Talk:Eurovision Song Contest 2008

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[edit] Splitting ties

I think u'll find yeah were poland etc are on the same score but still thats JOINT LAST duh!!!

Please don't delete my comments, and stop altering the scores, as you clearly have no idea what you are doing Greebowarrior (talk) 22:26, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
Wasn't me who deleted your comment, but the final position does take into account the number of 12- 10- and 8-pointers awarded as well as just the score 131.111.195.8 (talk) 22:28, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
well, someone did, and they did it with all the grammatical expertise of a dead heron - i wasnt aware of that rule, how does that effect the results? I thought the UK got more higher pointers than Germany (I know Poland got a 12)
I'll try and find the rule somewhere, but didn't germany get a 12-pointer as well? 131.111.195.8 (talk) 22:38, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
We have a description of the rules on the main contest page: Eurovision Song Contest#Ties for first place. Apparently it's number of countries that gave you points, then numbers of 12's, 10's and so on. (Incidentally, that seems to me to be contradictory - either lots of countries voting for you is good, or countries giving you lots of point is good - you can't have both...) --Tango (talk) 22:43, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
Ok, for all those who do NOT or CAN NOT understand that there are NO TIES IN THE EUROVISION SONG CONTEST. Please refer to the scoreboard as published by eurovision.tv, the official placements are there [1]Tony0106 (talk) 22:47, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
Here are the rules [2] and the rule regarding ties is section 5.1 - although it only mentions first place it would be reasonable to assume that this would apply for all positions 131.111.195.8 (talk) 22:53, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
I agree, no ties. TerriersFan (talk) 22:58, 24 May 2008 (UTC)
Then STOP changing it—Preceding unsigned comment added by Tony0106 (talk • contribs)
Please STOP making false accusations - at no stage have I altered the rankings. TerriersFan (talk) 14:36, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
False assumption, I'm afraid. If the tie-break rules were intended to apply to all positions, they would state that. Since they don't, they aren't. The tie-break rule was only introduced because it hadn't been thought about so there were joint winners; the rule as introduced clearly applies only when it's necessary (i.e. to award the trophy or for the last qualifying place in a semi-final). LondonStatto (talk) 09:36, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
This came up with "Flying the Flag (for You)" last year, and while the rules are iffy, the scoreboard definitively positions Latvia, Albania, Poland, the UK lower than the "joint" place. Sceptre (talk) 01:37, 25 May 2008 (UTC)


The rules do not mention anything to do with ties other than for first position. In my opinion, Wikipedia should not be assuming anything, be it reasonable or not. A reading of the rules does not mention rankings - the seemed to be concerned with the winner only. I suggest a footnote describing the ambiguity. Eurovision's website itself is currently showing the UK as 25th, yet it's table for 2002 shows the UK and Estonia both at third place. http://www.eurovision.tv/index/main?page=66&event=316 Similarly 2004 shows Sweden and Cyprus at fifth. http://www.eurovision.tv/index/main?page=66&event=8. Can we work together and devise a footnote explaining this? It is the encyclopedia solution, nicht wahr? Dmn € Դմն 01:57, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

"Poland, the United Kingdom and Germany all received a total of 14 points. Whilst the rules of the contest describe mechanisms to break a tie should it be for first place, it is ambiguous as to whether the procedure applies to other rankings. Should the rules apply, Germany having received more twelve points than the others would be ranked 23rd, Poland having scored more ten points than the UK would be ranked 24th, leaving the UK in 25th and last place. Other sources may list all three countries as having shared 23rd place.

The BBC here [3] state that "Germany and Poland also received 14 points each, but they officially finished above the UK". Also BBC Radio 2 reported that the UK finished in last place due to Germany and Poland each getting higher individual scores. I think that as the EBU have ranked the UK as last, that is what we should do here. What the EBU say in this particular case is fact, and not ambiguous - they're the bosses. 131.111.195.8 (talk) 10:14, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
The rules say it's only used to separate ranks where it means winning or qualifying. 23rd, 24th and 25th place are most certainly neither of those, so they're joint 23rd? 79.66.18.174 (talk) 16:59, 25 May 2008 (UTC)
If there are no rules to break a tie, the tie doesn't get broken. That's trivial. LondonStatto (talk) 09:34, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
If the official scoreboard of the Eurovision Song Contest put United Kingdom on the 25th place, Poland on 24th and Germany on 23rd is because is like this. Stop putting ties, there are NO ties on the Eurovision Song Contest, it doesn't have to be specified on the rule, it's common sense Tony0106 (talk) 21:00, 26 May 2008 (UTC)
If it is common sense, then perhaps you could tell me the positions of the contestants of 1956 contest. Or why the official scoreboard shows shared positions for the 2002, 2004 and 2007 contests? What objections would you have to the boilerplate text I suggested above. Dmn € Դմն 23:36, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
I readded the footnote. [4] and [5] are examples of news sources who quote 'joint last'. There is clearly a matter here to be commented upon. Dmn € Դմն 18:58, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Final Scoreboard (and gallery)

Is there a way that the Scoreboard of the final will fit in the page without having to expand it to the right? If you know what I mean. I think is better if I said; is there a way the final scoreboard could fit in the margins of the page? I managed to change the gallery to with five pics per row instead of 6. I think it looks much better this way, so please do not change it. Thanks Tony0106 (talk) 20:12, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Since every competing country has a snapshot of their performance it would be quite rude to leave out Serbia. Every country has a snapshot except them. Please provide one. Thank you. 11:01, 30 May 2008

