Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Olympics/Archive 3

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Pictograms

Since the use of the official Olympic Games' pictograms is restricted, i have created a set of neutral pictograms for most of the Olympic and non-Olympic (recognized or demonstration) sports. I've uploaded them to Wikipedia Commons and group under a special category (see here) under a free-use licencing so that people can put them in articles if they wish, without restrictions. They are 300px-wide PNG files with transparent background and black-coloured figures.I'll create more if necessary to cover other sports. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 04:31, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

I don't know about anybody else, but I am seriously impressed with the icons you created. Those would make great additions to the various sports pages. Not to sound pushy or unappreciative, but I think icons for the sports of the winter olympics would be nice too. Great job!! Perakhantu 06:42, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree - that is some awesome work! I've got a couple of great ideas on how to use them too.... Andrwsc 06:44, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Thank you both. I'm glad you find them useful! That was my purpose. Perakhantu, of course i will create the Winter icons. I just started with the Summer ones because they're much bigger in quantity.Parutakupiu talk || contribs 17:46, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
As an example, I've added a pictogram to the article Roller hockey at the 1992 Summer Olympics resized to 50px and with a border (from a template which should be improved to have text wrapped around images).Parutakupiu talk || contribs 17:58, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
I love them, great job. I would definitely put those on the pages that do not have specific pictograms uploaded, or on other non-specific-year pages. On the pages like Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics however, the true pictogram should be included because they can be used fair-use. Maybe your pictograms would be best on templates, portals, etc, where the actual year ones cannot be used. Thank you, again. How did you go about making them, anyway? → JARED (t)  19:48, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm currently in the middle of converting all the events and sports navigation boxes to use the standard template. Take a look at the bottom of Athletics at the 1908 Summer Olympics to see what it looks like now. In addition to adding the pictogram to the sport template, I also added the links to the list of medalist page(s). Andrwsc 19:57, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, Jared. I too thought that the Sport at Year Type Olympics articles needed the corresponding pictogram, but since i don't know which official year Games pictograms could or not be used on Wikipedia, i started creating these freely-usable ones. Thus, use them wherever needed: on articles and/or on templates/portals. I made them on a graphic editor using simple vector forms. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 21:37, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
After you've done so much work, I hate to made additional requests, but I have one or two. First, could you rename the images to something like "Olympic pictogram Athletics" and "Olympic pictogram Water polo"? (The case is significant.) I have an idea for a new template that would incorporate them, and it would be WAY easier to work with them if they had the same sport name as the corresponding "Sport at the xxxx Olympics" pages. Second, would it be possible to save them in SVG format instead of PNG? If not, I think I could do that for you. SVG is the preferred image format on Wikipedia for that kind of thing. Thanks!!! Andrwsc 22:17, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
What's your template idea? → JARED (t)  22:41, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
I think this will warrant a whole new discussion at the top level, but for a preview, check out User:Andrwsc/Test. After just finishing editing over 3000 "Nation at the xxx Olympics" articles to make sure that they are all at least stubbed (no more redlinks!) and using my new infobox with flag, medal count, country navigation, etc., my observation is that the results sections are dreadful to wade through unless there are only a handful of competitors. Take a look at United States at the 2004 Summer Olympics... It's complete, but I think the normal TOC mechanism is insufficient for browsing these articles. My idea is to use show/hide sections for each sport, and the pictograms would look great as part of the section headings. I'm still experimenting here - the idea would be to put all that html code inside a template so that you would write something like {{Olympic results section|Athletics|2004 Summer}} to generate all that stuff. Having each pictogram with a common name would allow me to automatically choose the right one from one of the template parameters. Comments welcome. Andrwsc 23:27, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Ouch! That's a fab idea! At least for those monstruous win-all delegations like USA, Russia, China... The concept is noteworthy, indeed, Andrwsc. I'm already changing the names and converting to .SVG so you can start pumping up that template. My applauses! Parutakupiu talk || contribs 23:44, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, I like that. It seems like it'd be difficult, though, and I'm not exactly sure where you'd put it. What types of pages would it be "implimented" on? → JARED (t)  23:55, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
This idea would be implemented on each of the "Nation at the xxxx Olympics" pages, in what is usually called the "Results by event" section. Andrwsc 00:06, 21 November 2006 (UTC)
I think i understand your idea, Andrwsc. What you want is the images names to be "Olympic pictogram Sport" where Sport is the same as in the articles "Sport at XXXX Olympics", right? The thing is don't know how to rename uploaded files... Do i have to re-upload them? Can you help me? Parutakupiu talk || contribs 22:53, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
To be honest, I don't know! I've never uploaded any images, so I'm not sure if there is an equivalent "move page" function. Andrwsc 23:27, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
I've figured it out. I'll have to re-upload and "name-change" tag the old ones. Thanks anyway, Andrwsc. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 23:38, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
See here for the Summer Games sports and here for the Winter sports. These are/should be the exact names of the sports, so use those. I think the only one we had problems with was what to name the Canoe/Kayak articles. Currently we have Canoe only, but that's a whole other discussion. → JARED (t)  22:59, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Stating the obvious, I'm sure, but I think these icons would look great on the "sport in the summer olympics" pages. I was thinking of having them of relatively large size. Perakhantu 23:08, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes, that's what I was thinking too. On a near-blank page like Archery at the Summer Olympics. → JARED (t)  23:19, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Alright, i've created a complete set of pictograms for the Summer sports (including the "old" ones like cricket, croquet, lacrosse, etc...); i've changed the filename for "Olympic pictogram Sport" - as Andrwsc requested - and re-uploaded them (see here). So, if anyone has used the old filenames in articles or templates, it's better to change to these ones, since i've tagged the former for deletion. Next: Winter pictograms! Parutakupiu talk || contribs 22:16, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

As you can see, i created icons for Canoeing's two disciplines - flatwater and slalom. Do you think i was too specific with this sport while not with others? Do you believe i should, for example, create specific icons for rhytmics gymnastics and trampoline? Comment, please. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 19:21, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

It's hard for me to say, mostly because I'm not the one putting the hard work into making them. But if you don't mind, I think that all of the sports on the Olympic sports page should have their own picture, if you get to doing it. It is kind of all-encompassing in regards to past and present sports and disciplines. So I say, if you can, go for it! → JARED (t)  00:07, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
You're right. Anyway, it doesn't take me much time to do them so i guess it's better that all can be represented. Thanks, Jared. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 00:33, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Like I already requested on your commons talk page I'd like to see these type of pictogrammes for mainly every possible sport, I already gave you some of the most important examples there as well. If it is (at least that's what you are saying) not too much work to do them, I would love to see some sports split up in seperate disciplines like the rhythmic, artistic and trampoline in gymnastics. But like Jared already said, you are the one that creates them and invest your free time in creating them. We can request what we want, but when you don't like to do it, we can't complain about it. At least, don't hurry, we can wait, take the time you need for it. SportsAddicted | discuss 01:10, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, one issue is that we tend to put multiple disciplines together on the same "Sport at the year Olympics" pages. For example, Canoeing at the 2004 Summer Olympics shows medalists for both disciplines (which all have their own event result pages, of course), Wrestling at the 2004 Summer Olympics combines Greco-Roman and Freestyle, Cycling at the 2004 Summer Olympics has all three disciplines, etc. On my "to do list" is to clean up the massive Gymnastics at the 2004 Summer Olympics by splitting into multiple event pages too.
I'm not discouraging the creation of discipline-specific pictograms if you desire to use them on those pages — in fact, I think it will look great! — but we do need to have a single "Olympic pictogram Sport.png" file for template use. That means that we should probably alias the flatwater canoeing image to "Olympic pictogram Canoeing.png", for example. Andrwsc 01:19, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
It doesn't really matter whether you have multiple pictogrammes for a sport available. You can add the flatwater pictogram at the flatwater section, while the slalom pictogram can be placed in the slalom section. In this case it doesn't really matter if the results are split in two or more results pages, or that they are all combined on one results page with two or more different pictogrammes placed. I agree with Andrew when it comes to also having a separate pictogram for the sport only (not a specific discipline). SportsAddicted | discuss 02:10, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree completely with both of you on the matter of having specific pictograms for every discipline... but also on the matter of a single sport-related pictogram for template use, like Andrwsc said. Therefore, i'll upload a copy of Image:Olympic pictogram Canoeing (flatwater).png with the name "Olympic pictogram Canoeing" to solve this issue, while i'll create the other discipline-specific icons. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 02:49, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Said... and done! Andrwsc, here you have Image:Olympic pictogram Canoeing.png. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 02:58, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Great!! Check out User:Andrwsc/Test, where I followed Jared's lead and tried a mock up of United States at the 2004 Summer Olympics with the new templates. The end result uses two templates: "Olympic sport header" to render the pictogram with the title, and "Olympic sport section" for the hide/show section. Do you think this is good enough to "go live"? If so, I can use AutoWikiBrowser to quickly make the substitutions on one of the previous years so that we can get some more feedback. Andrwsc 03:35, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
As i commented before: it's FAB! Well done! Go ahead! Parutakupiu talk || contribs 03:51, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Looks good Andrwsc, although the size of the images may be a little bigger in my opinion, not much, but just a little. SportsAddicted | discuss 10:58, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Just a quick note to say that I haven't forgotten about this, but I want to wait until the dust settles a bit on the changes currently going on with the common.css and common.js pages (affecting the underlying "NavFrame" etc. classes). I also want to get some opinion on any potential pitfalls about using those classes in this way. Andrwsc 17:14, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

NEW ENTRY – I've started with the Winter sports pictograms. I've done all but skating and skiing because of their many disciplines which require specific and pretty variable icons. So, as of now, we have biathlon, bobsleigh, curling, ice hockey, luge and skeleton‘s own "little black dummies" :P (see here). Oh! and i've also made icons for the cycling, gymnastics and volleyball disciplines — "it's a rap" for the current and former Summer sports! Parutakupiu talk || contribs 05:24, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Impressive. You've done a good job on these pictograms. Just a few comments: I don't know if it would be a good idea to have pictograms for the demonstration sports. For one thing, many of them don't even have their own "Sport at the Winter/Summer Olympics". Some sports would be rather difficult to produce pictograms for anyway. Budo for example comprises of many sports, not just one. Not to rain on your parade or anything, but IMHO, I think having pictograms for just the current and past sports is fine. Another thing I want to point out is having a pictogram (large format) on each of the olympic sport pages. See Baseball at the Summer Olympics. I know, I know, I should have put up a test page, but I have no idea how... so if any of you got upset you can delete the pic. But, do any of you like this format? The vast majority (if not all) of these pages have no pictures at all, and I think the pictograms would make great visual additions to the pages. Any comments? Perakhantu 20:31, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, i made the demonstration sports' pictograms because i created the article (and other linked pages) for the roller hockey in Barcelona'92 and thought it should have one, even though it's not an Olympic sport and only once it was a demo sport at any Olympics. Anyway, i haven't done any others so far, so if i think its unnecessary i won't proceed on doing more (the same goes for the Winter sports) and will just keep on current and past sports. About your other suggestion, i've already done that with the roller hockey page but with a smaller thumb and on the left - as an intro pic - as you can see here. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 04:41, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Carrying on Perakhantu's idea of putting bigger-sized pictograms of each sport on the respective article – should we do it? If yes, we must count with some articles which do not have an introductory text long enough to properly wrap around the image - see Baseball at the Summer Olympics and Diving at the Summer Olympics for examples. This could be avoided if one came up with a different formating solution, but i kinda like the one in the baseball article... Parutakupiu talk || contribs 22:55, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, I just went with what you had on the Roller hockey page. I kinda liked the large format of the icon on the baseball page, but then started thinking that these are indeed icons, and having them 100 pixel size should be fine. I see that you have done the other pages as well. Good work. Overall, I think this is a good format to have. I was also thinking of adding them to each "sport at the XXXX Summer/Winter Olympics". Having the 100 pixel icons on each of the pages would make them look better, since so many of them have no pictures at all. What do you think?
As a side note, now that you've uploaded these icons, the use of these things will be everywhere, and not just in the Olympics either. I see that some have been used in pages for a sport festival in the Philippines. You should be proud of creating such useful icons! Perakhantu 09:19, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes, i like this 100px-wide left-floating option too - not too small nor too big. If you want to put them also on the "sport at the XXXX Summer/Winter Olympics" pages... by all means, go for it! It's A LOT of work but if you feel up to it, why not? I'm one wikipedian who likes image-containing articles ;)
I uploaded them for olympic-related usage as main purpose, but i also made them as neutral as possible so they wouldn't be limited to this field. I'm glad they're having good use. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 19:17, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

IOC designations

People's Republic of China, IR Iran, Lao PDR is the IOC designations code. However, i'm really question why the article in Olympic only use China, Iran and Laos. Why?

Note: This need explaination, as IOC designations also use in other article like Asian Games, as currently i'm refer to what the Olympic page do. Thank you

--Aleenf1 04:36, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Mostly for simplicity, but also for consistency. In most cases, the main Wikipedia article uses the common short name (e.g. Iran and Laos), so it is unnecessary for the Olympic articles to deviate from this. In all cases, the full designation is extremely awkward to use on results pages, medal tables, etc. because the names can be very long. However, through the use of standard templates, every nation name is wikilinked to the nation's article, and usually the full name is spelled out in the first sentence of the article's introductory paragraph. That ought to be satisfactory. Andrwsc 06:16, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Also, check out the conversation (or lack thereof) earlier on this talk page, under the "USSR, or Soviet Union?" thread. I tried to get some consensus on what short names to use, but there was ZERO response. You can see what I went ahead with (from the list of flags.) Andrwsc 22:19, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone know whether there has been a voting or something similar in the past deciding that we should use names like China and Chinese Taipei instead of People's Republic of China and Taiwan or Chinese Taipei (Taiwan)? This problem, with mainly Chinese Taipei is becoming bigger and bigger at 2006 Asian Games and it's talk page. User Aleenf1 who spoke above about this issue already decided not to take part in the article and its subpages anymore due to this issue. Some people are really focussed on adding Taiwan to any Chinese Taipei related stuff, while others are saying this should not be the case. Looking at what is common on Wikipedia and what is said above here it should be Chinese Taipei. In my opinion it should be Chinese Taipei as well, but as long as we don't have anything to show them not to do it like they're doing now we will face the same problem over and over again. So...does anyone know where I can find a discussion about this subject before that tells us to use Chinese Taipei, China, Laos, Iran, South Korea etc.? Thanks, SportsAddicted | discuss 11:07, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
At one point, I think we tried. See here and here. Andrwsc was the one who started the both of these threads, but they didn't get much response. I really don't think we need to get a big straw poll going here, though, because personally, I think the shorter the better. The most common name is what should be used. As far as Taiwan, I saw we should use Chinese Taipei just because it is common enough for people to know about it, and it is what is used by the Republic of China for international events. Many articles use "Republic of China at the ...," and I think that should be changed. But again, just getting the opinions of those who look at this page is good enough. We're the ones who take care of the pages, after all. → JARED (t)  14:29, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
Thanks, indeed not too many responses. The thing here is that there are now several, mostly Taiwanese people who are disliking the fact that the IOC uses the name Chinese Taipei and they want to change that into Taiwan entirely over Wikipedia. However there seems to be some sort of a consensus now where they agree with having a note at the bottom of the page. Let's hope it's a consensus indeed, although I don't think it's necessary to have a note telling that Chinese Taipei is in fact Taiwan, because when they are clicking on Chinese Taipei they will find out what Chinese Taipei exactly is. Anyways, thanks for your help and if anyone wants to give their opinion, feel free to join at Talk:2006 Asian Games. SportsAddicted | discuss 15:47, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Current situation

(moving indent levels back first) I'll restate my position, not because I'm trying to impose it on everybody, but because I've edited several thousand Olympic pages and have had to deal with many different situations, so I think my experiences are useful.

This issue arises because a handful of nations are designated with their full official names by the IOC, not their common-use names. Thankfully, we use Australia instead of "Commonwealth of Australia", Greece, instead of "Hellenic Republic", and so on. However, the IOC now uses "Islamic Republic of Iran", "Libyan Arab Jamahiriya", etc. (Actually, this last one is interesting because it is not actually the official name for Libya - "Great Socialist People's Libyan Arab Jamahiriya" is!)

Each nation's name is used primarily in two places - in sport result listings, and on the nation's set of articles for each Olympics (i.e. the "Nation at the year Olympics" pages). I feel that it is extremely unwieldly to use the "full" name for most nations in both places. The result would be an awkward article title, but more importantly, lists of nations in results tables would be badly formatted.

I should repeat again that the name we choose for each nation is used by many templates to automatically format things like lists of nations, headings in the nation's Olympics infobox, etc. The current solution we have is to encode the common-use name for the nation in the appropriate Country_IOC_alias_xxx template, where xxx is the country code for the nation. For example, {{Country IOC alias IRI}} returns "Iran", which means that:

  • {{flagIOC|IRI|2004 Summer}} renders Iran Iran (where the wikilink is automatically generated to Iran at the 2004 Summer Olympics)
  • {{Infobox Olympics Iran}} uses "Iran at the Olympic Games" in the automatically generated title
  • If we want to capture the full name of "Islamic Republic of Iran", then that's typically done on the first line introduction of the appropriate "Iran at the xxxx Olympics" articles.
  • If we really need to render a more precise name of the nation, then the name= parameter to the flagIOC templates can be used
  • If we really need a more precise name for the "Nation at the year Olympics" article, then we can create a redirect from the auto-generated link. This is currently the approach taken on the Great Britain articles, where "Great Britain" is the name returned by {{Country IOC alias GBR}}. This creates automatic links to Great Britain at the 2004 Summer Olympics (for example). Some editors insist that the main article ought to be Great Britain and Northern Ireland at the 2004 Summer Olympics, so the auto-generated link is a redirect to that.

I think there are a couple of principles which ought to guide us here:

  1. consistency with the main article for the nation in Wikipedia
  2. consistency with the IOC name
  3. allowances for names which might be politically incorrect, despite what Wikipedia uses.

I have created a complete list of all nations where there are differences between:

  • what we're using for the Wikipedia Olympic pages, with links to the most recent summer Games appearance so you can see how the nation's name is handled in the infobox and in the introductory paragraph of the article
  • the IOC's official designation for the nation. I've wikilinked the name so you can see where it goes. If it differs from the main article name, it is usually a redirect or it is an article on the geographic region
  • the main article (non-Olympic) for the nation on Wikipedia

These fall into a few different categories:

Category 1

First are the list of nations whose common-use name should uncontroversially be used for the Olympic articles. In each case, the main Wikipedia article uses the common-use name, and I see no compelling reason for the Olympic article to be different. Also, in many of these cases, the current IOC designation has not always been used for all Games. (For example, "Iran" was just "Iran" from 1948-1988. I feel it is important to use "Iran at the xxxx Olympics" for all years. See Category:Iran at the Olympics for the full set.)

Wikipedia Olympic usage official IOC designation main Wikipedia article
Brunei Brunei Brunei Darussalam Brunei
Hong Kong, China Hong Kong, China Hong Kong, China Hong Kong
Iran Iran Islamic Republic of Iran Iran
Laos Laos Lao People's Democratic Republic Laos
Libya Libya Libyan Arab Jamahiriya Libya
Moldova Moldova Republic of Moldova Moldova
Russia Russia Russian Federation Russia
Syria Syria Syrian Arab Republic Syria
Tanzania Tanzania United Republic of Tanzania Tanzania
United States United States United States of America United States

There is one more nation that ought to be in this category. but currently is not:

Wikipedia Olympic usage official IOC designation main Wikipedia article
Micronesia Micronesia Federated States of Micronesia Federated States of Micronesia

I would prefer to shorten this to "Micronesia" if we have consensus. I see that single-word name used on part of the IOC website too. I typically use the name= parameter of the {{FlagIOC}} template to render this as FS Micronesia FS Micronesia, which retains the long name for the article. I also put this nation under "M" in alphabetic-order list of nations. Alternately, using "FS Micronesia" for {{Country IOC alias FSM}} would be acceptable (as per category 4 names below).

Updated
{{Country IOC alias FSM}} now returns simply "Micronesia", and all other related changes have been made. Andrwsc 07:25, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Category 2

The next category are nations whose main Wikipedia article uses the full name because the common-use name is used to refer to a geographic region instead (and therefore, serves as a sort of disambiguation page). In each case, I think the IOC designation still makes the most sense for the Olympic articles.

Wikipedia Olympic usage official IOC designation main Wikipedia article
Congo Congo Congo Republic of the Congo
Great Britain Great Britain Great Britain United Kingdom
Ireland Ireland Ireland Republic of Ireland
South Korea South Korea Korea South Korea
Palestine Palestine Palestine Palestinian National Authority
Virgin Islands Virgin Islands Virgin Islands U.S. Virgin Islands

For PLE, I would prefer to use "Palestine" as the IOC does, but I can see some political sensitivity around that, so I am ok with the current usage.

Category 3

The next category are nations where I felt the common-use name was the most appropriate choice, because it was widely known and/or the official designation was awkward to use.

Wikipedia Olympic usage official IOC designation main Wikipedia article
China China People's Republic of China People's Republic of China
East Germany East Germany German Democratic Republic German Democratic Republic
West Germany West Germany Federal Republic of Germany West Germany
North Yemen North Yemen Yemen Arab Republic Yemen Arab Republic
South Yemen South Yemen Yemen Democratic Republic People's Democratic Republic of Yemen

I would not object to using "PR China" for CHN (and making it a category 4 name, as per next section) if there was a big objection to the current Olympic usage. I would object to using any other longer name.

