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Contents 1 Linking to 2004 Summer Olympics 2 New template argument 3 Current discussions 3.1 Another argument 3.2 Host? 3.3 Proposal to replace {{flagIOC|USA...}} calls 3.4 Discussion at MoS on flag icons

[edit] Linking to 2004 Summer Olympics

Jonel,

All of these are linking to the 2004 Summer Olympics pages for the countries. Was that your intent?

Sue Anne 22:20, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

The 2004-specific links pre-dated my involvement with these templates. The more I think about these templates, though, the less I like them. Even beyond the Wikipedia:Avoid using meta-templates arguments, I find it just as easy to type/copy-paste the flag image and name. I'm not planning on using the templates anymore, but if you or anyone else finds them useful please do edit mercilessly to whatever makes them most useful to you. -- Jonel | Speak 22:40, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't find them useful either and prefer to use just the flag image. There are already so many links, that using the template doesn't seem all that worthwhile.

Sue Anne 22:43, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Most of the 2006 country pages use this template, and none of the 2004 pages do. I'm going to edit it. Jimbo (not THE Jimbo) 20:23, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

I think these template would be very useful for fixing up old Olympic pages. What would greatly help would be removing the hard-coded "at the xxxx Olympics" string in this template, and make the xxx an additional argument (i.e. "at the " and " Olympics" would still be hardcoded). For example, using "FlagIOC|USA|2006 Winter" would result in the current output, and would be appropriate for medal tables on pages referring to the most recent games. Using "FlagIOC|USA|Summer" would result in a wikilink to the overview page United States at the Summer Olympics, which would be the most appropriate link from pages that span multiple games (e.g. used in all-time medal tables, which appear on "Sport at the Olympics" pages for example. I would like to add the second argument to FlagIOC, and can probably make the edits quickly using AutoWikiBrowser, but would like to hear from others using the template. Andrwsc 17:40, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] New template argument

I have made the change described above. Unfortunately, the template is not backwards compatible with previous usage (e.g. {{FlagIOC|USA}} yields: United States. The second argument is intended to follow one of the following forms: "<year> Winter" or "<year> Summer" or just "Winter" or "Summer". For example, {{FlagIOC|USA|2006 Winter}} yields: United States and {{FlagIOC|USA|Summer}} yields: United States (Look at wikilinks to see the difference.) My intent is to use this updated template for all medal tables, so that the country name links to the appropriate "Country at the xxxx Olympics" page instead of just the page for the country (which is not useful). Andrwsc 01:29, 11 March 2006 (UTC)

Addendum to above: I made an improvement on July 11 to fix the backward compatibility problem. Omitting the second argument defaults to creating a wikilink of "Country at the Summer Olympics". Andrwsc 04:00, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Addendum 2: I have made the flag image a named parameter, so you can specify an alternate flag for early Games. There should be no reason 'not to use this template now. ;) Andrwsc 04:29, 15 July 2006 (UTC)

Addemdum 3: This template is now smart enough to choose the correct flag by itself (assuming the "games" parameter is correct), so the flag argument has been removed.

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[edit] Current discussions

[edit] Another argument

OK, so I was looking at the 2006 Winter Olympics article when I realized that the # of participating athletes in small print after the nation name looks nice. So I added this argument to the template, which can be used by just adding the # of participants as {{{3}}}, like this:

{{FlagIOC|USA|2006 Winter|211}}

United States (211)

This way, you don't need to repeat the small tags over and over again, and it's pretty simple. → JARED ^(t)  14:31, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Host?

How could we denote that a nation was the host? Maybe by bolding the nation's name, or adding a small "host" after it? I'm not sure, but I think it may be helpful.... Suggestions? → JARED ^(t)  14:36, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Maybe something that would render like one of these, perhaps:

United States (host, 211)

United States (211, host)

The code would be simple to do. → JARED ^(t)  15:12, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi Jared. To be honest, I don't think this parameter is necessary. In the only location in which I believe it would be used (i.e. the "Participating nations" section of each Games main article), I think it is unnecessary. By that point of the article, there are usually many times in which the host nation has already been mentioned. Therefore, there is no need to repeat it again, and possibly expanding the column width of the NOC list. Andrwsc 21:50, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

I really didn't either. I just saw that it was on one of the pages, so I thought at the time that it would be useful, but it's just one more thing to clutter up the template! → JARED ^(t)  15:39, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Proposal to replace {{flagIOC|USA...}} calls

FlagIOC is becoming part of a new proposal. Notice: There is currently a proposal to change calls {{flagicon|USA..}} to {{USA|..}} at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Flag_Template#Changing_USA_flag_calls. Please consider posting there to keep the discussion in one place. (SEWilco 02:44, 10 January 2007 (UTC))

So if I correctly read that thread, the proposal will not include this template? It seems necessary to keep the Olympics flags out of the discussion because they are used for totally different purposes. And the different parameters that this has would make a common template difficult. → JARED ^(t)  15:38, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I posted a detailed explanation of what I had done to "decouple" the current flagIOC from the previous implementation, and therefore, the WikiProject Flag Template folks seem happy to leave the Olympic flag usage alone. Andrwsc 17:34, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

The WikiProject Flag Template discussion may be of interest for its technical information. The Manual of Style discussion mentioned below is relevant because it is about Wikipedia usage of all flag icons. (SEWilco 06:03, 16 January 2007 (UTC))

[edit] Discussion at MoS on flag icons

Please contribute to the discussion on flag icons at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style#Flag icons - manual of style entry?. (SEWilco 14:49, 15 January 2007 (UTC))