[edit] Remove Commentators and Spokepersons sections

I believe those sections are a disaster: Not all of them are well sourced, there are missing commentators for some countries, all of them have links to Wikipedia pages but not even half of them have Wikipedia pages. Spokepersons play a minor role in the show; they just announce the results of the televoting of the country, they don't make any desicions and are not involved in the conduction of the festival, half of them don't even have any links with the participating broadcaster. Commentators are part of the telecast/broadcasting but not the show itself. So please remove this section from the Eurovision 2008 page and further pages. If you still would like to include them you can put them on the individuals country pages. Songwriters and composers are way more important than them and they are only included on the individual entries. Thanks Tony0106 (talk) 20:28, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Also they are never included in the Wikipedia in other languages; not even the bigger ones Spanish and German.Tony0106 (talk) 21:10, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
The citation needed issue can be resolved by removing the unsourced ones, which I did do but they were just re-added still without sources! It does need some work but I do not think we should remove it purely on these grounds. The gallery is less important as a more detailed one can be found on Commons - and if a reader wants pictures they can easily go there. In fact it has already been disputed by Chwech above if there should be a gallery for this reason - which brings up the question more on if it should remain. The commentators and spokespersons sections could be replaced with giving the commentators and spokespersons in each x country in the Eurovision Song Contest 2008 article. There are several issues with this 1) There will be the loss of general convenience to readers of having the content together, though this is less important than for other content such as scores. 2) The reality has to be faced that if the section is blanket removed, many of the x country in the Eurovision Song Contest 2008 articles need work, and a lot of encyclopaedic information and sources would not make it to the individual articles. Therefore any removal has to be carefully done to ensure encyclopaedic information is not lost i.e by making sure the content is actually transferred to these articles. What other wikis do should not determine alone what is done here, and that may be due to less contributors than actual decisions. Camaron | Chris (talk) 20:51, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
I still think it should be removed and I didnt understand at all what you mean with the "encyclopeadic information". I believe the galleries should stay and I don't see why they wouldn't. There are galleries in other festival pages but the commentators/spokepersons is not needed. How many people actually care about that? Somebody can stay in charge of the individual pages so that "encyclopeadic information" doesn't get lost. Those sections look "ugly", I guess, in the page. Everything is nicely organized except for that.Tony0106 (talk) 21:10, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
Well regarding the gallery, I'd point to WP:NOTREPOSITORY - "Wikipedia is not a mirror or a repository of links, images, or media files". A few of those images is fine, but all 43 without any context is unencyclopedic. I'm not really too pushed about the commentators and spokespeople (of course, they need references), although I agree that they're less important than songwriters, and they don't get a mention in the article. Chwech 21:11, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
Sourced, verifiable information, is encyclopaedic information. How interesting something is not usually very relevant in deletion and content debates. I find my thoughts on how ESC can be improved interesting - that doesn't mean I think it should be added to the article. I don't find maths articles interesting - that don't mean I think they all should be deleted. If at least one single person that reads the articles finds the information in these sections helpful/interesting/informative/useful as encyclopaedic information, which is almost certainley the case, then losing it it a bad thing as far as I concerned. On the in-charge of individual pages suggestion, well nobody can make themselves in charge of articles, but I will copy the content to my sandbox and keep it there for eventual moving into the x country in Eurovision Song Contest 2008 articles. The sections don't look that ugly to me, and even so the general response to issues like that is to fix it not to delete it. To review, I think the strongest, and the only argument I agree with given here so far for removal of these sections, is that they can be covered in the x country in the Eurovision Song Contest 2008 articles - which is why I think that is what should happen.
On the gallery issue, well first I would like to point out that the Eurovision Song Contest 2007 still has its commentators and spokesperson sections, that does not mean it should be retained in this article. Similarly, just because Eurovision Song Contest 2007 and other pages has a gallery, does make it appropriate or mean it should be retained in this article. Chwech has already said well why - providing picture galleries is not a function of Wikipedia, pictures should be in articles to help illustrate and elaborate encyclopaedic information, fundamentally speaking nothing more. As I have already said Commons has a picture gallery which is appropriately linked, and you have said yourself article length is an issue, hence it really has to be asked should a gallery which is effectively redundant be retained.
As for the article being well organised, I don't fully agree with that either. The article is good but it is B-class - not anything more at this time as it does still need some work. With the hope of one day getting this to good/featured article status I do plan to re-organise, fill in gaps, and resolve problems - for example make sure the lead section only summarises the article per guidelines, and improve/clean-up referencing. I will probably draft major changes in my sandbox first, but any help is always appreciated. Camaron | Chris (talk) 18:10, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Since there appears to be consensus for it I have removed the commentators and spokespersons section, and added it to my sandbox for re-location to individual entry pages. For the record removal reduced the article size by about 12kb. Camaron | Chris (talk) 10:09, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] International broadcasts

German channel ARD did not broadcast any semi final, the article is wrong. NDR did show the first one live, and the second one was not live as it was broadcast a couple of hours later it happened. 195.190.180.28 (talk) 00:43, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Spokespersons and Commentators

Why is that withdrew from the spokespersons and commentators?

GONÇALO. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.84.129.149 (talk) 21:34, 12 June 2008 (UTC)

I think there was consensus to do so and they are going to be (or already have been?) moved to the individual countries' articles, like the songwriters and national final details. Chwech 22:02, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
There was a consensus reached to move them out of this article and into the individual ESC country entry articles. That has not yet happened, but it is on my list of things to do. The info is currentley stored at User:Camaron/Sandbox. Camaron | Chris (talk) 15:41, 13 June 2008 (UTC)