As for the two Germanys and two Yemens, I would oppose any change to them. I can't see any other solution that would work as well as the current one.

You might ask about the two Koreas - they are listed in category 2 and 4 for different reasons. I would not object to moving them both here (as "South Korea" and "North Korea" instead of "Korea" and "DPR Korea"), if there was strong support for that.

Updated 
Koreas have been updated to as described. Andrwsc 01:40, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Category 4

Next are nations where I chose to retain the official name, but in abbreviated form. In each case, there was an existing redirect page from the abbreviated form (in a non-Olympic sense) to the main article, so I felt that the abbreviation was valid and well-known.

Wikipedia Olympic usage official IOC designation main Wikipedia article Redirect page
DR Congo DR Congo Democratic Republic of the Congo Democratic Republic of the Congo DR Congo
North Korea North Korea Democratic People's Republic of Korea North Korea DPR Korea
FYR Macedonia FYR Macedonia Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia Republic of Macedonia FYR Macedonia

For PRK, I would support using "North Korea" instead of "DPR Korea" (which would make it a category 3 name). This might mean changing KOR to use "South Korea" (and moving it from category 2 to category 3), which I am not fond of doing, but would not strenously object to.

For MKD, I see that there have been lots of renaming wars over those articles already, so I don't think we can simply use "Macedonia" (as a category 2 name). I think "FYR Macedonia" is the best compromise.

Miscellaneous

Wikipedia Olympic usage official IOC designation main Wikipedia article Comments
Timor-Leste Timor-Leste Timor-Leste East Timor Perhaps the main Wikipedia article ought to use the nation's preferred name instead of the English translation (see Côte d'Ivoire for an example of that).
Soviet Union Soviet Union U.S.S.R. Soviet Union I tried to get a discussion going about what to use, but nobody joined. I settled on "USSR" as per IOC usage. I would not object to a change to "Soviet Union" if we had a big discussion on it.
Bahamas Bahamas Bahamas The Bahamas could change to "The Bahamas" if desired. See "The Gambia" below.
Gambia Gambia Gambia The Gambia We should be consistent with respect to GAM and BAH about whether "The" should be in the title or not.
Update
I have changed {{Country IOC alias GAM}} to "Gambia", and made all other related changes. Andrwsc 23:10, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Comment on China & Taiwan

As for Taiwan, I am sympathetic to the political situation, but I believe the current situation is the best NPOV solution that also respects the Taiwanese position:

  1. Use TPE ("Chinese Taipei") for 1984 and later Games, as per IOC usage
  2. Use ROC ("Republic of China") for 1932-1976, as per official reports from those Games
  3. I put both infoboxes on every TPE page (e.g. look at Chinese Taipei Chinese Taipei) so that readers can see both the TPE Olympic flag and the ROC national flag, and readers can see the full set of Olympic Games in which Taiwanese athletes competed.
  4. There was already a fairly detailed description of the naming controversy on all the Chinese Taipei pages; I feel this is wholly sufficient to describe the situation. Changing article names and/or pretending that "Chinese Taipei" doesn't exist is un-encyclopaedic, in my opinion.
As for Taiwan (Chinese Taipei), we have a running compromise in the 2006 Asian Games pages (both main and individual sports pages} where we have a footnote describing what Chinese Taipei is while retaining Chinese Taipei in the tables including the flag. Perhaps this should be considered as the permanent solution for all post-1983 references to Taiwan. As for pre-1976, wasn't there one or two Olympics where Taiwan competed under that name under the Olympic code TAI? I don't remember for sure. As for pre-1949, to label that as having anything to do with Taiwan is absurd because the ROC was China and prior to 1945, Taiwan was a part of Japan. It is possible (though I don't know for sure) that there may have been Taiwanese athletes competing under the Japanese flag. Something for investigation to be sure. Ludahai 03:01, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I like the footnotes. As for the rest of it, I'm not sure there is a good solution for us; I'd love suggestions as to how to make things less bad. The RoC definitely competed as "Taiwan" in 1964 (that's the year I'm working on right now, not sure about other years) at the least. I think using "Republic of China" for everything pre-1984 works because that was the full name of the state, massive shift in geographical boundary notwithstanding. The IOC has used four different designations for the NOC corresponding to the Republic of China: "China", "Republic of China", "Taiwan", and "Chinese Taipei". -- Jonel | Speak 03:57, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I thought that the introductory paragraph at Chinese Taipei at the 2004 Summer Olympics was pretty good at explaining the situation in a NPOV way, so I replicated it when I created stubs for all the missing TPE articles (e.g. Chinese Taipei at the 1988 Winter Olympics. Of course, that intro is only a single click away from any reference to "TPE" on result pages, etc. Therefore, I would only use the footnote at the highest level article for each Games (i.e. in the "Participating nations" section of "xxxx Summer/Winter Olympics". I think it would be unnecessary, and distracting, to include it on every page where a TPE reference appears. The same rationale applies to Unified Team and United Team of Germany, to name some similar examples of uncommon "nation names".
As for the older appearances, I think using "ROC" and "Republic of China" for all pre-1984 appearances works well. Any country codes prior than 1972 were somewhat haphazard anyway. "RCF" was used in 1960, "TWN" in 1964 and 1968, and "ROC" for 1972 and 1976 Winter. In the same way that we use "NED" for all appearances by the Netherlands, regardless of what was actually used at each specific Games (in addition to "HOL" through 1988, there was also "PBA", "NET", "OLA" and "NLD" in the pre-standard years), I think "ROC" is the best choice for that NOC. Andrwsc 23:29, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Summary

As you can see, I have given this a LOT of thought. I believe the current situation has good arguments to support each of the decisions we took. There are a handful of potential changes, and they are noted in my comments above. Hopefully I can spur some more discussion on this! Andrwsc 19:32, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

Discussion

Jared's take

Pretty much, I agree with almost all that you said. You hit the key points of the current designations and your views basically aligned with mine.

My theory is that the IOC is usually the best source. If there is ever confusion about something, the IOC should be the source to clear that up. In some cases, the IOC will use NOC names that are true to the name of the country, but are obnoxiously long or unnecessary; usually the shortened version (used by most WP pages now) is best at carrying across the point that this is the NOC we're talking about. So in sum, the IOC's names should be followed closely, and only should be deviated from if a shortened name would carry across the same effect.

I'll go over everything that you brought up again, but with my takes:

Category 1
  • As far as this category, everything you said is good. Short and sweet and too the point is usually best, as is in this case.
  • That said, I would make FS Micronesia just simply Micronesia. Again, it just makes sense.
Category 2
  • PLE should be made just Palestine. The IOC designates that, so why should we add extra?
  • See my thoughts about the Koreas below.
  • Everything else is fine.
Category 3
  • Everything is good; I'd object to PR China because again it is unnecessary.
Category 4
  • As for DR Congo, I don't think anything else could be done to shorten this (because of the Rep. of Congo), except for what is already in place, so I'm fine with this.
  • As for Korea, see below.
  • As for FYR Macedonia, I say go with Macedonia. The actual political name of the nation is Republic of Macedonia, and we've been shortening all the other ones, so I don't see why we shouldn't shorten this one.
Miscellaneous
  • Something bugs me about having an abbreviation in the name. Using USSR would be like saying USA at the ... ... it just doesn't seem right. I'd support having Soviet Union.
  • For Bahamas and Gambia, get rid of the "The." it is, to me, unnecessary in the Olympics context, plus, the IOC doesn't use "The."
Taiwan
  • If splitting them is the only option, I guess that's fine. It just seems like the only reason a nation should have two separate pages (3 in the case of Germany) is if the nation split itself, but I see that for political reasons, this had to be done. There's just no ____ at the Summer Olympics page where both designations are shown as related, which may present a problem when this is made. How should it be designated?
Korea (North and South)
  • Here's my theory: going for simple (like I've stressed above), North Korea and South Korea seem like the best options. But going with IOC designations, it is a similar case to Congo and DR Congo. I would say that North Korea and South Korea are a pair, and if one is objected, both are. Therefore, I would say keep it as the IOC designations of Korea for South Korea, and use DPR Korea for North Korea. It seems most logical.

That's pretty much it. Feel free to branch off of my views for your discussion. Don't feel like you have to write as much as we did, either, because we were just trying to get our views out there. You just have to say what and to what extent you support something. → JARED (t)  21:27, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I agree with all said by Jared as this is exactly how I feel about these naming conventions. When it comes to those he wasn't sure about, this is my opinion. I would go for Chinese Taipei since the IOC started to use that name and Republic of China before that time. For the Korea's I prefer North Korea and South Korea, as this makes more sense in my opinion. SportsAddicted | discuss 23:29, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

More sections!

"Micronesia", "Palestine", "China", "Congo" and "DR Congo", "North Korea" and "South Korea" following German convention, "Great Britain" by itself everywhere, status quo on Germanys and Yemens, "Macedonia", "Soviet Union", "Bahamas", and "Gambia" are my takes on those issues. Clearly, redirects need to be sprayed liberally.

As for the Republic of China, I'd say this is a pretty simple case of real-world politics screwing over the poor free encyclopedia. Doesn't help that the IOC medals database refers to the nation as "Chinese Taipei" for the 1960 medal ([1]). Or that the official report in 1932 refers to the nation as "China" (see page 19) and the one in 1964 refers to the nation as "Taiwan" (see page 9). Regardless, since 1984 seems to be the first contemporary use of "Chinese Taipei", and using RoC throughout would be somewhat disingenuous, I agree that the current situation is best. Again, liberal spraying of redirects.

Russia is an interesting case. The IOC treats the "Russia" of the pre-Soviet era as a separate entity from the "Russian Federation" of the post-Soviet era, whereas we currently conflate the two. Mayhap we should (re-)consider that? -- Jonel | Speak 23:52, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

I am ok with all those changes (and non-changes, as appropriate). I can start making the changes in a few days, to allow for some more discussion. Four of us agreeing is a great start!
When I created all the "Republic of China at the xxxx Olympics" stubs, I contemplated several options about how to represent it. Certainly, I think the official reports of the specific Games should take some priority over the IOC's retroactive use of TPE for pre-1984 medals. I thought the best solution was to use ROC for 1932-1976 and TPE for 1984-current, with two sets of articles linked together through the infoboxes. Complicating matters is that ROC referred to mainland China for the 1932, 1936 and probably the 1948 Games, so one could make the case for showing those appearances in an "Other appearances" section of {{Infobox Olympics China}}, but I decided against opening that can of worms.
As for RUS/RU1, I really think that we should use the same code for both eras, much the same way GER was used for two periods of history. Andrwsc 00:20, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Sort order?

I have started to make some of these changes, as it appears we have some consensus. One question - how should the pair of Koreas, Germanys, Yemens, etc. be sorted in the list of participating nations and in the navigation boxes? Should I put North Korea and South Korea together under "K", or under "N" and "S" respectively? The Germanys are currently under "E" and "W", but I have to edit all those templates anyway and if we want to change the sort order, I can make all the changes together. Andrwsc 21:37, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Well it depends how we're going to do Korea. I guess it really doesn't matter to me. North Korea and South Korea are fine, as long as its both of them. Plus it matches the germanies and yemens. I think they should be placed according to the main name, like put them both in the K's. It makes the most sense, becuase we're just using North and South as helpful locators. → JARED (t)  12:13, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm about half-way finished moving the Korean articles to "North Korea at the..." and "South Korea at the...". Still some cleanup left for today. Right now they're sorted under K (because I put "DPR Korea" after "Korea" when the previous names were used) so I'll leave them that way. But, right now the Germanys are under "E" and "W", so I shall move them under "G" for consistency. Also, I think that means "United Team of Germany" (1956-1964) ought to go under "G" as well, not "U" as is the case now. Andrwsc 17:05, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Competitors by sport table

Now that we have graphics for the Summer Olympic sports, i had this idea to create a table, in the "Country at the XXXX Season Olympics" pages, where all the competitors would be sorted by their sport. You can see what i'm talking here. The images and numbers are called through this template (very basic), but the table has to be set by the editor, considering the number of sports and consequently the number of rows and columns — this issue would be discussed. I tried to code the table itself, but the wiki scripting language just doesn't suffice. What do you think? Parutakupiu talk || contribs 21:43, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 02:29, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

Olympic Template

I've been gone for a few days, but I WOULD REALLY LIKE TO KNOW why the olympic template that lists the years of each summer and winter olympic games, as well as wikilinks to "sports", "medal counts", "NOC's", "medalists", and "symbols" was changed. And more importantly, why wasn't this up for discussion on this page? I LIKED the previous template, and I don't see any advantage of this one other than the colored wikilinks (which of course could have been incorperated into the previous template). Please respond. Perakhantu 05:35, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Hey Perakhantu. Coincidentally, the template was changed first by Tompw within a matter of seciond before my edit to change it, which I found funny. But anyway, my motivation to change it was that without the image being able to be there, which (I though) completed the template, it seemed like an ugly jumble of links. I was meaning to make a change ever since the image was taken off in June. Anyhow, I never even thought to bring it here. User:Tompw, User:Andrwsc, and I were all there about the same time of the edit. I personally wanted it to match all the others, using Template:navigation but I gave in on that, and it was sort of compromised as the template that's there now. Andrwsc changed the colors to match the other Olympics templates.
So I still think this is up for discussion. If you don't like the design (which wouldn't matter to me) then say so or suggest an alternate. Discussion is good! → JARED (t)  15:14, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, I think having the main pages such as Athens 2004, Torino 2006, Bejing 2008 and Vancouver 2010 linked at the bottom of the template should have been kept. These are pages that get the most traffic and having easily noticed wikilinks are a good idea. The rest of the template has kind of grown on me, I guess.
I put those links back into {{Olympic Games}}, but still retaining the rest of the current visual style. Hopefully this version is a "keeper" then. Andrwsc 05:11, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Another thing I've noticed, is that the sport templates have changed. The worst one I've seen is the olympic baseball template (which can be seen at the bottom of the Baseball at the Summer Olympics page.) All those "demonstration sport" statements clutters up the template. It looks really ugly. What happened to the sport templates that had the demonstration years below the official years? That looked great. It segregated the template into two parts with the official years on top and the demonstration years on the bottom. I know that the medalists wikilinks and sport icons have been added to the templates, but isn't there someway of incorperating the previous version of the sport templates into the current ones? Perakhantu 20:45, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, those changes were mine. I thought it was important to use the standard navigation box templates consistently. That meant that the multi-color formatting had to go, as one consequence. I think they all look pretty good, with the exception of {{Olympic Games Baseball}}, because the sport unfortunately was a demo on seven occasions. (See Wikipedia:WikiProject Sports Olympics/Templates for an easy way to view the whole set.) I will see what I can do to improve that one. I do like the single chronological list instead of two sections, however. Do you have any concerns over any other sport templates? Andrwsc 21:52, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Ok, so why DID you find it important to use the standard navigation template in this case? I guess, we'll just have to disagree on this one. Frankly, I find the new template... ugly. It looked much better before. Taking the new template into account, there doesn't seem to be any other particular sport template that stands out as needing clean-up. Anyway, there are plenty of things to work on in the olympic pages, so I won't fight it. (shrug)Perakhantu 22:16, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, I guess there were a few reasons. First, I saw the work (still ongoing) to standardize on navigation box functionality Wikipedia-wide by updating common.css and common.js. One example is the hide/show behaviour that I wanted on those huge templates like {{NOCin2004SummerOlympics}}. Another example is that editors no longer need to fiddle with the layout by putting <br> around the template calls, etc. to make them look good. Back-to-back navigation boxes are cleanly rendered now. Second, I thought it was essential to have consistent visual appearance within the Olympic nav boxes, so that meant things like a common color scheme, box width, font size, use of bullets instead of pipes as separators, etc. Third, I guess I liked the "new" style and found the old ones ugly! Different tastes, I guess. I never liked the multi-color style; it looked cluttered to my eyes. Anyway, I'm still open to suggestions for improvement, but I do believe we need to fall within the scope of what can be done with {{NavigationBox}} and {{Dynamic navigation box}}. Andrwsc 00:18, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

(sigh) It seems like I'm beating a dead horse here. Andrswc, what is your reasoning on having the medalists list inside the sport template? I mean Diving at the Summer Olympics looks good with having the see also statement above the medal table. I know there are other pages that include the sport template, but couldn't we have the same see also above those medal tables too? Perakhantu 06:53, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, sure! My motivation was that the "List of Olympic medalists in...." articles weren't readily accessible (except for a handful of sports, where they had been added in the "See also" section of the main "Sport at the Olympics" article only), but putting them in all the navigation boxes instantly added them to all the "Sport at the year Olympics" pages too. I feel that that is an important link to have on every sport page, so our options are:
  1. leave the links in the navigation boxes
  2. remove them, but add a "See also" section to every sport page (main + years)
I do think it is inconsistent to have both links on those pages for some but not all sports, so we need to have consistent presentation either way. If you feel strongly about it, be WP:BOLD and make the changes, but please make sure that they are all consistent! Andrwsc 07:56, 1 December 2006 (UTC)
Ok here is what I'm going to do. I'm going to go into each "sport at the XXXX Summer Olympics" pages and delete (if I find any) event templates on those main sport pages. I will also add a see also section for "List of Olympic medalists in XXXX", so the sport template will eventually won't have that section in it. And then adding in the pictograms would greatly enhance these pages (long ways to go, I know). As for the details link, I think that is still up for dicussion, and I'm guessing that Andrwsc would want to do that part. So for the people seeing the "see also" sections popping up, please don't delete them. I slowly slogging my way through this. Perakhantu 06:26, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
Sounds like a reasonable plan. Might I suggest you look at Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser to help you "slog" through the articles? It's a pretty useful tool for making repetitive similar edits like this. Hope this helps, Andrwsc 06:55, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

Olympic & Asian Games Infoboxes

((pulling this out into a separate topic since it's not related to the "Olympic Template" topic) Andrwsc

can someone help me make a template for the Asian Games? like the one used in the satellite pages of the Olympics. Like this one: Template:Infobox Olympics Philippines thanks a lot! --RebSkii 19:26, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

That template is based on the parent template {{Infobox Country Olympics}} created by Andrwsc. If you want support on making an Asiad infobox, ask him.Parutakupiu talk || contribs 19:53, 10 December 2006 (UTC)
Before explain how the current template works, please let me first explain my motivation for the Olympics infoboxes and the rationale for their use.
You'll note that every "main page" for each Olympic Games has a "Participating nations" section with links to individual pages for each nation (of the form "Nation at the xxxx Olympics"). These pages are also linked to from many results pages through the use of the {{flagIOCathlete}} and related templates. One of my goals is to make sure this is used on ALL Olympic pages so that we get consistent flag rendering, consistent links to the nation pages, etc. There are over 3000 of these nation pages, and I think I created about 1200 stubs when I installed the infoboxes on all of them. There are zero redlinked "Nation at the xxxx Olympics" articles.
There had been some large discrepancies in the layout of those pages. I think the common infobox format helps significantly with a common appearance. For example, the medal summary is in the same place, the flags are all the same width, links to all other pages for the same nation are put in a common section, etc.
So, with this in mind, what is your intent with the Asian Games? I think it would be inconsistent to put an infobox on a single nation's pages, for example. I think you need to set up the "infrastructure" to support the infobox before putting it on any nation pages. For example, I would work on the list of nations at each games and you would have to create all the "Nation at the xxxx Asian Games" pages (even if stubbed) if you want the same degree of infobox detail as the Olympic one.
Now, the Olympics infoboxes are implemented in three places. First, the "root" {{Infobox Country Olympics}} template is where all of the visual appearance is handled. This ensures complete consistency on all the pages. There is a LOT of variable parameter usage in that template, and much of it is specific to the rest of the template system used for Olympic articles. For example, the flag is rendered by a call to the appropriate "Country flag IOC alias xxx" template, which returns the specific flag for the Games year. I think the simplest thing would be to just make the flag a simple parameter.
The second place where the infobox is implemented is in a specific template for each nation (e.g. {{Infobox Olympics Philippines}}) The idea with this level of template is that common sections for all pages of the same nation (espcially the list of summerappearances and winterappearances) is written once. Individual Games parameters (such as gold, silver and bronze) are "passed through".
This leads to the third place in which the infobox is implemented. On the specific "Nation at the xxxx Olympics" article, the template is called with actual values for gold, competitors, etc. This renders the middle section of the template, which is Games-specific (and in a slightly different color). If a games= value is not specified, the infobox is drawn with the current flag and with no middle section. This would be seen on the overview articles, such as Philippines at the Summer Olympics. Again, there is a lot of intelligence to this section in the parent {{Infobox Country Olympics}} template so that (for example), if a flagbearer is specified, the heading links to the Opening Ceremonies article -- if it exists. Another example is that the link to the "xxxx Olympics medal count" page is automatically created.
So, my advice for the Asian Games is to not try to implement all the features of the Olympics box, especially because the infrastructure isn't there. When all the medal count pages etc. are created, then those features can be added. I can help create a simpler version of the box that contains the flag, the medal count, and possibly the list of past appearances. I think it would work best (for now) as a single generic template with all the parameters specified on the "Nation at the 2006 Asian Games" pages (for example), rather than trying to duplicate the complex structure I used for the Olympics boxes. It was a necessity with 3000+ pages to edit, but until the Asian Games gets that "mass", it is not worth it. Hope this helps, Andrwsc 20:13, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
i agree, that is very complex. so, can you help me make the simpler one? i understand that we are backlogged with "NOC at the 2006 Asian Games" articles, but we're on the way to finishing it up. thanks for your help. am i'm hoping that we can have a consistent and a "simpler" way of having an NOC infobox for the Asiad thanks again. --RebSkii 21:10, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, I'll see what I can do, but it make take a few days. We're having a new baby tomorrow, so I will be on a wikibreak until the end of the week, perhaps. Andrwsc 21:29, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
thank you so much Andrwsc. i will wait for that or you can put the toolboxes in my talkpage and i'll be the one to make all of them. thanks again! --RebSkii 17:54, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Article building using templates

Hi everyone, I started on this Wikiproject a couple of years ago, I then disappeared (well, worked on other areas of WP) and have just had a read of these talk pages again the last few days. Wikipedia's templating features have become very advanced since then so I wanted to throw an idea around:

Now before you say "too much work!" this could actually make things easier! Article G could be a template, and transcluded into articles D, E and F. The same information would only need to be written once, and would then appear in multiple articles. If each transcluded article took the form of a whole section, it would be editable by the usual section "edit" links and no-one would even notice (unless they went to edit the whole page). Formatting changes or disambiguation of names would only need to be done once. Noinclude tags could be used so that the articles can be individually viewed as their own article as well as a subsection of other articles.

