republic of China" in full form on every results table.

You say Of course, worse than seeing an athlete from Thessaloniki not competing under the Sun of Vergina would be seeing an athlete from Northern Ireland competing for a team erroneously called 'Great Britain'. This strikes me as a horribly POV thing to say. Why would that be worse? Again, I ask you to remove your personal bias from this discussion. Please read WP:NPOV again. Wikipedia is not a platform for you to make a point.

Despite our efforts to have you only consider the narrow focus of this topic (Olympic context only, and shorthand names used in table formatting only), you persist in making this a broader nomenclature issue. Tell me, would "Great Britain & NI" be an acceptable shorthand form (in Olympic results tables only) for you? Andrwsc 19:39, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

When it comes to the USA, 'Olympic context' can't be removed to the fact that the terms are interchangeable ('Great Britain' is not, as the content of that article proves). I don't object if it doesn't confuse, even if it uses a name that isn't IOC-sanctioned. In this case, though, 'Great Britain' does confuse, as it perpetuates the myth that Northern Ireland is not under the jurisdiction of the BOA, thus affirming the OCI's position (hence the accusation that I levelled that it was, unknowingly, POV). Nobody confuses the United States of America with the United Mexican States or the United States of the Ionian Islands, but loads of people confuse Great Britain with the United Kingdom (or, rather, Great Britain and Northern Ireland).

On the alleged 'POV' issue, there is none at all; that I use the word 'worse' should not detract from the fact that all but the most hard-line Macedonian or Irish nationalists would find the sentiment agreeable. It's not at all a bad thing for an athlete from Greece not competing for a foreign country (FYROM). However, bearing the name 'Macedonia' implies that that athlete would compete for that team, even though it represents FYROM. However, if an athlete from Northern Ireland is said to represent 'Great Britain', when he's not, that is the flaw in your naming convention.

Onto a more civilised course: your proposal. Indeed, I would have no problem with 'Great Britain & NI', just as I would have none with 'GB & NI', 'United Kingdom', 'Limeyland', or pretty much anything except 'Great Britain'. Thus, I support. Bastin 00:11, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Hmmm. Now I am extremely tempted to change it to "Limeyland".  ;) Instead, I changed the {{flagIOC}} template to accept another over-ride parameter to accomodate an alternate name to be used. This also handles the case where GBR represented "Great Britain and Ireland" through the 1924 Games. Please take a look at Field hockey at the Olympics, which is my test page to try it out. It definitely looks cleaner with "Northern Ireland" replaced by "NI". The remaining problem is the wikilink. I think the simplest solution now would be to use the full name for all pages (i.e. Great Britain and Ireland at the 1908 Summer Olympics and Great Britain and Northern Ireland at the 2004 Summer Olympics) but create redirection pages from "Great Britain at the ..." so that the template-generated wikilink will resolve. This idea is already in place for most of the GBR pages. I hope you will not object to this plan! Thanks, Andrwsc 19:53, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

Eep. My 'Limeyland' may have put British-American relations back 200 years (which is very bad news for Canucks).

The wikilink ought to go to the full name. However, since it may be preferable to keep the mechanism of {{flagIOC}} the same, then I'm also redirecting from 'Great Britain & NI at the...' as well. Currently, 'Great Britain at the...' is already redirected for all extant articles (mainly because Jonel moved them all in January, and because, if he hadn't, I would have). Bastin 23:00, 21 July 2006 (UTC)

I remember that we've had this discussion before, and it does not make any sense at all to conclude that "and Northern Ireland" should be included. The IOC's name for the NOC is Great Britain and that's all there is to it. End of discussion. → JARED ^(t)  21:20, 17 November 2006 (UTC)