I can do up an example of this later if anyone is interested as to how it would work, if there is interest. -- Chuq 01:02, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Many times this suggestion of pairing "nation/sport" has come across my mind... but it flew away as fast as it approached and i never really had a deep thought about it. An example would be cool. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 01:59, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I had never though of this, but I don't see why we couldn't do this... I'd be "too much work," but it is possibly something that may be for the better. I'd like to see a working example (i.e. one with each of the pages above, A-G and links between them, etc. Don't go overboard, I just want to see how it'd work). I'd like to see it in action! → JARED (t)  02:25, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
I will try to do up an example over the next day or so then :) -- Chuq 02:55, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
My initial thought is that the "G" pages would only be helpful for a small handful of "D" pages that are too long and need to be split up. I do not think that it should be the default organization for the vast majority of the 3000+ "D" pages we have. Many nations send a relatively small number of athletes to each Games, and if the entire set of results can be captured on a single article neatly, then there is no reason to split it further. Similarly, the "F" pages would be helpful only for "B" pages that are too long, and to be honest, the "B" pages are collectively in the worst shape of any on that list.
My next thought was that I think we have a LOT of work to do with completing the "base" articles before introducing another level of articles. I fear that the "F" and "G" articles will be very incomplete, perhaps only implemented completely for a very small number of the 3017 nation appearances, and therefore, resulting in inconsistent layout of those articles.
I think our current job should be to complete what we have now. My current assessment is as follows:
  • A. (year) - all complete, although some could use more detail, especially in the "Highlights" section
  • B. (nation) - terrible shape! Only 48 articles of a possible 230 for the summer Games have bene started, and the vast majority are little more than stub status, with some statistics from 1896-1900 and that's all. The winter Games articles are even worse, with only 3 complete of a possible 105!
  • C. (sport) - all exist, but most need some work. I would like to see the following sections implemented at a minimum on all of these pages: For individual sports: all-time medal table, table of events per Games, list of "top" multiple medalists. For team sports, all-time medal table and a table of national appearances.
  • D. (nation/year) - all exist now, although I'm guessing that I created over 1000 stubs, so there's obviously an enormous amount of work to do. At a minimum, we should strive to complete the following information per page: number of competitors and sports (in infobox) and complete list of medalists. A conservative guess is that only a few hundred pages at most are at this level of completion.
  • E. (sport/year) - many still don't exist. (This is where I plan to work on next.) At a minimum they need a medal summary, and a medal table for multi-event sports. When complete, each event ought to have its own article as well.
I don't mean to put a damper on your proposal, but I don't think we should start another set of articles until we've made more progress on what we've already started. Andrwsc 05:54, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Andrwsc: you have a knack to enlighten us :D The way you've put things... there's no doubt that there is still a lot of work to do, indeed. Neverthless, we can always see an example of his proposal just to have an idea of Chuq's intention. Nothing serious for now. Anyways, have you people seen my recent posts above? — Here and here. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 06:31, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Yes, absolutely! I've already added those six winter pictograms to the appropriate navigation boxes! As for the competitor summary, it's a neat idea, but I haven't thought hard enough about how to respond to your proposal... Andrwsc 06:51, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Ok - take a look at:
User:Chuq/Paintball at the 1996 Summer Olympics
User:Chuq/Australia at the 1996 Summer Olympics
See what you think! -- Chuq 12:04, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, there's some interesting ideas there! However, I do feel that "Results by nation" is not a good idea for any of the "Sport at the year Olympics" pages. "Results by event" is clearly the most logical way to go for those articles. I also think that there should only be a single "Results by xxxx" grouping per article - take a look at Brazil at the 2004 Summer Olympics to see what happens when a page has multiple groupings. (It has results by date and by event.) Not only do they easily fall internally inconsistent, but it is a mess for a reader to navigate. Andrwsc 00:22, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
It might be me but... those two examples don't exist already in the "Country at the YYYY Season Olympics" pages? I mean the "Results by sport" section. Isn't pretty much what we have already? Parutakupiu talk || contribs 04:32, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
They do exist (well, except for Paintball at the 1996 Summer Olympics, I hope no-one creates that!) - but edit the page and take a look at the code. You will find an article, User:Chuq/Australia in Paintball at the 1996 Summer Olympics, which is included in both - and when one is changed, the other is also changed. Andrwsc raises a fair point in that it won't be useful in all cases, but it is just a concept I thought I would introduce here, as it may have potential! Also note that the "User:Chuq/" prefix is solely so that these test pages dont get mistaken for "real" pages.
Not to confuse things, but I just made another change (about 5 minutes ago). User:Chuq/Australia in Paintball at the 1996 Summer Olympics now works as a stand alone article. When included, it is just the bare content - when viewed separately, it adds a header, and categories, and changes the section name, to appear as a real article. -- Chuq 06:11, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
can i make a suggestion? re: E. sport/nation/year, instead of having "NOC at Sport Year Summer/Winter Olympics" why not just make a general article for each NOC and the Sports Team/Athletes, that can be titled "NOC national sport team" for team sports or "NOC national sport athletes" for individual sports. for example, there is an article called Japan national baseball team which can be linked to the standings table of "Baseball at the Year Summer Olympics" article. another example in the Boxing at the 2006 Asian Games medal table, Uzbekistan is linked to Uzbekistan national amateur boxing athletes. i believe this would be simpler and easier than having an article created for each Olympics like creating Timor Leste in Boxing at the 2008 Summer Olympics while we can consolidate all the info of a particular sport for each NOC in one article. there was a previous discussion in village pump (sorry i can't seem to find it) about the growing consensus regarding the quality of WP articles rather than quantity. RebSkii 18:14, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

IOC usage vs Wikipedia's inventions

While the IOC uses "USSR", not "Soviet Union" in the majority of its publications, including official reports by the organizers, Wikipedia seems to have now completely settled upon using "Soviet Union" instead. Even "URS", which is a shortcut for the French "URSS" (English:"USSR") now corresponds to the "Soviet Union". I thought, that using "Soviet Union" in category and article names and the IOC designation "USSR" inside the Olympic articles was a compromise. It's now clear, that I was wrong.

Well, if you, guys, keep things going this way, then I'll consider starting to use "USSR" in category and article names to balance your POV. Cmapm 23:07, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

What's the POV issue here? As per the lengthy discussion above on this page, we're trying to arrive at a set of names that are appropriate for Wikipedia Olympic articles. The arguments in favor of "Soviet Union" are that it matches the name of the main article for the nation, and it avoids using an abbreviation in the article name (similar to the choice of "United States at the Olympics" instead of "USA at the Olympics"). The argument in favor of "USSR" is that it more closely aligns with Olympic report usage. (Although, to be precise, only two official reports used "USSR" as written, the other 16 used "U.S.S.R.".) Are there other arguments to those three?
In any case, I'd still like to know why you think "Soviet Union" usage has POV implications, and what your suggestions would be? When I last tried to raise this issue a few months ago, there was deafening silence. At least this time there were three other people (now four) to weigh in with an opinion. Andrwsc 23:22, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
Some prefer to use "Soviet Union", while others prefer to use "USSR", from this I conclude, that both have two distinct POVs on this issue. Wikipedia should equally represent both of them IMHO. I should add to your arguments, that the IOC also always uses "U.S.S.R" (or "USSR"? don't remember) at its official website in medal stats tables. I didn't dig into the "USA" usage, but it seems, that the IOC prefers "United States" or "United States of America" - hence I see no problems with this name.
I should immediately reply on that discussion if I knew of it. But even now I'm writing quite a long article on a completely different subject :) So, please, could you excuse me, if next time I come with too late reply? Cmapm 00:38, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
No worries! I didn't mean to imply there was a time limit on discussion! I just didn't realize it was a sensitive issue. From my perspective, "Soviet Union" is much more widely used in Wikipedia, and didn't seem controversial to me. Very few of the articles mentioned at Wikipedia:WikiProject Soviet Union use "USSR" (or "U.S.S.R.") in the name. I still fail to see what is POV about the name. To me, they are both reasonable abbreviations of the proper full name. One does not strike me as any more or less neutral than the other. "Soviet Union" just seems to be a better choice for Wikipedia article names, for pretty much the same reasons as found on Talk:Soviet Union#Title etc. Andrwsc 00:54, 30 November 2006 (UTC)
More common? E.g. Britannica prefers the "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" (abbreviating it "U.S.S.R.") [2]. Anyway, it's important, in which context the name is more common. In Olympic documents, footage, etc. "USSR"/"U.S.S.R." is much more common, than "Soviet Union". And after reading, watching official coverage and documents, folks come into the Wikipedia and see "Soviet Union" in the majority of Olympic-related stats...Cmapm 10:53, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
If you really insist on "USSR" instead of "Soviet Union" (and I think you are the only one here who cares and/or wants it that way), can you please make the hundreds of other edits required to implement that change? Making the change to {{Country IOC alias URS}} is only the first step. There are category name changes (e.g. from Category:Soviet Union at the Olympics to Category:USSR at the Olympics), navigation box changes, and hundreds of article edits. Redirect pages are handy in the interim period, but they should not be relied upon for the long-term solution. Thanks. Andrwsc 17:56, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Standardize 'em all? :-) Why can't two names coexist inside articles? Quite a lot of the categories with "Soviet Union" name (e.g. subcats of Category:Olympic competitors for the Soviet Union) were created by me. Because Wikipedia's rules say we should better avoid abbreviations in category/article names and "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics" would be too long for that. But I'm speaking on the recent change in the URS alias, which automatically changes, for instance, all "total medal count" tables, where "USSR" was since their creation and for a long time! I expected strong sourced reasoning behind that change, because the IOC also uses "USSR" in those tables. I see that "reasoning" in the recent "URS alias" change - "the majority of us think so". No more comments from me. Cmapm 11:15, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Cmapm, it was great for you to have stood up for your opinions! You had a very logical, reasonable argument for using USSR. Unfortunately, most of life revolves around "majority rules" and this situation was no different. You've been editing WP long enough to know that. I see that you are an avid supported of the Soviet Union, and that's great, and I hope you understand where we're coming from. A majority of the people here agree with Andrwsc's ideas below about the "details" link he wants on the sub pages. Although I disagree, I'll live with it because most people think it will be for the better. And I'm staying with the project.
I hope I speak for everyone when I say that your opinions are very valuable! A discussion would be pointless without someone opposing something. Thanks for getting involved and I hope you choose to stay with the project! → JARED (t)  20:36, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Medal summary table formatting

I'd like to get some opinion on a potential change to the layout of the medal summary tables found on the "Sport at the year Olympics" pages. Right now, the standard format looks like:

Event Gold Silver Bronze
50 m freestyle United States Gary Hall Jr.
United States (USA)		 21.93 Croatia Duje Draganja
Croatia (CRO)		 21.94 South Africa Roland Schoeman
South Africa (RSA)		 22.02
100 m freestyle Netherlands Pieter van den Hoogenband
Netherlands (NED)		 48.17 South Africa Roland Mark Schoeman
South Africa (RSA)		 48.23 Australia Ian Thorpe
Australia (AUS)		 48.56
200 m freestyle Australia Ian Thorpe
Australia (AUS)		 1:44.71 Netherlands Pieter van den Hoogenband
Netherlands (NED)		 1:45.23 United States Michael Phelps
United States (USA)		 1:45.32

Our intent is that this table is the "gateway" to the detailed results for each event, using the wikilink on the event name in the first column of the table. One of the things that has always stuck in the back of my mind is that it may not be totally obvious to newcomers that there is a whole "layer" of information beneath this article and clicking on the event name is how to find it. Therefore, I thought we might want to make it a bit more explicit. Borrowing a formatting idea that I've seen on some other sport pages, I thought we could add a "details" link in the first column, like this:

Event Gold Silver Bronze
50 m freestyle
details		 United States Gary Hall Jr.
United States (USA)		 21.93 Croatia Duje Draganja
Croatia (CRO)		 21.94 South Africa Roland Schoeman
South Africa (RSA)		 22.02
100 m freestyle
details		 Netherlands Pieter van den Hoogenband
Netherlands (NED)		 48.17 South Africa Roland Mark Schoeman
South Africa (RSA)		 48.23 Australia Ian Thorpe
Australia (AUS)		 48.56
200 m freestyle
details		 Australia Ian Thorpe
Australia (AUS)		 1:44.71 Netherlands Pieter van den Hoogenband
Netherlands (NED)		 1:45.23 United States Michael Phelps
United States (USA)		 1:45.32

What do you think? Andrwsc 04:52, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Took the words out of my mouth. This was exactly what I was thinking of proposing. It would let the reader know that there are more details about each of the events. I really like this. Plus it would most certainly do away with the event templates that are found on certain pages. The event templates certainly should exist, but not on the "sport at the XXXX Olympics" pages. Athletics at the 2004 Summer Olympics is an example. With details added into the medal tables, the event template at the bottom of the page would be completely unnecessary. Perakhantu 08:04, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
Maybe tomorrow I'll try to update Athletics at the 2004 Summer Olympics to see what it looks like. We can always revert back if there is violent opposition. Andrwsc 08:43, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
I say: go ahead. Don't see any cons that would create tension over that change. And if those huge super-coloured event templates happen to be replaced, the better! Parutakupiu talk || contribs 18:20, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
At the risk of starting a divergent topic, I must say that I'm not a big fan of those navigational templates either. The multi-colors and the multiple titles (e.g. do we really need yet another link to "Athens, Greece" etc. on each sport template?) really make them look cluttered and ugly, in my opinion. I would be in favor of a simple list, located at the top right of the individual event pages, in a style similar to what is suggested at Wikipedia:Article series. I like the simplicity and placement of templates like {{Style}}. Andrwsc 18:37, 2 December 2006 (UTC)
I agree. That list would look much cleaner, aesthetic and its vertical axis would distinguish it from all the other horizontal templates. It's a matter of testing. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 18:46, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Sorry I'm a little late joining in here. Here's what I think: First, I'm not too big on the "details" link. I'd go for it, but it seems that it's a little unnecessary for the table. I can see where you're coming from, but, again, the other template that you brought up takes care of that. Which leads me to say that I do like those event per sport per year templates. The colors and nice, IMO, and it's a quick way to navigate between those sub sport pages which are big enough to have their own page. {{Style}} seems like an alternative, but if anything should be salvaged from the templates that Jonel created, it should be the coloration and the basic set-up. Maybe I'll make a test template if I get a chance...one that could be used across all of the sports and sub-sports pages in each year. For now, though, I think everything is viable. → JARED (t)  20:50, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

I guess we have different tastes! No disrespect to Jonel, because I know how much work has gone into them, but I have several problems with those templates. First, the color scheme is a poor choice. The bluish shade for men and pinkish shade for women in templates like {{AthleticsAt2004SummerOlympics}} is a form of gender stereotype that could be offensive to some people. To me, it's just tacky. I see that some years have a different scheme (e.g. {{AthleticsAt1964SummerOlympics}} and {{AthleticsAt1896SummerOlympics}}) but I would still say that there is no strong reason to have three or four shades of color in a single navbox. Second, the titles of these templates often go overboard; they don't need the extra header rows to repeat the link to the main Games page and host city, or to state "Games of the x Olympiad". A single title and link to the main "Sport at the year Olympics" article to totally sufficient, in my opinion. Lastly, I do not like the inconsistency of these templates. In addition to the color differences mentioned above, there are also size differences. For example, {{FigureskatingAt1908SummerOlympics}} is vertically oriented, but placed at the bottom of articles, where horizontally oriented navigation boxes are usually used.
I think the right solution is to have a "parent" template that defines the basic structure, color, location, etc. and then per-sport/Games templates would be derived from those. That is the approach I took with the infoboxes on the "Nation at the year Games" articles. All the layout details are defined in one spot ({{Infobox Country Olympics}}) with parameters to define the details. Some of those parameters are specified in a per-nation template (e.g. {{Infobox Olympics Greece}} and the rest are specified on the individual articles.
With that in mind, perhaps we need to agree on the visual details first and then work from there. Andrwsc 08:08, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I'd just like to note that I didn't design those templates, I've just been using a format I picked up somewhere else (specifically, {{SwimmingAt2004SummerOlympics}} -- going through the history of that template is quite interesting). I definitely agree that blue/pink is not wise; all of the 1964 templates I've created recently have been blue/blue. I'd certainly have no problem making them the same shade of blue. The extra title lines are indeed extraneous and could be eliminated. As for the size differences, those are an artifact of the fact that sports have different numbers of events. The figure skating one has three lines because it had men's, women's, and mixed events. Since it only had 1 or 2 of each, it looks vertical. If there were 8 events in each group, it would be as horizontal as the others.
All that said, as long as there's an easy way to navigate between events, I'm happy with pretty much any display characteristics. -- Jonel | Speak 15:01, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Wow, there certainly were some style differences on that swimming template! I think this precisely makes my point that we need a "parent" template to hold all the style decisions (such as our current use of {{Dynamic navigation box}} or {{NavigationBox}} for the current bottom-of-page navigation boxes such as {{NOCin2004SummerOlympics}}, {{EventsAt2004SummerOlympics}}, and {{Olympic Games Swimming}}).
I recognize that the size and shape differences of the current event boxes are due to the differences in number and type of events, but I also think it is possible to use a scheme that looks similar across a wide variety of cases. For example, instead of:
Figure skating at the
1908 Summer Olympics
Individual   men   women
Special Figures men
Mixed Pairs
we could have:
Figure skating at the 1908 Summer Olympics
Men's individual • Men's special figures • Women's individual • Pairs
I'm not necessarily advocating the use of {{NavigationBox}} for these boxes, but I just used it to make my point about consistency.
I do think that we need to decide upon a format we want to see for these boxes. I've already stated my personal opinion, about a vertical "series box" in the upper right hand corner, because I think this style "scales" easily from sports with a handful events to the current athletics and swimming programs. I also think a vertical format is easier to read with respect to lists of event names. I find horizontal formats to be difficult to read sometimes when you see a big mass of text. (I think they work great for lists of years, of course, since they are all similar list items.)
When I created all the infoboxes for the "Nation at the year Olympics" pages, I just got WP:BOLD and forged ahead. About 4000 edits later nobody complained! However, in this case, I think it might be better to get a discussion going first. ;) Andrwsc 17:52, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
With every reply you make, Andrwsc i'm even more decided to support you on your vertical event list template! Your arguments are very pertinent and i do believe it will benefit those pages both in aesthetics and acessibility. You have my support. Just one doubt: the "details" links you suggested would still apply? I wouldn't see much sense in that afterwards. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 20:28, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I think what is being proposed here is that the event template would only be used inside the events themselves, while the details links would be used on the main sport page. For example, the details links would be used in here: Athletics at the 1900 Summer Olympics. The event template would be used in here: Athletics at the 1900 Summer Olympics - Men's 400 metre hurdles. By the way Andrwsc, the current event template at the bottom of that 400 meter hurdles page would be changed so that there won't be any color and the heading The 1900 Summer Olympics in Paris Games of the II Olympiad would be removed, correct? Perakhantu 07:06, 5 December 2006 (UTC)
Oh, ok. That seems right. Thanks for clearing me on this issue. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 18:43, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm not part of the project, but I have changed many tables, including some related to the Olympics (e.g. Shooting at the 1996 Summer Olympics). I noticed the use of a template on Shooting at the 2004 Summer Olympics which led me here. Some thoughts I had (comparing the above two pages):

  1. Instead of a flag icon, country name and country code/abbreviation, you could make use of the standard Wikipedia:Country referencing templates, where {{USA}} would result in a flagicon and a wikilinked country name, e.g. Flag of the United States United States. Putting this on a new line below the athlete name (or in adjacent column) makes for a clean look as well as simpler editing.
  2. You could consider reducing the font-size ever so slightly, perhaps to 95%?

Deon Steyn 11:10, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

We are using standard templates for these tables, namely {{flagIOC}} and related templates. They have several advantages over the non-Olympic templates:
  1. the wikilink is to the appropriate "Nation at the year Olympics" article, which is significantly more useful than a link to the nation's main article
  2. the flag is automatically chosen as per the specific Games instance. This is helpful for historic flags (e.g. US 48 stars, German Empire, etc.) It is sometimes quite difficult to find the right template call for historic flags but it is handled completely transparently by the flagIOC templates (assuming that the Games paramater is correct, such as "1912 Summer" for example)
  3. the flagIOC series of templates use the IOC country code, not the ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code. This makes it significantly easier for editors writing new pages from official results (esp. since 1972), where the codes are used prominently. How would they know that Algeria is {{DZA}} instead of ALG as they see it in the results listings?
Also, how does reducing the font size help? What problem are you trying to solve? Andrwsc 18:02, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

UPDATE: Hi all! What's the situation of this proposal? I'd really like to see the vertical event box that Andrwsc suggested being applied, as I've created new event pages and a template like that would come in handy. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 20:12, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

New Olympic infobox

Hey all. This discussion has made me think about our existing template {{Olympics infobox}}. The problems I have with it are that the logos are totally ramdomly named and are in totally different formats, some have extra links in the fields, some don't, and its only use is basically on the main Olympics page. It should be able to be used across all Olympics pages right? So right now I'm pretty much doing a complete overhaul on the existing template, making it useful, convenient, and all the information would be built into the template. The only thing the user would need to know is the year of the games, the season, and possibly the sport (I haven't gotten there yet).

Anyway, regardless of whether this goes through or not, could someone with oodles of free time on their hands go to the Olympic games IOC page and upload each Olympic logo again, under a common name such as Year Summer/Winter Olympics logo.jpg (ex. 2006 Winter Olympics logo.jpg). I'm not sure whether .jpg would be the best format, but since I think all of the logos (the IOC website calls them "emblems") are in the .jpg format, that'd be easiest. (What do you think?) The Games that don't have "emblems," just use the IOC's "poster" for those games. Then just speedy all the other images already on WP.

Thanks to anyone who is up to doing this! → JARED (t)  16:49, 3 December 2006 (UTC)

What are you up to? :) I'm a bit concerned about your idea of including this infobox on ALL olympics pages - i hope it won't clutter up some already content-filled pages. But i'll wait for an example. As for the Olympic emblems, there's indeed a need to standardize the image files 'cause we have PNG, JPG, GIF and even SVG! And most of them with different filenames... I could do that task, if anyone doesn't come forward. You'd want them all in JPG format?
I'd have to upload them to en Wikipedia (not Commons), right? And the existent logos? What would be of them? Parutakupiu talk || contribs 20:21, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
I really haven't finished it yet, so I'm not even sure what'll come of it, but I'm sure it'll be better, whether it is put on "ALL" pages or not! :)
As for the images, I'd think .jpg would be fine. That's what they all are on the IOC page, I think. Regardless, they all need to be the same format for my evil plan to work! And, yeah, go ahead and upload 'em to the en wiki. I would just put {{Redundant image}} on the old image pages.
But some of the images on IOC website are not better than some emblems on Wikipedia. For example, i don't think i should replace PNG or even SVG files with those JPG ones from IOC. I could upload the IOC ones... and not tag the existent ones, for now. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 20:46, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Sure! → JARED (t)  20:50, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Ok, then ;) (you're welcome) Parutakupiu talk || contribs 22:30, 3 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, the "dirty" job is done - see here. I've regreted going for the JPG instead of PNG when i saw Tokyo and Sapporo's red sun all "wavy", but i'm not going back for that. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 00:27, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I applaud the effort to standardize the visual appearance of those boxes, but what did you have in mind when you said "It should be able to be used across all Olympics pages right?" I strongly believe that infoboxes built on {{Olympics infobox}} should only appear on the main "Year Summer/Winter Olympics" pages. I do not think they belong on any of the next level sport or nation pages, for example. The information contained in those boxes (e.g. opening/closing ceremony information, "Officially opened by", etc.) really only applies to the Games as a whole and would be inappropriate on other pages. Or am I misreading your intent? Andrwsc 08:12, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I review myself on Andrwsc's point, that's why i revealed my "concern" with that idea... but i lent Jared the benefit of doubt, even though i tend to agree that that infobox makes sense only at the main Olympic Games article. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 20:11, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, my plan pretty much fell through anyway, it didn't seem plausible. I totally agree Andrwsc, that the info on the box should only be on the main page, and I was trying to make it so that it would only appear when it was there, but that would have gone overboard. Anyway, here's what I've come up with. It's basically the same template, only all the information has been transposed onto one template (series) so that the only info needed to get the same thing as what is on each games "home page" now is the year and the season.
Now, the whole idea may seem unnecessary now, because my original intentions weren't going to work (as I initially found out) but on the plus side, I think they would still be useful because
        1. it wouldn't clutter up the top of the page
        2. the whole thing led to a common logo name
        3. and it would be easy and convenient for people to put it up on new pages (assuming, that the info is already entered on the page.
If worse comes to worst and this doesn't go over well, the plus that comes from it is that I've placed everything onto one set of pages, if anyone ever needed to quickly reference it. → JARED (t)  20:30, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
... Even if it won't be used, i'm really awed by the code you used to automatically get the Olympiad roman number out of the Olympic year ;) Parutakupiu talk || contribs 20:45, 4 December 2006 (UTC)
I liked that, too. I was surprized that it actually worked when I went to test it. It was simple in theory, but it was a nightmare putting together. lol. → JARED (t)  00:54, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

Medalists dynamic box

I've been a bit absent from here, but i've been working on a new thing which i think might interest you. I've made a two-version template (actually two very similar templates) which can display all the Olympic medalists of a certain country, per medal type. Here is where you might say "ALL?! You're crazy! Do you know how many medals the United States have?!", lol. Yes... in the case of "big" countries like the US, Soviet Union, China, etc., it might be an herculean task, but there are loads of countries who don't have such records and listing their medalists would be simple. To find out more about this take a look - HERE - and then post your comments here! Parutakupiu talk || contribs 03:09, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

It looks good; I'm just not sure of your intentions for the template(s). I think you would want to put them on Nation at the Olympics, Nation at the XXXX season Olympics,...and possibly at each medalist's page (but that may be overboard). Overall, I think I like first template better because it looks neater. The second one might be nicer, yes, for larger nations, but would each medalist be listed for as many times as they won? I'm also not sure of the ease of using the template for huge nations, like the US. Maybe an example... Good work though so far! → JARED (t)  21:21, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
I believe they could fit at the "Nation at the Season Olympics" because the template header will only show either "Summer" or "Winter". Moreover, for countries with "tons" of medals it'll be heavy to join all Olympic medalists from both seasons. I also thought putting it on the medalists' pages but i'm not so sure now because there are A LOT of medalists without personal articles, especially from weak-performing countries. I also like the first template too (tidier) and it only implies a unique entry for an athlete, even if he won more than one medal of a kind. In the second template, the inclusion of the years would oblige repeting athletes who won the same medal in different Olympics. Yet, i quite like the "year parameter" - even with these cons - but i'm ok with your preferences. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 23:40, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

{{NationsinOlympics}}

I just discovered this template, leading me to a whole slew of pages I had no idea existed. Do we want to have Nation at the Olympics pages, discounting season? I think it's interesting, but I'm not sure about it. I didn't realize they were there, and I wasn't sure if anyone else did or not, so I thought I'd bring it up. → JARED (t)  21:33, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Not only that, but notice the use of a whole new parallel infobox template ({{Infobox Country at the Olympics}})!! User:Nyttend seems to be doing this work outside of the scope of this WikiProject.
So much for my vision of a CONSISTENT visual appearance to these pages. What a waste of my time. I give up. I'm outta here. Good luck, everybody! Andrwsc 21:43, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
What that heck! Besides being totally redundant, that user can't even claim he/she didn't know, since that template's a perfect copy of Andrwsc's infobox!!! Andrwsc, please don't abandon this. Your work is too important and valuable on this project for it to be the same without you. Please, reconsider. I do admire your tremendous work :) Parutakupiu talk || contribs 22:37, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Has anyone gone to User talk:Nyttend to ask them why they're creating an alternate system? The use may be newer, but they seem to listen to reason so they may not even know about this WikiProject. Everybody remember to take a breath and assume good faith in your fellow editors, please. :) -- nae'blis 22:55, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Ok, notwithstanding my knee jerk reaction at the apparent case of "not invented here syndrome" demonstrated by these new pages and templates, I do think there is a lot of merit in having "Nation at the Olympics" as the main summary article for each nation. Of the 233 NOCs that we need pages for, only 105 have ever appeared at least once at the Winter Games. Also, the large majority of those nations could easily use a single page to describe their entire Olympic history, including both Summer and Winter. My estimate is that only about 20 nations will really need to have to use separate Summer and Winter pages. Therefore, I believe that the default structure ought to be a single page for most nations, with a split into separate Summer and Winter articles only when there is enough content to warrant it.
I would still like to see these new pages, and especially the new infobox, be reconciled into our existing structure and templates, but I'm not going to do that. It's time for a wikibreak for me, possibly for a long time. Good luck! Andrwsc 23:00, 11 December 2006 (UTC)


Mea culpa. I admit i was a bit harsh on my reaction too but i almost went desperate just by seeing Andrwsc hitting the door. For what you've done here (thousands of edits!), you - more than anyone - deserve a break from anything wiki. Just promise you come back fresh to help us ;)
I'm not angry at User:Nyttend... but it's strange that he made a perfect copy of that infobox and won't know of this project, i guess. However, after thinking a bit, i agree with Andrwsc with the validity of those pages for NOC's which don't have much of an Olympic history. But perhaps we should reach our goals on the current work before starting on that, i don't know. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 23:31, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Yeah, just assume good faith now, and then someone should try to figure out what the heck he/she is doing. Maybe I will when I find the time. But it's definitely another thing to think about! I'll have to think before I can make a call on this. → JARED (t)  01:36, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, I initiated contact, and I hope I came across as diplomatically as possible. (did I do a good job?) If any of you have anything to add to his talk page, please do. I have some serious concerns about this as well. The pages that have already been created and extensive edited by Andrwsc are very well done, and have been made such a way, that basically you just have to add the info from the offical reports. I hope we won't have an edit war on our hands. (crosses fingers) Perakhantu 07:52, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Wow, I read all this, and I'm so sorry for causing quite a mess. I had no idea that there would be a problem. I'll just give you a shortened version of what I left on Perakhantu's talk page. In short: seeing that there were already pages for Belarus and the USA at the Olympics, and that there was a long-dormant {{NationsinOlympics}}, I thought it might be useful to have more national summary pages (as Andrwsc said above), so I began putting some up. I was aware of Andrwsc's template; because I have almost no template experience, I took that template and sought to modify it to get it to show summer and winter and total medal counts, plus all the different years in which each country participated. Let me be clear: I am not seeking (nor have I ever) to compete with you or get in your way, and I am sorry for my encroachment. I created these pages as an introduction to each country's Olympic participation, using solely the various articles on the country's participation at each Olympics plus the IOC website. I am not especially interested in joining this wikiproject because I did this as a means of organising information better (like how people create "List of ___" articles), not because I'm interested in continued work on Olympic articles. If you prefer that only wikiproject members do major stuff for Olympic articles, I'm fine with getting out of the way :-) Nyttend 16:02, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

By the way, looking again at what all of you said: what I put together I drew, not from the official reports, but from pages like Cameroon at the 1972 Summer Olympics that Andrwsc created. Nyttend 16:17, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Hey Nyttend! I never intended for this to be a brawl or anything. I didn't even intend to point out an individual person for doing this. (If fact, the template, as you mentioned, has been around for some time.) I noted the "problem" here because we've always only had "Nation at the Summer Olympics" and "Nation at the Winter Olympics" pages, and it came as a surprise to me when I saw the ones I did ("Nation at the Olympics"). I appreciate your tidying skills, and definitely would encourage you to work with on Olympics articles—you need not be a member of this project! Here, though, we've found it more helpful if we discussed things here before implementing major changes, but, again, you had no idea, so it was an honest mistake.
My main concern, which has little to do with you, is whether these pages should be kept, scrapped, or what? We already have separate Summer/Winter pages for each nation, and combined pages might be nice, but I like I've said, I've never seen these before and I was confused. I think now, before other users continue editing them, we should make a decision on whether we should keep them or not. About 160 redlinks can be found for each the Summer/Winter Olympics in regards to nations, FYI. → JARED (t)  20:42, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
Well, since I began creating 20+ complete summary pages having already seen some of the summer and winter summaries you mention, you should be able to guess what I think on having complete summaries :-) Incidentally, the reason I did the ones I did was that I wanted to get lots of countries done fast, and West African countries I figured had participated the least and won the fewest medals.
Anyway, I don't think it right to have a non-wikiproject member determining wikiproject policy, so I'll not attempt to get in your discussion. Nyttend 22:59, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

Olympic Games FAR

Olympic Games has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. Sandy (Talk) 04:17, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

International Boxing Association

i used to have an impression that the International Boxing Association (IBA) is the same as Amateur International Boxing Association (AIBA). the latter's official website also calls itself International Boxing Association. the former according to the article is not amateur. i can't seem to find an article for AIBA. can anyone help me? coz i'm supposed to link AIBA to some boxing articles and i made a mistake linking to IBA. thanks. --RebSkii 19:58, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

From what I've read, here's the deal:
The International Boxing Association that you referred to in your comment (the one with the Wiki page) is a totally different association and has nothing to do with the one that governs boxing in the Olympics. The one you're referring to, the AIBA, actually once stood for Association Internationale de Boxe Amateur, but today, the word Amateur has been dropped. Hence, it is still abbreviated as AIBA, but it is called the International Boxing Association in English, and is most likely unrelated to the other one above. So if you want to link Olympics boxing pages to something, AIBA is what you want, and FYI, there's no Wiki page for it. → JARED (t)  20:17, 14 December 2006 (UTC)
i just made one, however, i titled it the wrong way Amateur International Boxing Association it should have been titled otherwise. and a disambiguation page should be made for this. i don't know how to do it, so if you or anyone here can help me, that would be very much appreciated. --RebSkii 17:41, 17 December 2006 (UTC)
the International Boxing Association (the amateur one) article has been moved as per an administrator's suggestion. thanks JP06035. --RebSkii 21:24, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Reconfigured categories and WP template

Hello, people. After creating another Olympics-related article (one redlink less!) I noticed that the project's template {{OlympicsWikiProject}} had a glitch on the category inclusion - it included the banner category on the template page only (correct) but it also "noincluded" the wikiproject category for the individual articles where it would be transcluded (wrong). I suppose it was meant to be put the <includeonly></includeonly> tags so that this latter category would appear on the articles pages themselves, as obvious. That's what I did. I also created a new subcategory - Category:WikiProject Sports Olympics articles where all the ones who have the project template would be directed. I'm still trying to devise something more out of this matter, though. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 01:18, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 19:07, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Diving events at the YYYY Summer Olympics

Hello all! How was your Christimas and New Year's celebrations? I hope they were great. And I see Andrwsc's back on the "job" so... welcome! :)

I just wanted to inform you that, in the past days, I've been creating the event-specific articles for the Olympic diving. I've started with 1912 (1904 and 1908 were already created but I want to change its structure to resemble the related pages) and have created every diving event page until 1960, so far. In parallel, the nations table at the main sport article (Diving at the Summer Olympics) is being updated with the participating nations and other figures and internal links were added in the events table, too.

If you want to have a look, go ahead and comment on my edits or make any suggestions as to improve them. On a general basis, the articles are all standardized, but some might differ on the display of certain info; I'll try to correct that towards the end. To improve guidance inside the different diving events' pages, I've created year-specific event vertical boxes, like Andrwsc suggested here but a decision wasn't made about it, so I was bold and headed on with it. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 18:37, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi Parutakupiu! And yes, I have been back at it again...  ;)
I have noticed your work on the diving pages -- this is very good work! I do like your event navigation boxes too. I have a couple of suggestions... First, I think the "Participating nations" sections on the summary "Sport at the Olympics" pages would be more informative if the actual number of athletes for each nation were listed in those tables, rather than just an "X" for participated or blank/dash for not. Second, I noticed you are using {{cite web}} for the reference to the official reports which are PDF files on the AAF web site. I think that {{cite book}} is more appropriate. That template still has the url parameter to provide the web link, but those sources really are better classified as books instead of web pages. Look at how I formatted the reference at Canoeing at the 1924 Summer Olympics for an example. Also, starting in the 80s (I think), some of the official reports also have ISBN numbers, so "cite book" is definitely more appropriate for them. Hope this helps! Andrwsc 18:56, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! Glad you liked it. As for your suggestions I agree with both and will implement tehm on the following edits I make ;) Good to have you back, again. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 19:43, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm sold on the vertical boxes. Let's see if I can get one of those to look nice for an athletics or swimming event... Good work. -- Jonel | Speak 00:44, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Well, 2 or 3 events for the Diving don't make the boxes actually that vertical :P But you'll see the nice and true appearance with the Athletics ;) Thanks! Parutakupiu talk || contribs 00:51, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Here are a couple of examples I made before the holidays to see which I liked. I used athletics because it is the largest sport by number of events, so would be close to the "worst case". See User:Andrwsc/Test2 for a very vertical format and User:Andrwsc/Test3 for one that puts men & women side by side. (I think that Parutakupiu might have noticed that one.  ;) Andrwsc 00:54, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Indeed I did. I hope you don't mind, since you didn't have the chance to "officialy debut" that template before my patience to wait for a decision ended :P
For me it was right down obvious that this version - User:Andrwsc/Test3 - was the best: the list of events isn't repeated for each gender hence we get a smaller vertical box without the risk of overlapping sections below. ~~
No, of course not! I'm still not 100% sold on that style, however. I think the "men" and "women" strings might be a bit too close to each other, for example. I was planning to experiment with a few things, but got distracted by other stuff in the past couple of weeks! I think I'll still tinker with it though. Andrwsc 01:13, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
The largest athletics one is 1912, here's what that one looks like - User:Jonel/AthleticsAt1912SummerOlympics Test1. Used the same format as diving and Andrwsc's Test3 (women would just mean adding a column). That's 30 distinct events, which is the worst of any sport at any year, as far as I can tell. I played around with a couple more (#2 uses the format I've been using for recent templates; #3 is an ugly thing attempting to limit verbiage due to only men competing; #4 is trying to get the thing onto one screen by using types of events, but is both a) ugly as hell and b) not easy to scale to men/women), but I think this format's the best I've got. -- Jonel | Speak 01:18, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
@Andrwsc: I quite like, if not (a lot!) but that proximity detail also came across my mind and I even thought of how to solve that, but never got my hands on it. You work on that, and any changes you might do, please warn me so the diving templates I used are updated accordingly.
@Jonel: Now imagine that Test1 box double-sized because of another list just for women's events. I'm 100% supportive of User:Andrwsc/Test3. #4, though noteworthy, seems to clutter up the box when it's purpose is to help people navigating easily through a sport's events ;) Parutakupiu talk || contribs 01:27, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Like I said, #4 is ugly as hell! ;) -- Jonel | Speak 01:33, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I agree that looks the best. I am convinced that these navigation boxes must be located at the top of event pages, because that way you can quickly jump from event to event without having to scroll to the bottom. (Similarly, that's one reason why I put the "Appearances" section in the nation infoboxes, so you could jump from year to year and get the quick details at the top of the page.) One consequence of being at the top means that it needs to co-exist with the intro paragraph, list of medalists, etc. and that means that it needs to have a fairly vertical format.
I made one quick edit to User:Andrwsc/Test3 to add spacing between the three columns of text and I think this might be good enough to make "standard". Andrwsc 01:35, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
(pull left) Since I haven't been here for a little bit, here's what I have to say: I like the diving templates, but I also like Andrwsc's #2, the entirely vertical one. Somnething is more appealing about that one, rather than having men and women right next to each other. I don't know, maybe it's just me. It just seems more neat, but the other is shorter. Also take into consideration that there really aren't that many events--even in recent times--for sports. Swimming and athletics are the biggies for summer, and even then they aren't that big. I advocate a straight column, but don't care either way. → JARED (t)  02:01, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
The main pro is not even the fact it becomes shorter this way, it's the guidance improvement in the box itself, where you don't have to scroll up-and-down to get to the event pages for men and women. I think this is what pushes me more into the "parallel gender" box type. I also like the other option but it's mostly on a aesthetic basisParutakupiu talk || contribs 02:16, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Another note - I updated User:Andrwsc/Test3 again to reflect what the event article names should be. Many existing pages need to be renamed for consistent use of case, etc. I thought I should do this in case anybody pulled this page as is to replace {{AthleticsAt2004SummerOlympics}}. Andrwsc 18:17, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Gosh, so many redlinks on that template... Now I know what you mean when you talked about closing the 2004 Games events' articles before the 2008 rush comes in. 18:24, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Just moved 'em all. Pain in the arse. -- Jonel | Speak 21:12, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for that! Andrwsc 21:46, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

UPDATE — I'll probably finish with creating the missing diving events pages in two or three days (avergage of one Games per day). After that, I'll retouch with extra info and assure consistency. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 22:09, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Olympic Games

Not to bring another issue into the mix, but that's exactly what I'm going to do (☺)! I have been handling the FARC of Olympic Games for a few weeks now, but it seems that the page hasn't gotten far. I've edited some sections and added a lot of sources, but many sections need re-writes. I began to outline some stuff that needs fixing on the talk page. Anyway, if anyone has any spare time, could you look at that article and maybe choose a section to fix up. I'd hate to lose it, but I have other responsibilities that hinder me from doing it by myself. → JARED (t)  20:23, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

As you know I'm currently working on the Diving at the Summer Olympics per-year events, but free time is what I have most now, and if it's a subject of the utmost importance I'll be glad to help, in any way possible. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 21:06, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
It's not the utmost importance, but I think it is a notable article-- one that the whole framework of this Wikiproject is built upon. But that should put no pressure on you; do as you wish. → JARED (t)  21:24, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

WR+OR tables

This new topic is about an idea I had when reading this:

One other comment, and this is for anybody, is what should we do with the "Records" section at the top of the page. I can see how it was useful for Wikipedia to show for the 2004 pages, but I'm not sure what we should do for all of the past "Swimming at the yyyy Summer Olympics" pages. Do we want to include the records in effect at that time, or should we just delete this small section altogether?
Andrwsc 22:17, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

I think we should leave that data, as I believe it's a good reference for the progression of both Olympic (OR) and World (WR) records (the latter at the time of the Olympics). What I figured was, basically, creating a template (User:Parutakupiu/Tests6) that holds simultaneously the WR and OR throughout the entire existence of an Olympic event. But, thanks to conditional statements, it will only show the current records at the time of a certain Olympiad, depending on a single parameter.

EXAMPLES:

Using the example of Swimming at the 2000 Summer Olympics - Men's 50 metre freestyle (the one tested on the template): it was first competed at the 1988 Summer Olympics but sooner than that, worldwide. Therefore, if we assign the value 1988 to the parameter gamesyear, the table will show the WR before those Games but nothing as the OR, since it's its Olympic debut:

  • {{User:Parutakupiu/Tests6|gamesyear=1988}}

User:Parutakupiu/Tests6

In the 1992 Summer Olympics, a OR already existed (from 1988) and the WR had changed since. So, if we assign the year 1992, we'll have:

  • {{User:Parutakupiu/Tests6|gamesyear=1992}}

User:Parutakupiu/Tests6

And for the following Summer Olympiads:

  • {{User:Parutakupiu/Tests6|gamesyear=1996}}

User:Parutakupiu/Tests6

  • {{User:Parutakupiu/Tests6|gamesyear=2000}}

User:Parutakupiu/Tests6

  • {{User:Parutakupiu/Tests6|gamesyear=2004}}

User:Parutakupiu/Tests6

Notice that I use the {{FlagIOCathlete}} template for the OR holders, and a similar non-template structure for the WR holders.

So this is what I thought up in order to preserve this data. I haven't foreseen if this can be easily adapted for other Olympic events, but I believe it can - with or without much more work. The thing is there would have to be one template per event.

What do you think? Parutakupiu talk || contribs 02:44, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I definitely like having the records as they stood just prior to the event at the event article. I've been doing the Olympic record in prose for the 1912 athletics articles I've been doing recently, especially since so many of them were broken, usually more than once during an event. The format you've got there looks good to me. As for the number of events, many Olympic sports have no Olympic records -- swimming and athletics do, of course, and they're the ones with the most events, but really it's only those two, archery, cycling, shooting, weightlifting and speed skating that have official records ([3]). I think archery is the only one that has weird things happen with the records, so given enough legwork, that should work for most everything. -- Jonel | Speak 03:19, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes, considering amount of sports with official records (even though athletics and swimming are the "heavyweights") it seems a reasonable job. I'll take care of that, if you people want it to go ahead. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 04:22, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Gee, I seem to have a knack of starting whole new discussion threads from extra comments I throw into previous threads! Anyway, after reading your comments and thinking about it for a bit, here is what I think.
  1. The original list of records was on the 2004 pages when it was a current event, but now those pages have evolved into after-the-fact results lists. Therefore, we need to come up with a solution that works for all past Games articles too. I think what I found potentially confusing by just having the small table of records was that no context was given. I think perhaps all it needs is a sentence or two of prose text around the table — maybe something like: Prior to this competition, the existing world and Olympic records were: <then show the table, then another sentence like:> United States Mark Spitz (USA) broke both records in the heats and again in the final. (or whatever)
  2. One thing we really need is a complete list of Olympic records for those half-dozen or so sports that maintain them. There are a handful of records pages elsewhere on Wikipedia — see Category:Athletics records and Category:Swimming records. (There is also an expected List of Olympic records that is redlinked from {{Records}}.) These sets of pages are incomplete and desperately need better article names!! Anyway, whether it is a section in Swimming at the Summer Olympics or a separate List of Olympic records in swimming, I think we ought to get these tabulated soon.
  3. Parutakupiu, I think your meta-table is quite clever, but I think it might be overkill for this task. These tables ought to be "write once" Wiki markup that won't need future updating after each event article is written so I don't see why you need to use conditionals and other parser functions. Just a suggestion!
  4. I would make a change to the formatting. I think we should be consistent with our usage of the three letter IOC country codes for wikilinks to the "Nation at the year Olympics" articles. Therefore, I would spell out the nation in full for the location part of your tables (i.e. Moscow, Russia and Barcelona, Spain. I think I'd also drop the flag from that section too. There is a movement afoot in Wikipedia to eliminate flag icons (see WP:FLAGCRUFT). One administrator actually completely disabled the {{flagicon}} template for a short time before it was reversed. I do agree with some of the sentiment expressed there, but I also firmly believe that flag icons in the Olympic context are a well-known and firmly established presentation style even outside of Wikipedia. Therefore, I think we should stick to using the flagIOC templates for Olympic-specific instances but not introduce superfluous flag icons where they are redundant.
Andrwsc 17:07, 6 January 2007 (UTC)


Lol, you really dissect everything :P Perhaps you're right on the record-updating issue: it would be far easier to just write a non-templated record table on the event article itself. My idea was to simplify the display of this data by means of a template and a single parameter, as you can understand. Anyway, it was a "test" and I wanted to read comments about its validity to proceed, and then formatting suggestions, or be replaced by a better alternative.
For the record, in case anyone ever looks back at this section, here is a page on the beijing2008.cn website that has all the records: this page. └Jared┘┌talk┐  20:40, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Number of participants

I see that Jared has added a parameter to {{FlagIOC}} to render the number of competitors for each nation in parenthesis after the name, as seen on 2006 Winter Olympics. This is really useful, and I encourage anybody who wants to take up the challenge to help complete these numbers for all past Games, and to also add the numbers to the appropriate "Nation at the year Olympics" page (by using the "competitors=" parameter to the infobox, and "sports=" if possible). I realize this is about 3000 edits, but it is very useful information and would greatly help for the summary "Nation at the Olympics" articles to have this data too. Andrwsc 21:57, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

"X" or "•"?

One thing I noticed - and I believe should be standardized soon - is the way a sport or event was present or absent at a Season Olympics. In the Olympic sports tables, the sports included in the Olympic programme of the different Games are indicated with a bolded X (e.g. X); if it's absent, nothing is written on the cell. However, on some "Sport at the Season Olympics" articles, the event tables display either bolded enlarged dots (e.g. •) or simple X's, even on disciplines of the same sport (Swimming at the Summer Olympics and Synchronized swimming at the Summer Olympics), while others don't even have one event table yet (Water polo at the Summer Olympics). What type of mark should we use? X or •?

Deriving from this, I've turned the dots on the Diving at the Summer Olympics event table as links to the various diving events along Olympic history. Do you think I did well? If yes, could it be expanded to all other tables?

To finalize, as per Andrwsc suggestion:

«(...) I think the "Participating nations" sections on the summary "Sport at the Olympics" pages would be more informative if the actual number of athletes for each nation were listed in those tables, rather than just an "X" for participated or blank/dash for not (...)»

I've done that with the diving nations table (at least, since Andrwsc warned me). Then, I conclude we should do the same with the rest, even though some editors are still putting X's or dots.

Comments are appreciated. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 18:50, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I prefer the bullet. The upper case X is not as aesthetically pleasing, in my opinion. The one thing I'm not completely sold on is the need to use it as a direct wikilink to the specific event page. Whatever character is used there, it's a somewhat hidden navigation method that may be useful for us keen WikiProject editors, but not natural or obvious to our audience of casual readers. If you really want to keep it, I won't delete it! But it certainly adds to the page size, and adds to the difficulty of maintaining the page, especially if you can imagine what the completed table at Athletics at the Summer Olympics will end up as. I think the cost outweighs the benefit. Andrwsc 19:50, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Even I wasn't really appealed by it, in aesthetical terms, but I didn't want to undo it before taking your opinions. But your arguments - which I incredibly didn't consider before now (!) - seem completely justified and I won't lose anymore time and work with it on future edits. Thanks, Andrwsc! You're a true help ;) Parutakupiu talk || contribs 19:58, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Bullets, certainly. As for the event links, they are useful in editing (such as when I want to open all instances of men's shot put events, for instance) but not so helpful for casual readers. As for nations, number of competitors is nice, so if you have it handy use it; if not, put a bullet and someone can come along later with numbers. -- Jonel | Speak 20:55, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
An idea I had that might help in your example would be to put all the event pages for the same event across multiple Games into a new category. For example, Athletics at the 2004 Summer Olympics - Men's shot put would be in both Category:Athletics events at the 2004 Summer Olympics and Category:Shot put at the Olympics (or whatever). That would help both in editing (e.g. use AWB on that category) and for reader browsing ("hey, I'm interested to see how the shot put changed over the years"). Andrwsc 21:38, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
FYI, the existing Diving pages already had such a Category:Diving at the Olympics; while I created the inexistant event pages of a Year Summer Olympics, I included them on this category. It's a matter of creating equal categories for those sports/disciplines which don't have it yet. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 22:15, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
No, what I was suggesting was in addition to that. Right now, we have (or should have), a category for "Sport at the Olympics", which contains the top-level summary page plus all the top-level per-Games pages. It also has subcategories of "Sport events at the year Olympics", each of which is populated by the per-event pages for those Games. Therefore, we have a tree-like hierarchy. What I'm proposing is to add a "perpendicular slice" across all Games for the same event. In your case, you would have all the men's springboard event pages from all Games in another category (say, Category:Diving at the Olympics - men's springboard). In other words, each per-event results page would be in two categories - one with all the other events in the same sport in the same Games, and the other with all the same event in other Games. I hope this is clearer! I don't know if it's actually useful or not, but it seemed like something potentially helpful, once we have a lot of the per-event pages complete. Andrwsc 22:26, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Oh, I'm sorry, I misunderstood you. Yes, I think that's a valuable addition to the Olympics category network. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 22:49, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Jeese, you guys are moving fast-paced! I have to catch up. OK, so yes, bullets. Now, to tackle some of the other stuff above.... → JARED (t)  21:27, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree that it should be the bullet and not the big x. --Sue Anne 07:21, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

New template, take 1

I've created a new template at {{SummerOlympicSports}}. It's designed for use at the bottom of [[Sport at the Summer Olympics]] pages, and navigates between them similar to the {{EventsAtXXXXSummerOlympics}} series. There are a couple of issues I've thought of while creating it. First, ought we differentiate current vs. historical sports in the template? If so, how? Second, would separate templates for winter and summer be appropriate or should they be combined in one template? Thoughts on these questions, and any others you might come up with, would be nice. -- Jonel | Speak 01:27, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I hadn't realized we didn't have a template like this... very useful. We should differentiate, maybe perhaps by fading the text color of those not current. But that may instead offer the opposite effect: highlighting those that are faded, which wouldn't be desirable. Maybe just don't include those that are not current, writing at the top "Current sports of the Summer Olympics" or similar. In regards to the separate templates, I'll have to think about that. → JARED (t)  02:14, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
How about this hypothesis - User:Parutakupiu/Sandbox? Parutakupiu talk || contribs 02:35, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Jonel, this is a great idea, and long overdue. I don't know why we haven't thought of it before! However, the first thing that struck me was that it really ought to include the winter sports too, and the past sports really need to be grouped into a different list. We have a great page at Olympic sports that could serve as the "parent" of this navigation box.
I put together {{OlympicSports}} to try to address both these issues. I wanted to use the standard {{Navbox generic}} template to handle the groups, as this appears to be a standard Wikipedia way of doing this, but the color of the group headings cannot be changed from that purple and I like our use of blue, so I simply used the underlying CSS classes to accomplish pretty much the same visual appearance.
Anyway, how does this look? Andrwsc 17:49, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Looks fine to me. All issues Jonel pointed out are solved on that template. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 18:59, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Yup. I like it. -- Jonel | Speak 19:42, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
How about making just two sections "SO" and "WO", with "past sports" highlighted; or saying in which of the two past sports were present in some other way? Cmapm 19:51, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

AFD notification

I have nominated the article 2004 Summer Olympics medals count by International Organization for deletion. You are invited to comment, at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2004 Summer Olympics medals count by International Organization. AecisBravado 00:14, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Participating nations

About a week ago, Jared added a third parameter to {{FlagIOC}} to show a number in parenthesis after the nation name. I had an idea to use that to add a "Participating nations" section to Weightlifting at the 2004 Summer Olympics, which I have just finished splitting into per-event articles. I rather like the result! It is informative, with numbers of athletes provided for 79 nations, without being an excessively large table or list. Perhaps we can adopt that as a standard section on the per-sport per-Games pages when this data is available. I will be adding it to some of the other 2004 pages in the next few days too. Andrwsc 20:52, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Indeed, it looks nice and especially informative. That data can be used also to replace the numerous X's at the main "Sport at the Season Olympics" pages' nations table (and vice-versa). Parutakupiu talk || contribs 00:21, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
I like it. I just switched it over to four columns so it filled up space better. → JARED (t)  01:43, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

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 06:22, 16 January 2007 (UTC))

Another AFD

As per a request by Parutakupiu, I am trying to delete Bobsleigh at the 1960 Winter Olympics. An admin disagreed with my prod request, so now it's up for AFD. Please see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bobsleigh at the 1960 Winter Olympics if you want to comment. Andrwsc 17:39, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

Possible AFD?

As it is stated on the lead of Rowing at the Summer Olympics, despite scheduled for competition, no rowing events were actually contested at the 1896 Summer Olympics, because of bad weather. The {{Olympic Games Rowing}} navbox also clears this by signaling 1896 as a noncompeting year for rowing. Still, there is an article for it - [[Rowing at the 1896 Summer Olympics]]. It think we should propose it for deletion like we did with Bobsleigh at the 1960 Winter Olympics. The article is very short (won't expand anymore) only stating the reason for the absence of competition and also which events were scheduled. Since the main sport page already does both things in the lead section and on the event table (if deleted, this year would become a linkless "gray" number but the events could stay), I think we should go for deletion. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 20:58, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

I say go for it. -- Jonel | Speak 21:16, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Consider it deleted :) Parutakupiu talk || contribs 01:57, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Peer review/Olympic Committee of Portugal/archive1

Hello all. I requested a peer review for the article Olympic Committee of Portugal created entirely by me and I would be glad if anyone here could contribute. Thanks! Parutakupiu talk || contribs 05:02, 23 January 2007 (UTC)

I went a bit further and nominated it for GA, while the peer review is still on, but since the GAC list is huge (though reaching GA is simpler) I'd like people who have interest on the subject and wouldn't mind to evaluate the article to post more comments. I've been expanding the content and copyediting so there's some new little things. Thanks! Parutakupiu talk || contribs 19:50, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

Fanny Blankers-Koen FAR

Fanny Blankers-Koen has been nominated for a featured article review. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. Please leave your comments and help us to return the article to featured quality. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, articles are moved onto the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Remove" the article from featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Reviewers' concerns are here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:15, 24 January 2007 (UTC)

Re-open discussion

I'd like to re-open this discussion. First, let me apologize for my slightly over-the-top reaction before my short (as it turned out) wikibreak. It was a bit unprofessional of me. I didn't mean to sound like I was attacking Nyttend. I was just a bit frustrated at having a "parallel" set of pages and infoboxes.

Having said that, I think the issue raised ought to be dealt with. Basically, the question is how we want to organize the "top-level" articles in the "Nation at the Olympics" series. I had created a few Winter Games summary articles (e.g. Norway at the Winter Olympics and Germany at the Winter Olympics) before the holidays, but before I continue, I'd like to get consensus on the structure and content.

Here are my suggestions:

  1. As per comments above, I don't think that the Summer/Winter pair of articles should be the main method of navigation. Really, only about 20 nations (~10% of total) require this split. 54% of nations have never attended the Winter Games at least once. Therefore, Cuba at the Olympics (for example) strikes me as a better top-level page than Cuba at the Summer Olympics. Of those who have, quite a few are warm-weather nations who sent 1 or 2 athletes each time. Do we really need Mexico at the Winter Olympics as a separate article? Therefore, I think those nations could and should have their entire Olympic history in a single article. "Big" nations like USA, URS, GER, FRA, etc. can and should have multiple summary articles.
  2. I'm concerned about the currently poor quality of the existing summary articles. There were good intentions to have tables showing the number of participants and medals for the nation, by sport and by games, but these were not completed past 1908 or so in most cases. See United States at the Summer Olympics for an example. I think it will be very difficult (or at least, time consuming!) to complete these, so I would suggest we start with something more modest. The "Medals by Games" and "Medals by sport" tables I put on those Winter pages are actually fairly easy to generate. I have an Excel spreadsheet with all the winter medal tables broken by sport, so I can crank out those pages very quickly. I intend to do the same for the summer medal tables. Would anybody object if I re-wrote many of those articles so that they were more like Soviet Union at the Summer Olympics (for example)?
  3. Looking at Total Olympics medal count, we see that only 40 nations have won 60 or more medals all-time, which means that 92 nations have won between 1 and 53 medals. That's a somewhat arbitrary cut-off point, but I think it is manageable to include a full list of all medal winners for those nations on their Olympic summary pages. Some examples of where this is already done are Trinidad and Tobago at the Summer Olympics, Ireland at the Summer Olympics, and List of Olympic medalists for the Philippines (which I'd like to merge with Philippines at the Summer Olympics). As you can see, there is a wide variety of formats of those pages, and I'd like to see that standardized somehow. For nations like the USA, it would obviously be prohibitive to list all the medal winners in an article, but we can certainly link to Category:Olympic medalists for the United States (whose subcategories ought to be populated over time).
  4. There are about 100 nations who have never won a medal at any Games, and for those pages, I don't think it makes sense to include those aforementioned tables, with a lot of zeroes.
  5. The summary sport pages (such as Diving at the Summer Olympics) all have all-time medal tables, which currently link from each nation to their summary Summer or summary Winter pages as appropriate for the sport. This can continue, or be replaced by a link to a single "...at the Olympics" summary page if desired. I can easily modify the {{flagIOC}} template so that the following behaviour takes place:
  6. I really don't like the idea of putting the total medal counts in the infoboxes, which was Nyttend's main addition to the original template. I just think that makes that section very uncluttered. Does anyone agree? I had contemplated something like this when I developed the infobox template, but decided that the middle section should be used for per-Games pages only and the only parts of the infobox that ought to be on the summary pages were the top and bottom (appearances) sections. We need to find some sort of consensus on what looks best, so that we can merge to a single infobox template again. It will be awkward to maintain a parallel set of templates.

Comments? Andrwsc 20:07, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, so here's what I think:
    1. I like the idea of just a single page, and double where applicable. I haven't thought this through, though, so don't take this as a finalized "vote."
    2. No objection.
    3. I don't think we should have a cut-off point per se, but I think editors will realize when there are too many names on a page! Your cut-off point, though, seems reasonable.
    4. No tables for non-winning nations. Although they definitely deserve pages. Even nations that have never competed could get pages. It's a possibility, but I don't know if there's info out there about non-competing nations. Maybe Non-competing nations at the Olympics or something of the like.
    5. The change of Sport at the season Olympics to ...at the Olympics may be controversial. I think if the move is made, it should be along with "Nation at the Olympics" changes too. The problem I have is that some sports have been contested in each of the two seasons. Plus, it seems right to specify which Olympic games they are a part of. Like I said, I'll sit on it. I misunderstood. I think a link to Nation at the Olympics would be in order, given that pages are switched to those locations.
    6. Somehow, I do like the idea of total medal counts. It seems reasonable, and gives some sort of overall number on which to base the nation's participation. I say keep them.
→ JARED (t)  23:09, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
  1. Totally agree. We just have to eventually reach a decision on which nations deserve a single "...at the Olympics" or double "...at the Season Olympics" articles.
  2. Hmmm... Yes, those two medal tables are far easier to insert than the per-year tables with competitors and events entered and medals. But, in my case, I've recently created (and completed almost immediately) Portugal at the Summer Olympics, and seeing all that being reverted, it's kind of frustrating. Still, I recognize my nation was easier to deal with in this issue, since I've completed all "Portugal at the YYYY Summer Olympics" and the data was far smaller than if it was the USA or Soviet Union (that leads me to think I should move Portugal at the Summer Olympics to Portugal at the Olympics and add the Winter data...).
  3. There's a topic here about a template I made which could include a list of all medalist by a country – here – but it wasn't commented by many. It's a matter of discussing it...
  4. With the above mentioned template, that could also be dealt with, by simply not putting it.
  5. Don't have an opinion.Now that you've explained in a more analytical way, I see no obstale on doing that. The template brilliantly already comes with that possibility ;)
  6. Ditto.Yes, yes... Once again, I didn't understand it at first but I agree with keeping only a "total medal count" on the main "Country at the Olympics" infobox.
    Parutakupiu talk || contribs 23:45, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi Jared. For #5, I think you misunderstood my point. I'm not suggesting that we change the name for any of the sport articles. I'm suggesting that we have options of what the links should point to on those summary pages. For example, on Diving at the Summer Olympics, the all-time medal table shows the United States with 48 gold, China with 20, etc. My point is that those wikilinks could be set to either "Nation at the Summer Olympics" or "Nation at the Olympics". We have the technology to do either. All the editor has to do is choose to add "Summer" in the call to the {{FlagIOC}} template or not.
For #6, I offer a compromise. Take a look at Belarus at the Olympics (for example), which uses Nyttend's modified infobox. In my opinion, the large section with total/summer/winter medal counts is overkill and not terribly attractive because of the three sets of boxes. If we want to maintain medal counts on these "summary" pages, then I suggest we only have a single set of counts. If the infobox is on a "... at the Olympics" page, then the total count would be used. If the infobox is on a "... at the season Olympics" page, the the appropriate subtotal would be used. In all cases, the first column would have a link to the appropriate count page. I think I can do this as an extension to the existing infobox template without having to create a new one. But I still don't like the three sets of counts, especially where unnecessary (e.g. look at Chad at the Olympics) Andrwsc 00:13, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Sorry about the misunderstanding! Haha. I get it now. I just read too fast. As far as #6, I like the compromise too! The three lines are quite ugly, so one will be sufficient, with the total counts. → JARED (t)  00:33, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
  1. One page or two ought to depend on size of pages; if one, both Summer and Winter should redirect to it; if two, the basic should be a disambig to the two. Where to draw the line, of course, is the tough question.
  2. I'd say add the tables you want right to begin with (the "medals by sport" overall table is definitely a plus) and let the more extensive tables grow. They only go through 1908 at this point because that's as far as I've gotten adding detailed results (I'm working on 1912 at the moment). Portugal is a beautiful example of what I'd like all of them to look like eventually. The number of competitors the country sent to each Games is, in my opinion, a very important piece of information. I could do without the number of events entered and especially the number of entries, but I like being able to look at the Portugal at the Summer Olympics page and being able to tell when Portugal won its first medal in judo.
  3. I think a list of all medal winners for each nation would make sense. If the list is small enough, it could be on the main page. If the list is medium-sized, it could be a separate article, linked from the main page. If the list is huge (really, probably only the US and USSR), it could be broken into a few lists by sport. The Philippines one, for example, could definitely be merged.
  4. If the tables are of all zeroes, text would be a better way of saying it. But if the number of participants is included, the table is nice. Also, the table gives an easy visual way of telling when the nation competed and when it didn't.
  5. Wouldn't this just be a consequence of #1?
  6. Going with "undecided" on this one. -- Jonel | Speak 00:21, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Jonel, I fully agree with your per-sport tables as the goal for all pages, and I certainly don't want to undo the excellent work that Parutakupiu put into completing the Portugal page! However, the "work in progress" countries don't make good stubs. I'd prefer to see that data added all at once rather than have incomplete tables for extended periods of time.
I think that number of participating athletes and number of medals is wholly sufficient. I find number of events and entries to be a bit too much detail, and will certainly be a bear to complete! Andrwsc 01:10, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Future editors: please, drop out at least the "entries" column! What a dull it was to complete that. The "events" column was also a bore, but I recognize some importance about it. But the most important are really the "competitors" and the medals. I would've ended so much faster "my" page if those columns were dropped out. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 01:16, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
I've already been deleting "entries" in places, when I've edited pages that have had it. There is some usefulness in it, but it's far too much work for what it's worth. "Events" I'm ambivalent about, so whatever you guys decide is fine with me. As for the works in progress, I guess you could just comment out the incomplete ones and they could be uncommented when finished. Doesn't undo any work, I can keep adding as I go, and the display isn't full of half-finished tables. -- Jonel | Speak 01:25, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Sources?

Hello all. As I mentioned to Andrwsc, there is a sequence of articles missing that I was meaning to help with: the event-specific articles for the Swimming events at Sydney 2000. Surprisingly enough, though, I have encountered great difficulty finding an online source for the results. The medalists are very easy to find out, but the complete results, which would serve for us to create entries similar to those made for the events in the 2004 Games, those seem to be very difficult to come by. Arguably, I might be somewhat inexperienced in retrieving this particular kind of information, so perhaps I could get a little help in finding those sources? Incidentally, I was able to find the results for other swimming events as far back as 2003, but going back all the way to 2000 seems to be too much for the more "mainstream" websites out there. Redux 21:02, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi, Redux. I - and plenty of others - use the official Olympic reports as main source of data. They are stored under PDF format here. Sidney 2000's swimming results can be seen at this link. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 21:21, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
For later Games, the official report is really all you need for results. They can be found at the Amateur Athletic Foundation of Los Angeles website (linked by Parutakupiu above), at least up through the 2002 Olympics. Bill Mallon has an excellent series of books with complete (or at least, as complete at possible) results from the earliest Games, though those books can be hard to find sometimes. There are a couple websites with fairly complete results listings (the best of which I've found as yet is, unfortunately, in Polish), but for Sydney 2000 the official report is easily available and useful. -- Jonel | Speak 00:29, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Excellent. Thank you both. I have already retrieved the pdf file for the Swimming results, and will begin creating the event-specific articles for the Sydney 2000 Swimming competition. I'll probably be following the order on Swimming at the 2000 Summer Olympics. Again, many thanks for the references. :-) Redux 11:57, 4 January 2007 (UTC)
Hi Redux, before you continue much further, I urge for you to look at how we're trying to format results pages now, specifically to use the {{flagIOCathlete}} and related templates for rendering of the flags and country codes. I see that you've started work on Swimming at the 2000 Summer Olympics - Men's 50 metre freestyle using the 2004 page as a prototype for visual appearance. Might I suggest you look at how a page like Canoeing at the 2004 Summer Olympics - Men's C-1 500 metres is formatted. The advantages of using that template are significant -- you automatically get the correct flag image and size without having to hard-code the image file, and you also get an automatic link to the appropriate "Nation at the 2000 Summer Olympics" article, which is one thing we want to do. Links to United States after a swimmer's name are far less useful than links to United States at the 2004 Summer Olympics, for example.
If it would help, I could spend some time on your work in progress to show you what I mean, or I could stay out of the way, if you prefer. Please let me know how you'd like some help, if any, but I still strongly request that you try to use these templates for any new pages you create. You can also look at the recent work of Parutakupiu for diving events in past Games, where he has also been using the flagIOC templates effectively.
As far as the 2004 pages are concerned, one of my goals is to bring them all up to the current style in time for the 2008 Games, when we anticipate a boatload of new editors to tackle the Olympic results pages for a few months before they move on to other parts of Wikipedia, leaving a few of us hard-core Olympic nuts left to clean up. I really want the 2004 pages to be rock-solid so that they can serve as effective prototypes. I have already updated a few of the 2004 sports (sailing, canoeing, triathlon, diving) but obviously there is still a lot to do.
Thanks! Andrwsc 18:06, 4 January 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Since I was almost done with that article, I concluded adding the results. I'll see the code you indicated and hopefully, upgrade the page. Redux 12:56, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Would you object if I edited the page? I have some tools that assist with this kind of re-formatting quickly. I'd like to get one swimming event done so that it serves as a prototype for others. Andrwsc 19:20, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Please, do! Any help is greatly appreciated! We should all pull in to make this and all articles the best that they can be. :) Redux 21:56, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Have done! I've taken a first pass at it and updated all the swimmers to use the flagIOCathlete template. This actually corrected three flags which were different in 2000, plus also created the links to the Nation at the 2000 Summer Olympics pages. I also changed the nav box format as per discussion elsewhere on this talk page.
I'd still like to make another pass at this page to fix a couple of things. First, I find it difficult to see the times since they are not all lined up. I used tables on the canoeing pages to solve this problem, so I will try to do the same thing here. Second, I find it verbose and unnecessary that the heat rankings effectively duplicate the same list of 80 swimmers, just organized by time instead of heat. I think this can be fixed by adding a "heat rank" column with the "QS" indicators for the top 16 to the heat listings.
Please don't take these comments as a criticism of your work, because that's not intended! I realize you used the 2004 page as a prototype and that's exactly how it was done. My goal is to go back and fix up the 2004 pages the same way.
One other comment, and this is for anybody, is what should we do with the "Records" section at the top of the page. I can see how it was useful for Wikipedia to show for the 2004 pages, but I'm not sure what we should do for all of the past "Swimming at the yyyy Summer Olympics" pages. Do we want to include the records in effect at that time, or should we just delete this small section altogether?
Andrwsc 22:17, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Like I said, we should make the articles as good as they can be. I'm not starting any of the remaining articles for the Sydney 2000 swimming events until we've come to a definitive version for the 50m freestyle article, which I will then use as a model after which the rest of the articles will be created.
As for the records table, I do find it useful to show what were the OR and WR standing at the time of the competition, which is, after all, what the athletes were looking to overcome at the time. Many sports almanacs feature this kind of information when giving results for specific events. Perhaps it's just a question of making it clearer that we are conveying the records in existence at the time — and which, especially for the earlier games, might have been surpassed a long time ago.
Other than that, I believe the Heats' general ranking does serve a purpose. True, it repeats the results given in each Heat's listing, but it provides an easier-to-read larger picture of the first stage of competition. When we have +10 Heats listed, it is somewhat difficult to visualize how the athletes did when compared with those who participated in other Heats (which is actually what the competition is about: each athlete is competing with all the other 79 for a berth in the next stage, and not just with the other 7 in his or her heat). Example: it may be difficult to read from the separate listings how an athlete who placed last in his or her Heat was actually in the top 20 of the general rankings (only those who qualified are distinguished easily, because we "mark" them with the big "Q"). An eventual "heat rank" would help, but it wouldn't be as easy for the reader to visualize, since s/he'd have to go back and forth through the separate heats' listings — so by the time you find out who was 20th overall, you don't even remember if you saw who was the 19th place. :-) Redux 02:37, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, on the other hand, the current layout makes it more difficult to find how a particular swimmer fared overall. You have to remember the name & time from the heats, then scan down a different list to find the same person again. It just seems quite redundant to me. Let's see what it looks like without the second list and decide from there. Andrwsc 18:06, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Why not simply do both? Put an overall rank in the the heat results to make it easy to find out how the fourth-place finisher in heat 1 did overall, and have the overall list to see who was .01 seconds better than your favorite Laotian swimmer. It's not like we're running out of paper here. -- Jonel | Speak
My concern was not with the amount of space, but with the readability of the resultant page. I prefer to see as much of each event as possible together in one table, instead of multiple presentations of the same data. For example, look at Canoeing at the 2004 Summer Olympics - Men's slalom C-1, where I show the whole event in a single table instead of different tables for the preliminary round, semifinal and final. A similar approach has been taken with Diving at the 1984 Summer Olympics - Men's 10 metre platform etc. On the other hand, Athletics at the 1912 Summer Olympics - Men's decathlon repeats the points data after each of the 10 events. That seems like overkill to me - I wonder if there is a better way to present that? Nonetheless, I have reformatted Swimming at the 2000 Summer Olympics - Men's 50 metre freestyle to include the heat rankings after the heat results, so I encourage comments on that. Andrwsc 22:28, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm having a little bit of a problem with the formatting (whichever version) of the Sydney 2000 Men's 50m freestyle event because of the gold medal tie, which meant no silver medal and sikipping "straight" to bronze. For instance, when I implemented the new medal board, the word "none", which I wrote in the silver medal slot, is showing followed by two brackets, which is likely a side effect of the fact that the template wasn't created to accomodate this kind of input. I'm probably missing something silly, so it should take a fresh perspective to fix that. Redux 13:58, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Think I've fixed it - the brackets were actually in the wikicode. -- Jonel | Speak 18:00, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks, Jonel. :-) Redux 21:55, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Greenlight

The 50m freestyle article looks good. Is this the final version, or are we considering further adaptations? If we have arrived at a final version, I will start using it to create similar articles for the other (many) events. Only one thingy: this particular event (men's 50m freestyle at Sydney) had a gold medal tie, which resulted in there not being a silver medal; originally, I had written a "none" line on the medal board for the silver medal (whose code Jonel fixed, etc), but this seems to have been eliminated when the board format was reviewed. Was this done on purpose or was it accidental and that line should be restored? Redux 14:09, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I've made a couple more changes to the page. First, I added the references (essential!). You should be able to re-use these with only minor modification for the other events, namely use the corrent link for the swimrankings.net page for the specific event. The book reference can be used unchanged for all swimming results pages; there is no event-specific portion of that reference markup.
The other change was to introduce new templates for the small medalist table at the top of the page (as per ongoing discussion below), and this goes to your question too. I had removed the "none" for silver as I thought it wasn't necessary here, especially with the explanatory line of prose. We need the "none" in the main page 'matrix table', as there has to be a table cell in that format and I don't think it looks good left blank. On this table, there is no need to include it.
Lastly, I'm still not 100% convinced of the necessity of the heat rankings list, even though I included it with the table format. We had a bit of a discussion before, but now that we can see how it looks, I'd still like some opinions. If you really want to go ahead and include that similar section for other event pages, then be bold and go for it, but I think the page is suitably readable without it and that would save you some time. Andrwsc 19:12, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Few things -- I don't think there's any need to make the font size larger for the heat headings... simply bolding them will do. The periods with the place numbers also seem extraneous. I also think the table looks better with class=wikitable, but that might be just me. -- Jonel | Speak 21:00, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
The font size increase was supposed to match the visual effect of an equivalent header (i.e. ===Heat 1===) but that could go. I had forgot to ask for comments about not using the wikitable class. Now that you bring it up, I think wikitable is mandatory where there are lots of columns (e.g. at Triathlon at the 2004 Summer Olympics). However, in this case, I thought it looked better without the table cell borders mostly because it's viewed not as one big table of results, but as a series of races with 8 swimmers each. The heat headers aren't as prominent, and the "QS" and "QF" labels don't stand out as much either. As for the periods after the place numbers, I totally agree with you when wikitable is used, but without the table cell borders, I thought it looked better without.
So, to make it easier to comment, look at this version versus this version. (If we go with the wikitable one, I will remove the periods with the place numbers at that time.) Andrwsc 21:33, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Event page formatting

This is a continuation of a thread or two above, but I thought it would be a good idea to bring it out to a new topic. Specifically, I'd like to get consensus on how we format the individual event pages.

Race results - table or wiki list?

First, I'd like to see some comments on how race results are shown. One option is to simply use wiki markup like "#" for numbering, as shown in this edit of Swimming at the 2000 Summer Olympics - Men's 50 metre freestyle. I have taken the liberty of reformatting using tables (as shown in this edit], in case it is not top edit). The tradeoff here is that the first format is easier to create, but the second one (I think) is clearer to read because the times are lined up, tie results are handled properly (i.e. you can skip over numbers in ranked lists) and the TOC can be shown because heat headings are embedded within the table. The downside is that table markup isn't as obvious to a casual editor. My question to this WikiProject is: should we standardize on the more complex approach, in an effort to gain better visual presentation, or do we want to make it easier for new editors to make these pages?

Table. Much better look. Especially helpful for ties. New editors are certainly welcome to use numbered lists; it's pretty easy to change the formatting for them. -- Jonel | Speak 23:52, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
Table. Having the heat times and ranks all aligned because they have their own column - instead of letting the swimmers' name length deciding that - is much more important, in my opinion, to the goal which is to display the data in the best and clearest way. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 00:28, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Definitely table. It just looks nicer. → JARED (t)  21:29, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Medalist summary - which table format?

Second is the way in which we present the small summary table of medalists at the top of the page. There are several formats out there, and I really think we ought to converge upon one. Here are some options:

1. (from Athletics at the 1900 Summer Olympics - Men's 100 metres

Gold Silver Bronze
United States Frank Jarvis
United States (USA)		 United States John Tewksbury
United States (USA)		 Australia Stanley Rowley
Australia (AUS)

2. (from Athletics at the 1912 Summer Olympics - Men's shot put

Event Gold Silver Bronze
Men's shot put United States Patrick McDonald
United States (USA)		 United States Ralph Rose
United States (USA)		 United States Lawrence Whitney
United States (USA)

3. (from Wrestling at the 1904 Summer Olympics - Men's freestyle light flyweight

Gold Gold Silver Silver Bronze Bronze
United States Robert Curry
United States (USA)		 United States John Hein
United States (USA)		 United States Gustav Thiefenthaler
United States (USA)

4. (from Canoeing at the 2004 Summer Olympics - Men's C-1 500 metres)

Gold Germany Andreas Dittmer
Germany (GER)
Silver Spain David Cal
Spain (ESP)
Bronze Russia Maxim Opalev
Russia (RUS)

5. (from Weightlifting at the 2004 Summer Olympics - Men's 105 kg)

Gold
Image:Med 1.png		 Russia Dmitry Berestov
Russia (RUS)
Silver
Image:Med 2.png		 Hungary Ferenc Gyurkovics
Hungary (HUN)
Bronze
Image:Med 3.png		 Ukraine Igor Razoronov
Ukraine (UKR)

...and several others, but mostly those haven't been updated in a while.

Here are my thoughts. I prefer the "vertical" format (#4 and #5) for a couple of reasons. I think it looks better for events in which there are teams of 2-4 people (for example, Canoeing at the 2004 Summer Olympics - Men's K-2 1000 metres). Also, you don't have to deal with different column widths for the three medalists. I had been using format #4 for a while, but after seeing Jonel's usage of format #3, I switched to format #5 in a few places. I think format #2 suffers because the entire Event column is redundant to the pages on which these tables will be seen.

Anyway, if we get consensus here (perhaps on #5 as a hybrid of all the styles), I'd like to start adopting these everywhere applicable, perhaps creating a template or three to assist.

I think I've used 1, 2, and 3 recently... The horizontal format is nice because it's consistent with the sport pages (which is why 2 is what I'm using at the moment). I'd prefer them without the medal images. The point about redundancy of the event name is well-taken; I'd say #1 is the way to go. -- Jonel | Speak 23:52, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I wanted to speak to you about this and I'm glad Andrwsc mentioned it now (always you! :)) - I kinda like the horizontal display (it ocuppies space in a better way), but I also agree with Andrwsc that for non-single medalists situations the vertical display is free of column-width changes. As opposed to Jonel, I've been recently using #4 on all diving summary tables because I took that version from the events pages at Diving at the 2004 Summer Olympics (edited by Andrwsc), but I personally prefer #5 also. Better looking, indeed. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 00:28, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Here is how a three-person event would be rendered each way:

Gold Great Britain Shirley Robertson, Sarah Webb, and Sarah Ayton
Great Britain (GBR)
Silver Ukraine Ruslana Taran, Ganna Kalinina, and Svitlana Matevusheva
Ukraine (UKR)
Bronze Denmark Dorte Jensen, Helle Jespersen, and Christina Otzen
Denmark (DEN)

or

Gold Silver Bronze
Great Britain Great Britain (GBR)
Shirley Robertson
Sarah Webb
Sarah Ayton		 Ukraine Ukraine (UKR)
Ruslana Taran
Ganna Kalinina
Svitlana Matevusheva		 Denmark Denmark (DEN)
Dorte Jensen
Helle Jespersen
Christina Otzen

I prefer the former, and I guess I'd like to use the same style for 1 and 2 person events too. Beyond 4-6 people, the vertical listing / horizontal medalist style might be better, but I have an idea for that. More to come in a future discussion, but I have some ideas of how to treat team sports differently from the medal summary & medal table approach that works so well for individual multi-event sports. Andrwsc 01:44, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

The first table, definetely. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 01:50, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
I was experimenting with some templates and came up with {{OlympicGoldMedalist}} etc. (see example usage here). If we get consensus on the vertical format, this would greatly simplify its implementation. We can decide upon the medal icon etc. independantly (e.g. #5 vs. #4), as it would only take 3 edits to update all instances at the same time.... Andrwsc 19:23, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

OK, So here's my take. I agree with Jonel, in that I like # 1, 2, and 3. Somehow the horizontal is more appealing to me. I don't know why, but it just is. After ruling out #3 because of the icons, which I agree really aren't too appealing and needed, and ruling out #2 because of redundancy, I am left with #1. If someone could really convince me to use #4, I would do it, but for now, I am more partial to #1. I see how it could get overwhelming with the number of people, but it looks so empty with only one or two people... and the multi-person horiz. table above doesn't look half bad.... → JARED (t)  21:38, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

As far as spatial aesthetics (if it exists) goes, the horizontal table also appeals a bit more to me. It stretches from one side of the page to the other. But I also like the vertical box and the way it can take multiple names in a more fluid manner. I'm growing divided on this - I leave it to you to decide. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 02:49, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

Event series boxes

Lastly, and I think we have probably closed on this issue, but I'd like to get some feedback on some more examples of the new navigation box style. I added a few more sports, as there are some interesting situations:

  1. User:Andrwsc/Test3, intended to replace {{AthleticsAt2004SummerOlympics}} — are we all ok with this?
  2. {{SwimmingAt2000SummerOlympics}} — similar style, but event names are longer so the series box is wider. Is this still ok?
  3. {{CanoeingAt2004SummerOlympics}} — also a similar style, but more differences between men's and women's programs. Also uses an intermediate color shade for a sub-heading to separate the two disciplines. How does this look?
  4. {{SailingAt2004SummerOlympics}} — makes more substantial use of the sub-headings as the men's/women's/open programs have very little overlap
    • Addendum: I've already changed the sailing template as per Jonel's suggestion below. this edit is described above, to compare with the current one
  5. {{WeightliftingAt2004SummerOlympics}} — totally abandons the men/women side-by-side format in favor of a completely vertical format, but I don't see any alternative. Perhaps I could use the old names for each weight class (e.g. "bantamweight" for men's 56 kg class and women's 48 kg class, etc.) but these names seem to have been abandoned in recent Games and the numeric name is the only identifier for the weight class now. I still think the template looks fine, but comments would be welcome.

As always, thanks for thoughtful feedback! Andrwsc 23:15, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

The side-by-side looks good. With swimming, the events can be abbreviated, which will help the width. The sub-heading from canoeing is fine, when there are multiple disciplines. I'd say stick with the side-by-side link even for things like sailing and weightlifting, where there isn't much overlap. It won't change the length much, but it's a better look and makes everything more consistent. I'd say use it even if there's only one gender (i.e., early games or the equestrian "open" style). -- Jonel | Speak 23:52, 10 January 2007 (UTC)
I've modified the sailing template as per notes above, but I'm at a loss how to organize the weightlifting one. Is this what you have in mind? Would you sort them numerically (creating a "weave" of men/women) and/or combine 69kg onto one row even though men's 69kg is lightweight and women's 69kg is probably middle-heavyweight? Suggestions welcome! Andrwsc 01:12, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
I'd say to sort them numerically in order to keep it organized. If the sailing box will have three columns and men/women/open already appear in a weave-like fashion (which i don't like much but it's for the good of consistency) then why not? Parutakupiu talk || contribs 01:21, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, I don't know. I've got both sort orders in User:Andrwsc/Test5, and the second one looks odd to me. Andrwsc 01:30, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
On the other side, the first one, as is, would be better if divided with gender-specific sub-headings and the weights wikilinked. But that would just go against what Jonel suggested and you applied to {{SailingAt2004SummerOlympics}}. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 01:33, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
You mean, exactly as {{WeightliftingAt2004SummerOlympics}} looks like now, or a variation of that? Andrwsc 01:35, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes. That's what I stated on my thoughts (see below). And if this style is kept it should be also applied to other weight-categorized sports (i.e. Judo). Parutakupiu talk || contribs 01:42, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Let's stick with the side-by-side. Tables look very clean and organized this way.
  1. OK
  2. OK (don't see how a slightly "fatter" swimming events box would create any disturbance on the article text body)
  3. OK (can't see any other way of diving disciplines without drastically messing with strucuture)
  4. OK (no visible alternative!)
  5. OK (before reading your description I also thought about the traditional names, but they'd expand the box width and decentralize the weights - the most important, defining values!)
I say: let's get to work! GREAT JOB, Andrwsc *claps* Parutakupiu talk || contribs 00:28, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for that! Andrwsc 01:12, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, I had another minor question about the event series boxes. Should the word "events" be in the heading? For example, look at the latest revision of {{SwimmingAt2000SummerOlympics}}. It seems a bit clearer to me. Andrwsc 21:52, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I personally like #1 and #3 (haha, again!). They have a small name for each event (so there's no repetition) and if needed because of multiple disciplines, separate sections of the template. That, I think it key, to separate disciplines. It's more aesthetically pleasing! Anyway, those are my choices. → JARED (t)  21:42, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you mean, Jared. We're not comparing different renderings of the same sport, but looking at different sports, each of which has it's own quirks. So I'm glad you like the athletics and canoeing boxes, but what would you do to improve the swimming, sailing, and weightlifting ones?
I whipped up a few more easy ones last night too:

{{ArcheryAt2004SummerOlympics}}

I did a rowing one too, but didn't want to stomp on the existing template at that name just yet. All of these are fairly straightforward and are visually consistent. Of course, once we agree on how to handle weightligfting, then judo, taekwondo and wrestling follow suit. Andrwsc 21:52, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
Well I wasn't sure whether we were shooting for just one template for consistancy, or variations based on the sport. I myself don't care, and I think that the design should fit the sport. So based on that, I give approval (straight yes/no) to the following:
      1. Yes.
      2. No. See that talk page. Maybe that won't work, but there's too much redundancy.
      3. Yes.
      4. No. Seems weird with the columns like that. And maybe say "Mixed" instead of open.
      5. No. Obviously, men and women's separate sections are in order.
And your most recent ones are fine. → JARED (t)  00:02, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm not 100% sure that a "one size fits all approach" will work, but I'm trying hard for as much consistency as possible. As for your comments:
  • I agree that your version at Template talk:SwimmingAt2000SummerOlympics is a lot more visually appealing, but it sort of bends the "rule" of using sub-headings for multiple disciplines (like on the canoeing and cycling boxes). The alternative would be to use abbreviations such as "free", "back", "fly", "I.M", etc. I vote for your version, despite the "rule break".
  • An earlier version of the sailing template had the "open" straddling the men & women columns (which were much closer togather). I will try to play with that. As for "open" vs. "mixed", I know that the IOC medal database uses "mixed" exclusively for all events, but for this sport, "open" is the terminology used. (Check out the Sydney results for sailing, for example.)
  • I'm not sure which version of the weightlifting box you are saying "no" to. The current one does have men & women's events into separate "sections", just without the explicit sub-headings that an earlier incarnation had. I removed those headings and wikilinked "men" and "women" instead of wikilinking the weight class so that the template would be more visually consistent with the others. (Plus I right-aligned the weight classes, which looks quite nice, and is something I would do to your version of the swimming box too.) Andrwsc 00:33, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Now that I've thought about it, I'm OK with the sailing template. There must have been a misunderstanding on my part of the terminology. As for the Weightlifting one though, I think you misunderstood me; what I am advocating is this revision, where there are separate sections for men and women, because obviously none of the weight classes match up, so it would be foolish to do it the way it is now. The reason it works well for sailing is that there are two overlaps, which justify it. This one has none. → JARED (t)  00:48, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I think "foolish" might be a bit harsh! ;) The only differences I see between the current revision and the older one you link to is that in the current version, the sub-headings are removed (as they are implied by the column of "men" links and the column of "women" links), and the wikilinks themselves are applied to "men" and "women" instead of the event name. I agree with Jonel here, it is a lot more consistent to do that, even for situations where only one gender applies. Look at his {{AthleticsAt1912SummerOlympics}}, for example. Your version here is interesting. It is visually inconsistent with the others, however. Andrwsc 01:08, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Sorry about the choice of words, I was doing something else, so I wasn't totally focused! Anyway, you're right that the two revisions aren't too different, which is why I made the one on the talk page, but as you said, it is pretty different from the others. It does make it more compact, though. IDK. → JARED (t)  01:18, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
(back up left) The one sport that I foresee to be problematic, and where your solution might help, is wrestling... Multiple weight classes for men in two disciplines, and differnt classes for women in one discipline only...
I went back to your swimming suggestion and right-aligned the distances and unbolded the sub-section headings, and I like it. Maybe it would be worth looking at an athletics template with a similar treatment, making sections out of track, road, field, and combined events. I remember somebody wanting to carve up Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics this way. Perhaps the style is that "real" disciplines (such as those in cycling, canoeing and wrestling) would have a bold sub-heading and a non-bold subheading would be used in cases like swimming and athletics, where it might aid readability to apply some groupings to long lists. Andrwsc 01:25, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, so maybe do the wrestling similar to how I suggested it. Also, it may be a good idea to section them off by bolded disciplines. It seems like the way to go, especially when it comes to larger lists like athletics. (And when a discipline is too big [Swimming], then you just section it un-bolded.) I hadn't touched athletics because the list isn't that wide and repetative, but now that you bring up just straight discipline sectioning, I could reconsider that. → JARED (t)  02:10, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

New template, take 2

Another pair of templates for the [[Sport at the Summer Olympics]] pages. {{OlympicYearHeader}} and {{OlympicYearFooter}}. Basically just to clean up the events and nations tables on those pages. Any thoughts on these? -- Jonel | Speak 01:35, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I like this one too, but does it or does it not take into account the possibility that a page "Sport at the XXXX Summer Olympics" has yet to be created? Because this could mislead someone to think that said sport was not at the Olympics during a certain year when it really was. → JARED (t)  02:18, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Great job, Jonel. Anything that could clean out that link-overloaded header on every nations/events table is welcome! ;)
As for Jared's question: you can rest assured that won't happen (at least for all the Games held so far) because you can see all "Sport at Year Summer Olympics" pages exist as shown here (only a few demonstration sports are missing). Parutakupiu talk || contribs 02:29, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
This is a very clever idea! One thing that would need to be added, in my opinion, is a way to handle sports that didn't get added to the program until relatively recently. For example, the table at Synchronized swimming at the Summer Olympics really should not be any bigger than that. There is no need to show a whole lot of blank columns from 1896-1980. (Unless of course, we just use your template for the "old" sports and leave ones like this alone.)
The other thought is that we need to handle Winter Games in this template, or a parallel one.
As for the possibility of missing pages? I can assure you that there are no missing pages for sports in which medals were awarded. I went on a bit of a redlink-fixing spree about 2 weeks ago and added all the remaining missing sport pages (e.g. shooting in old games, all the sailing, a few missing wrestling, some fencing, etc.) - and even added a couple of demo sports to boot (Water skiing at the 1972 Summer Olympics and Badminton at the 1972 Summer Olympics). Not to worry that your template will miss something it shouldn't! Andrwsc 18:10, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I was thinking about your first point, about the leading blank columns, but I think doing that with a single template would be beyond my template-making skills. It could probably be done with a "startyear" parameter. I might try tinkering with it. As for winter, it could be done with either a parameter ("season" or the like) and conditional statements based on it to display the summer or winter years, or a separate similar pair of templates for winter ("OlympicYearHeaderWinter", with the original renamed accordingly). Parellel templates would probably be the easier way to go. -- Jonel | Speak 20:07, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
I managed to manipulate this template in order to apply Winter sports as well (I even solved the "Biathlon"/"Military patrol" duality issue). See the template code here and how it's displayed here. We could also code the template just to show the years where he sport was contested, instead of displaying a gray unlinked year. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 20:40, 12 January 2007 (UTC)
Since these header/footer templates are to be used mainly on the top-level "Sport at the Season Olympics" page's tables, I'd vote for leaving out the noncompeting years since the reader can find info on which years that sport was competed. I'd like this topic to be decided soon so the templates (in whichever version chosen) could be applied immediately. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 00:35, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
I'd say go for the version without empty years. -- Jonel | Speak 04:09, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Article checklists

On a related note, I think we ought to "retire" {{WikiProject Olympics Sports Table}}. I don't think it's been completely maintained (e.g. synchronized swimming still doesn't show up in it!!) and I think the set of templates visible from Wikipedia:WikiProject Sports Olympics/Templates is a much better way to see at a glance what redlinks still exist (only a handful of demo events as I write this).

Similarly, {{WikiProject Olympics Country Table}} and especially {{WikiProject Olympics Winter Country Table}} are quite out of date. The full set of "NOCinxxxxOlympics" templates has been diligently maintained, so I think the best way of navigating the complete list of "Nation at the year Olympics" articles is by viewing Wikipedia:WikiProject Sports Olympics/Templates. There are no redlinked articles for any of the per-nation per-Games type. All that remain are the overview "Nation at the Olympics" and/or "Nation at the Summer Olympics"/"Nation at the Winter Olympics" pair, and I'm working on that as per previous discussion. Andrwsc 18:10, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

I've used it often in the past, but never truely questioned the validity of it. It is very useful, but if it is not up to date, then it's not worth keeping (except for historical purposes in an archive). I just have always used those to gauge the Olympics pages of WP. → JARED (t)  20:32, 12 January 2007 (UTC)

More templates

As I was following Andrwsc's idea of creating a category to contain all the per-Games pages of a certain Olympic event (in the case I'm working with, Category:Diving at the Olympics - Men's springboard) as an complement to the already existing "Sport events at the Year Season Olympics", I also tried to devise a navigation template that would follow this idea. What I came up, for now, was one template containing all the springboard events (men and women) at year Summer Olympics (User:Parutakupiu/Springboard) and another linking to all the platform events (User:Parutakupiu/Platform).

As you can see, I tried to put both individual and synchronized women and men events on one template, to prevent creating multiple ones. But I guess they're a bit big, even with a collapsible option (I'd think they should be non-collapsible as with the "Sport at Season Olympics" counterparts). What you think of them? Helpful? Redundant? And about the format? Suggestions?

P.S.: I'm a bit of a template freak if you have noticed :P Parutakupiu talk || contribs 19:06, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

2008 events

In my efforts to create a pages with similar names, I have created this list of events at the 2008 Summer Olympics. Listed is every event to be contested (except Sailing, which I'm not sure how to name properly). Please feel free to edit it in any way you wish; it lacks structure right now, I was going to make each sport its separate section using =={{User:Andrwsc/Olympic sport header|Archery}}==. So anyway, I think it's important to come up with the correct names of events down to the spacing, capitalization, and abreviations, so please comment, if you get a chance to look at it! → JARED (t)  19:55, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Hi Jared, for sailing I suggest you use the names I chose here: Category:Sailing events at the 2004 Summer Olympics. The other suggestions I have are to omit the "12-team" etc. qualifiers for the team events, and to spell out "metres" instead of "m" in the shooting events. I think your sandbox page is a good place for us to see all the event article names in full and get consensus (especially as we are cleaning up the 2004 pages as well), so I would spell out all article names in full and not use the pipe trick to abbreviate any links. Andrwsc 20:52, 15 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes. Jared, I agree with Andrwsc you should list fully the article names so it's easier to detect any flaw and make suggestions. I don't know if you followed the naming pattern on other similar pages or/and you used the IOC naming (which can be confusing and inconsistent with what we have around here). Parutakupiu talk || contribs 00:18, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I realized after I did the whole thing that maybe listing the full name would be better. My initial intention was to use it as a check list to see if the article had been created or not, but it's more useful without the piped text. Basically, what I did was I looked at the 2008 program and used the event names there and matched them up to the 2004 events. For those that didn't match up as far as naming goes, I either left them blank or went with my best guess (even if it didn't match previous years).
The metres thing I didn't notice until the end, as well, but I found it weird that the shooting events were "m" not "metres." And the "12-team" thing I just did because there was no precedent otherwise, so I went with the IOC event name, but it is a little unnecessary. I'll take care of the list here and there. → JARED (t)  01:31, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Update. I have reorganized the list and counted all events on the list and that number (302) matches the number on the schedule. I had two extras I had to take out, and two I forgot to put in, so good thing I got the count wrong in the first place because otherwise, I would have never noticed! Anyway, so maybe take a look at that if you want. I just think it will prove useful when we want to rename some of the other existing pages or when we want to create new pages for the upcoming games. → JARED (t)  23:19, 20 January 2007 (UTC)
Hey, Jared. I've noticed one thing I never did before: why do some athletics' events bear the word "metre" while others use the plural "metres"? Parutakupiu talk || contribs 23:52, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

{{Olympic Games}}

OK, so I thought of an idea in regards to the template placements on the bottom of events pages like Swimming at the Summer Olympics, Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics, or even 2008 Summer Olympics. So, for example, on Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics, there are currently two templates listed there at the bottom. I think it would be more efficient to have the templates stemmed off from another template. And what better template to do this with than {{Olympic Games}}. What I suggest is that we add two parameters to this template: {{{Games}}} and {{{Sport}}}. If either is defined when {{Olympic Games}} is called, then those associated templates will be included in the transclusion and the Olympic Games template as we know it will retract. See this sandbox page of mine for the example template. It would work like this:

{{Olympic Games |Games=2008Summer |Sport=Swimming }}

would call the following template:

v • d • e
Events at the 2008 Summer Olympics (Beijing)
v • d • e
Swimming at the Summer Olympics
1896 • 1900 • 1904 • 1908 • 1912 • 1920 • 1924 • 1928 • 1932 • 1936 • 1948 • 1952 • 1956 • 1960 • 1964 • 1968 • 1972 • 1976 • 1980 • 1984 • 1988 • 1992 • 1996 • 2000 • 2004 • 2008
List of medalists (men, women) • List of Olympic records

The only problem that I have now, which is really not too bad, is that the {{{Games}}} parameter requires that the year and the season be right next to each other without a space, because of the name of the template that it is calling. I tried to use {{#replace:2008 Summer}} which would in theory remove the space placed there by the user, but apparently StringFunctions are not yet implimented on WP. On the other hand, the {{{Sport}}} parameter will work fine with sports like Water polo because there can be one space and the second word should be lowercase. Tell me what you think. It was just one of my little ideas, so I decided to try it out. Thanks. └Jared┘┌talk┐  23:00, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi, Jared. Anything that can save us from extra work is welcome. I like the idea, I just don't know about the preferable order of the "events per year" box and "sport per year"; if there should be a specific hierarchy. As long as it remains consistent for all other pages. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 23:33, 3 February 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I wasn't too sure on the order either. I went back and forth before deciding on this. I think that on a page like Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics, the choice here seems logical because you start with the main Olympic Games box, listing years; then you go to a specific year box, listing sports; then you go to the specific sports box. Now, what made it hard for me was that logically, the specific sports box should have been {{SwimmingAt2008SummerOlympics}} because this would list the sport for that year, not go back up one level. But given that we're changing the appearance of these templates, it could not be done this way, so I decided just to put the Sport at the Season Olympics template last.
Taking it from the other perspective, the "broken link" is between Olympic Games and the next template down, if you go in the order of Olympic Games → Sport at Olympics → Sport at Year Olympics. This template also makes logical sense because you're going from a list of years in which the sport was contested to all the sports in that one year.
Personally, I like it how it is, but that's just my opinion. It seems that 2008 is the first way, 2006 is the second way, and 2004 is mixed, so it doesn't seem that there has been precedent. Otherwise, though, I think it's a good idea to just do it. And if there's ever a problem with the layout, it is all controlled from the main "Olympic Games" template anyway, so it could be easily switched. └Jared┘┌talk┐  01:06, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, you're right. The last should really have been the "sport at year" box to give a hierarchical sense, but its use on the bottom is out of the question now. So we're left with this order which indeed seems the most logical, giving priority to the "events at year" box.
About having to concatenate both year and season on the "Games" parameter's string, there are two solutions:
  • Use the #switch function so that a string specified like "YYYY Season" comes out as "YYYYSeason";
  • Change every "EventsAtYYYYSeasonOlympics" template title to another with "YYYY" and "Season" separated.
But as you can see, they are both HUGE tasks and and become a useless effort when one just has to remind to write the strings all together instead of apart. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 01:29, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
I guess another option would be to split the Games parameter into two: {{{Year}}} and {{{Season}}}. I might seem kind of ridiculous, though. But maybe it would be better, IDK. └Jared┘┌talk┐  03:44, 4 February 2007 (UTC)
Leave it this way, for now ;) It's only a SPACE! :P Parutakupiu talk || contribs 03:50, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Usage of Olympic pictograms

I've noticed, that someone added one self-created wrestling pictogram into all "Wrestling at the NNNN Summer Olympics" articles. Even where official pictograms were available, they were replaced. As there were unique sports pictograms designed for many Olympics, I believe that replacement to be inappropriate and confusing. I see those self-made pictograms to be appropriate in articles and templates, that refer to "Wrestling at the Olympics" as a whole (for example, in {{Olympic Games Wrestling}}), but not in ones, that are limited to wrestling events at particular Olympics. Cmapm 10:03, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Official pictograms are encumbered with copyright. Parutakupiu was kind enough to create these pictograms and release them into the public domain. Since free content is a major goal of Wikipedia, the free pictograms are better than the official ones. They also serve to give a consistency across Wikipedia pages. -- Jonel | Speak 12:51, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, I hadn't found any understanding here before, and have no hope to find it in the future. Now you even don't bother to address my points, showing, that such free pictograms could be held equivalent to each set of official ones. This reminds me "standardization" of the education by using textbooks in one language for all races and peoples :) Go on with your "nice work", guys :) Cmapm 13:22, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, I recently uploaded the 2008 pictograms under the {{Olympics-logo}} license, which I think will work for the purposes of this encyclopedia. I think that it is good to have a set of common pictograms, but I also think that where available, the per-games pictograms are fine to use because they're under a fair use license, and they're only used (each one) on one or two pages anyway. └Jared┘┌talk┐  20:25, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Model sports page?

OK, so recently I've been trying to come up with what the best layout for a "Sport at the XXXX Season Olympics" page. I've run into a problem right off the bat in regards to the basic structure of the page. I myself like the table that lists all of the medal winners in one place, like the one at Swimming at the 2004 Summer Olympics. Here, everything is connected, it's organized, and it's easy to look at everything at once.

Fine. Now, here's where the problem comes: that layout makes it hard to allow for an explanation/summary of each event and what happened during the events. I feel that as the main page for that sport, before being broken off into subpages, this page is important in conveying the gist of each event. A page, for example, that does this is Alpine skiing at the 2006 Winter Olympics. This page doesn't have the table at the beginning, but rather it has each event sectioned off, a summary of each event, and a little box for the medal winners in each section. Again, though, the problem with this is that there's no easy way to see all medal winners at once.

I think that somewhere in there there's a happy medium. I want to see what someone else will come up with, but I think we should still put a table at the top, and then do a summary for each event at the bottom (without the individual medalist boxes there). The problem, though, comes when you have 32 events like in swimming and there is not really enough room to put summaries. You could do it, I suppose, but would it be fine?

As we get going into the 2008 pages, I think it's almost imperative to fix up the 2004 sports and sub pages because they will serve as models. If they're not up to par, it'll be a nightmare sorting through them all after the games are done. I hope we can come to some sort of consensus here. If anyone sees a page that could serve as a good model or create their own, please show it! └Jared┘┌talk┐  21:02, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Hey, Jared. I've come up with this idea which can conciliate the existence of both the medal per event table and the introduction of a small summary text for each event. The underlying template easy to insert on the already existing tables and only requires an extra parameter - the summary text itself (apart from an optional column number parameter for tables that have colspan=2 for each medal). Parutakupiu talk || contribs 23:35, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
I am certain that pretty much every event will have it's own page for the 2008 Games (e.g. Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's 100 metres), and I think those pages ought to have more prose commentary than they typically do now. I also think that the main per-sport pages (e.g. Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics) could potentially have a "Highlights" section, but of course, the choice of what is a highlight is somewhat subjective. If we really want to see a per-event prose summary of every event on the main page, then Parutakupiu's proposal is a really good idea! It reduces the potential clutter but makes the text readily available.
I also strongly agree that we need to get all the 2004 pages up to "gold standard" quality in the next few months. There seems to be just a handful of us who edit Olympic articles all the time, but we will be deluged with new editors around the Games, and I believe it is essential that we just point them to the "gold standard" 2004 pages and tell them to follow that style exactly, not inventing something new and unique. At various times in the past few months I have brought some of the 2004 sports up to a good level (e.g. Sailing at the 2004 Summer Olympics, Canoeing at the 2004 Summer Olympics and Weightlifting at the 2004 Summer Olympics), but there is still a lot to do. Andrwsc 00:04, 13 February 2007 (UTC)
I like that proposal. At first, I wasn't too keen on it, but I looked at it a bit and decided I liked it! I think that if we could put in each box where, when, etc the event was contested and anything else of interest, that would be a good place put two or three sentences without making a whole bunch of sections for like 42 events. Great idea, it should work just fine. I've been looking at the 2004 articles recently (notice the operative phrase...haha). Well, I've edited a few, sub-paged a few, etc. They seem to be overall in good shape, and may just need some polishing. The ones that'll be the most work are the ones that cannot be broken down further, like Basketball at the 2004 Summer Olympics, but I think that one can just be reorganized and it'll look a million times better.
So as a timetable of sorts, I say we just keep trying to find stuff that works for us, and then when we pretty much have it down, by then we'll probably have filtered through the 2004 pages some more. And then we'll do a final run through, making them all similar in appearance and maybe adding the summary template that Parutakupiu suggested. I don't think that's priority to do now, but I just wanted to know the direction we were going in. └Jared┘┌talk┐  02:02, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Hi, everyone. I was linked here after editing Figure skating at the 1908 Summer Olympics. I have a serious problem with the details link. It's v. v. easy to ignore. I've spent some time bluelinking figure skating medalists (not in the past few months, but before that. Too busy trying to catch up with current skaters) and I never noticed that details link. I've just scanned past it. Those pages with detailed results are very cool and very useful and I find it aggravating that I only stumbled upon it through "what links here" instead of logically from the 1908 page. If you take a look at some skating pages, there's a tendancy to link specific pages through the name of the discipline, such as men's singles and pairs. I changed the links to link from the discipline names because I think it's much, much more logical. Awartha 21:32, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

At one point I had a problem with the details link, too. At first, I just thought it was unnecessary, but then I realized that by putting it there, it would better show the fact that there is a whole other page to be seen. But, again like you said, I think we still have that problem. For some pages like athletics, there are these massive, 40-something-odd pages that are chock full of info, and yet they are only found by clicking on this one tiny "details" link. I think it's an interesting idea, but I don't think it's enough to show that there's other pages. Maybe we should put the {{AthleticsAt2004SummerOlympics}} templates on the main page too to offer one extra way to link to the page? Not at the top, but maybe down some. I'll check into that. └Jared┘┌talk┐  21:45, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
... or we make a version of that template that would look like all the other navigation templates we put on the bottom of the page. I could attach them to {{Olympic Games}} like I did the others. But I think we've already discussed this before and it was a no. I don't know. └Jared┘┌talk┐  21:49, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
Athletics at the
Athletics
2004 Summer Olympics
Track events
100 m   men   women
200 m ... ...
And while we're on it, I was looking at the events per sport year templates and decided that they might look good with the neutral pictograms. So here's this for example. You can change the positioning of the image or its size or anything if you want. I think it looks nice and is yet another place we can display our new wonderful images! └Jared┘┌talk┐  22:02, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
Athletics
 Athletics at the
2004 Summer Olympics
Track events
100 m   men   women
200 m ... ...
Suggestion 2, by Parutakupiu talk || contribs 22:37, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
I like either of the above. I'm more partial to the first one, I'm not sure why. Maybe it just seems neater. But it does take up a lot of space in the middle. That's why I like the second one. So I'm not sure. I'd go either way. ( I just made my image smaller, 30px→25px. ) └Jared┘┌talk┐  23:05, 20 February 2007 (UTC)


My opinion: I think that just wikilinking the event names in the medal summary table is insufficient. My {{DetailsLink}} idea was inspired by pages like FIFA World Cup, where something like that is used to good effect. If that is abandoned, then I am ok with the idea of using the "article series boxes" on the main pages, especially now that we are reducing them to a more aesthetically pleasing format. The previous, large, gaudy boxes were not a good idea, I think.
As for adding the pictogram to those boxes, I like the idea, but I think it would look way better if the white part of the pictogram was transparent, so that the background shading showed through. I'm not an SVG or PNG expert; does anybody know if that is possible with those image formats? I like the narrower version better. Andrwsc 23:13, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
I definitely think we should keep the detailsLink. I, for just a moment, changed it to read "event details" and it didn't look too bad. If the problem is not noticing it, this would be our best option; see the revision history. As far as the pictograms, you must be viewing it in IE. I knew right away because I noticed this before myself. I always use FireFox now, so it is transparent on my screen and it looks a million times better. I don't know what you would do in IE to fix this? are you using 7.0? └Jared┘┌talk┐  23:19, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
  • Let's keep the {{DetailsLink}} but, perhaps, search a way to make it more noticeable;
  • I'm being the most objective possible here: I prefer my version which looks tidier, like Jared himself admitted, but it might not work that good when the event names aren't so small as on the example...
  • I use Firefox and the pictograms are transparent... maybe it's a browser thing?
— Parutakupiu talk || contribs 23:55, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
(Reset.) This is very minor, but we're going for consistency. I was just wondering which template should be used on the medal tables on the "Sport at Year Season Olympics." I've been going over each page one by one and fixing up the little stuff before I move onto the big problems (I've already tried to tackle baseball and archery). So, should {{flagIOCteam}} (ex.) or {{flagIOC}} (ex.) be used in the tables. I've been putting them all in just flagIOC but somehow I think it'd be nice to have the IOC code along with the nation name. But then again, it's just more info in the box. I doesn't matter to me at all, really, I just want them all to be the same.
I started out just using {{flagIOC}} (without country code), but have switched over to using {{flagIOCteam}} (with country code) consistently for a while now. I think including the country codes yet again on these tables is important (especially for years like when FRG and GDR co-existed, for example.) Andrwsc 19:46, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
And while we're at it, I wasn't sure how to do the big medalist boxes like the baseball one so as you can see I just made it a column. Any suggestions on that? └Jared┘┌talk┐  19:26, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
I've got some ideas for team sports, as I think the existing format doesn't look great. My "working source code" is on another computer, so I don't have anything to show right now, but the gist of what I'd like to do is:
  • use a vertical, rather than horizontal format. That is, three big rows, with gold, silver and bronze teams stacked vertically. This also scales nicely to a few oddball situations where there were two bronze medal teams (e.g. Water polo at the 1900 Summer Olympics)
  • use a bigger flag (like 60px) and bigger team name. The standard flag icon size looks great in a table of lots of events, but for team sports, with only 1 or 2 events per Games, the small set of medal winners needs to stand out more.
  • list the team members in 3-4 columns within each big table row. I was experimenting with different formats, and I think it looked better than a single long vertical list (such as Baseball at the 2004 Summer Olympics#Medalists) or a comma-separated horizontal list (such as Field hockey at the 1980 Summer Olympics#Men's Medal Winners). That field hockey table is pretty close to what I have in mind, but with the team names in columns (i.e. a table within a table).
Of course, this sort of formatting would be encapsulated in a template or three to keep things consistent. I will try to post my ideas here tonight so we can discuss some more. Andrwsc 19:46, 22 February 2007 (UTC)
Yeah I figured using the codes would be nice. And as far as your envisioned table for big teams, from what I read it sounds good, but I'm not too good at visualizing things. I'll be able to understand better when you post it later. But for now, I think that would be good because it takes up space horizontally (i.e. across the page, not down). I think that is better. └Jared┘┌talk┐  19:55, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

New graphic layout for the WikiProject

Hi all! Since I've become a member of the Olympics project, I've grown much respect for our work and for some members which are more active with their contributions. That's why I get a bit frustrated, when I look at the project's main page, due to its poor, poor graphical layout - it deserves much better!

That's why I've decided to do some testing for of a possible new graphic look for the project's page. I must say, before anything else, that it is not an original idea, since I "borrowed" the template from another extremely active project, which I liked a lot. Of course, I made changes in terms of colors and minor structural variations, to become more "unique" to our project. Don't be worried by the absence of the "structural guidelines"; I'm thinking about putting those in subpages.

Here's the test page – User:Parutakupiu/Wikipedia:WikiProject Sports Olympics.

As usual, I'd be glad to hear opinions and, if possible, suggestions on how further improve the layout and expand the page's content. Cheers! Parutakupiu talk || contribs 04:04, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Heh, can't actually remember the last time I looked at Wikipedia:WikiProject Sports Olympics. This talk page for it, yeah, but not the actual project page... Anyway, your mockup looks good (much better than the current one). Good work. -- Jonel | Speak 04:24, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Lol, yes, that happened to me also :P. That is one of the problems - the supposed-to-be main page is pratically abandoned because everything is discussed on the talk page. For now, I still haven't worked out a solution to dynamize the page, but I'll think about it. Take your time to see my page draft. Oh, and thanks ;) Parutakupiu talk || contribs 04:37, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes, that is a very good idea. The page before was not too appealing, and me as well, I hardly ever went to that page. I created [[WT:OLYMPICS]] for the sole purpose of bypassing the main page! Haha, but now I have no reason not to use it!
Now, something that's been brewing in the back of my head is the title of this wikiproject. I was not here when it was created, but something leads me to believe that this was a full-out branch of the Sports wikiproject. Now, while that may have been fine then, I don't think we are at all affiliated with that project, so it doesn't seem right to have "Sports" in the name of ours. We've become a stable, stand-along project that has a whole lot of work to tackle. But the problem is that this is how everyone has always known the project. It seems logical to remove "sports," but it may not be recognized and accepted right away. So anyway, I just wanted to throw this out there and see what others think.
Again, cool page! └Jared┘┌talk┐  14:04, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
I fully support you. It should become "WikiProject Olympics" only, because we don't work only on Olympic or Paralympic sports, but also on Olympic competitors, so the current name theoretically restricts the project's scope. And yes, we've become a stand-alone project and don't have any connection with the supposed parent WikiProject Sports. What could we do then to change this? It might be easier now that we have an admin among us :D.
Another thing: other projects have their own system of article assessment and peer-reviewing. Do you think these could be applied successfully on this project?
Back to the new layout draft: should I write more things? Have I forgotten to mention anything? (I've just remembered to list the Olympics-related stub categories and templates). Parutakupiu talk || contribs 17:53, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
I think Parutakupiu's new page layout is a terrific improvement and long overdue! I'm glad someone tacked that problem. I think the next step would be to try and summarize all of our page layout decisions, document how to use the standard templates, etc. I'd also like to see an updated "to do" list. The previous ones we had been using only really showed missing articles, but pretty much everything is at least stubbed now, so the next step is to document what pages need cleanup to ove up to our current "model" layout, etc. Andrwsc 18:56, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! My wish would be to implement it right away but, as you said, there are many things we have to update and create (documentation about template and article structural/graphical layouts) before installing this new layout. The "to do" list is also great; it could be for example annexed to the project template (would appear on every page transcluded with it) or in a specific template that could be added to a userpage. I'd like to help (and be helped) on this because I sense it's a big task. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 19:29, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Glad to see someone else likes my suggestion! I think that if we have consensus here, all we have to do is move it and all subpages. As far as the assessment things go, I think it would be appropriate to come up with our own (or steal a) set of reviewing guidelines, like the ones for WP Sports. It would get our Wikiproject up to par as far as where the other ones are, which is helpful. We would also be able to gauge where we are as far as progress if we organized articles by importance and quality. So in short, yeah. Maybe I'll start working on it, and I think stealing most of the work from WP Sports would be my start!
From what I've seen on your mock-up page, everything looks fine, but I haven't gone into detail with it yet. I'll look through the "ugly" version to see if some things were not carried over. └Jared┘┌talk┐  19:08, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
If it's only a matter of "moving", then it's easier than I thought - I figured we had to address a "higher regulatory power" or something... I'm gonna take a look at WP:COUNCIL to be acquainted with the WP processes. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 19:29, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
That would have been by best guess. But maybe there is someone else it should be reported to. I've started the assessment thing (Wikipedia:WikiProject Sports Olympics/Assessment). I've added the parameters to {{OlympicsWikiProject}}, too, so all we need to start doing now is assessing. There is a "to-do" list already nested in there, too, but I haven't created the template yet. Just click on the redlink if you want to start it. └Jared┘┌talk┐  20:59, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I noticed it. Great work! Now I just have to settle in all the new changes, lol (and start assessing articles!). Man! Evrything was created automatically; there's already a "unassessed class articles" category filled with pages! :D Parutakupiu talk || contribs 21:05, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
There is something wrong with the {{OlympicsWikiProject}} though because the categories are only displaying some of the pages that are in them. I'll have to check it out later. Also we have to decide on basic things like "How important are Sport at the Year Season Olympics pages?" or "What should sub-page importance ranks be?", etc. These should all be the same. └Jared┘┌talk┐  23:30, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
(Indent) Well, you have already assessed Olympic Games, Summer Olympic Games and Winter Olympic Games as Top-importance, which is obviously right. Maybe Olympic sports and "Sport at Season Olympics" pages too? As for "Sport at Year Season Olympics", maybe perhaps a High-importance? What do you think? Parutakupiu talk || contribs 23:57, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Assessment

(You edit conflicted me!) OK, so I broke this off because it will warrant more discussion. Basically, since most of the articles in the Olympics jurisdiction are similar/the same, just with different content, we should decide now what each page should be ranked on the importance scale. I'll list the different types of pages:

Types of Olympics pages
# Setup Example(s) Importance
1. Year Season Olympics 2004 Summer Olympics
2006 Winter Olympics		 High
2. Sport at the Season Olympics Tennis at the Summer Olympics
Luge at the Winter Olympics		 High
3. Sport at the Year Season Olympics Tennis at the 2004 Summer Olympics
Luge at the 2006 Winter Olympics		 Mid
4. Sport at the Year Season Olympics - Event Tennis at the 2004 Summer Olympics - Men's singles
Luge at the 2006 Winter Olympics - Doubles		 Low
5. Nation at the Season Olympics United States at the Summer Olympics
Canada at the Winter Olympics		 High
6. Nation at the Year Season Olympics United States at the 2004 Summer Olympics
Canada at the 2006 Winter Olympics		 Mid
7. Year Season Olympics medal count 2004 Summer Olympics medal count
2006 Winter Olympics medal count		 Low
8. Year Season Olympic bids 2004 Summer Olympics bids
2006 Winter Olympics bids		 High
9. City Year Olympic bid New York City 2012 Olympic bid
 Mid
10. Year Season Olympics Type Ceremony 2004 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony
2006 Winter Olympics Closing Ceremony		 Mid
11. List of Olympic medalists in sport List of Olympic medalists in boxing
List of Olympic medalists in speed skating		 Mid/High
12. National Olympic Committees Australian Olympic Committee
Barbados Olympic Association		 Mid
13. Olympic stadia Panathinaiko Stadium
BC Place Stadium		 Low/Mid

In the table, I gave my own opinion about the importance rankings of the types of pages. Feel free to add your own suggestion for importance, as well as other page types I may have forgotten. └Jared┘┌talk┐  00:15, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

You missed one of my past projects: Lists of Olympic medalists and its sub-pages (e.g. List of Olympic medalists in boxing). I think these are mid to high importance, as they complement the respective sport pages. Also, I think Olympic sports is high importance, and perhaps Demonstration sport is mid to low.
We also need to document the criteria of how to assess each of these types of pages. I think each type has distinct levels of completion. Andrwsc 00:27, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Nothing like graphic display to better understand. I agree with the proposed importance-scale, considering the importance hierarchy, except on one: I think the medal count pages could be "Mid" because it's pratically a summary of the competition and people like to see "who won the Games" or "where was X country placed". Nice table, btw. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 01:16, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
OK, so right now I'm AWBing the template into the stub-classed articles. I'm just using all the links on the Category:Olympic stub page and its sub-pages. I'm a good ways into it.
You're hitting pretty much every article on my watchlist tonight. ;) Andrwsc 04:13, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
We have the "machine" running: I've put the assessment quality and importance categories as subcategories of Category:Olympics articles by quality and Category:Olympics articles by importance and have made these two subcategories of Category:Wikipedia 1.0 assessments, so that now EVERY DAY we have a bot that will automatically count all articles included on all these categories and show the statistics here (I've put this table on what will be our new frontpage). I've already "ran the bot" so this table has all the stats of our project :)
All left to do is assess, assess, assess! Parutakupiu talk || contribs 04:36, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Anyone have a problem with 1916, 1940, and 1944 pages being "Low" importance? Seeing as how they weren't, you know, actually held. -- Jonel | Speak 04:52, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
It's fine with me! Parutakupiu talk || contribs 04:59, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Can someone with more technical know-how fix {{OlympicsWikiProject}} so that Category-class pages say "this category..." or something of the like rather than "this article..."? Probably Template-class needs it too. -- Jonel | Speak 18:08, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Done. The template banner will now read "This category..." or "This template...". Parutakupiu talk || contribs 19:10, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Ooh, pretty ;). Good work, thank you! -- Jonel | Speak 19:25, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
I've been tagging some hundreds of Olympics-related articles for 3 days and only today I've come across with template pages. I've been assessing them as "Low importance" but perhaps we should not assess importance for templates/categories (non-articles) but only for articles, those pages that can really be developed further and further, don't you think? Parutakupiu talk || contribs 03:21, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree. Those templates should all be pretty stable now, and if any tweaks are required, it will usually be by one of us "regulars", so I think keeping an assessment on them is probably overkill. Andrwsc 03:39, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Indeed. Then, if you don't mind, I'll update the project banner so that only articles show the importance scale (Top-Low) – templates/categories/disamb. pages will just show their "type", which merely includes them on the Category:Non-article Olympics articles. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 04:08, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
I've added another row for Olympic stadia. I've put Low as default but some historical stadia, like the Panathinaiko Stadium, probably could be labeled as Mid. What do you think? Parutakupiu talk || contribs 16:51, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Tagging competitors

I'm relatively new to the project, so I'm curious, do athlete articles get tagged (well, obviously they do because Ian Thorpe is) and what importance would they have? Low? -- Scorpion 04:56, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it was me who tagged Ian Thorpe, because it's one of the four FA connected with the Olympics. But I do have the same doubt as to how far can this project extent: only the competition or the competitors themselves? If yes, what should be their general importance? "Low"?
There couldn't be an Olympics without Olympians, so maybe we should just tag the medallists as opposed to every single athlete that ever competed. -- Scorpion 05:02, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
That's very true. I would say that we're doing assessments from the Olympics lens, though, so a competitor, unless he/she is very important/noteworthy in the Olympic context (Nadia Comăneci), should be considered of low importance. But again, there are always exceptions. └Jared┘┌talk┐  05:05, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes, we could go with Scorpion and tag, as low-importance, every Olympic medalist, for starters, and with Jared and re-evaluate the article's importance when we stumble with a noteworthy Olympian (medalist or not). No? Parutakupiu talk || contribs 05:10, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, tagging athletes ise tricky because athletes are so varied. You have some (Clara Hughes, Kerri Strug) who are famous almost solely because of the Olympics and others (mostly pro athletes like NHLers and tennis players) whose Olympic victories had little impact on their careers at all. Either way I think we shouldn't tag too many pro athletes. -- Scorpion 05:19, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
So what should be the limits? Parutakupiu talk || contribs 05:23, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Well I'm not sure. I was just looking through the featured sports content when I found Suzanne Lenglen, Nellie Kim, and Bill Russell, all featured articles. Now, they're competitors, and won medal(s) but should they qualify for assessment? └Jared┘┌talk┐  05:36, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
I don't know. It's becoming hard to define borders as far as an Olympian's weight on the Olympics and vice-versa are concerned. We can't just simply tag everyone because it will result on the admition of a HUGE amount of pages, but we can't easily forget this issue and don't tag at all. Perhaps it should be best to tag case-by-case. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 05:50, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
I'm starting to second guess myself, now. Should Sport at the Year Season Olympics - Event really be low importance? I mean, most of the pages are stubs and you cannot get too much info on the pages from the past, but I just wanted to be sure I make the right decision before I start tagging a whole bunch of pages. It seems right, because no one else would really see them as crucial except maybe us, so I think low importance is fine. └Jared┘┌talk┐  17:06, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I'd definitely say those are "low" importance. They're great for those that are interested in the details, but not really that interesting for a wider audience. Anything that happened in a particular event that is especially important should definitely be summarised at the Sport at the Year Season Olympics, if not the Year Season Olympics article. -- Jonel | Speak 17:34, 4 March 2007 (UTC)
I apologize it's taken me a bit longer to respond. My wikipedia-time is fairly limited, and I've been trying to spend about 50% of that time doing admin-backlog things. This raises an overall important question for the project and for Wikipedia notability. Do we think there should be an article for every Olympic athlete or do we think there should only be article for every Olympic medalist? If we are going to defend AfDs on Olympic athletes that they are notable due to their participation in the Olympics, than I think it's important that we as a project tag and assess those articles. I would tag all non-medalists as low, all medalists as mid-importance and then certain medalists as high. --Sue Anne 23:49, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
What a wonderful solution! Seriously, though, it is good because it takes care of the problem of notability by saying "Look, the person competed in the Olympics" and thus is notable in that respect. But, again, they're not that important, so stick them in the Low importance area. Good. Then we've got the medalists who are quite important. If you've gotten a medal, then it should be noticed, so mid-class is good enough for those who have medals but you don't hear about them. For those medalists (or athletes for that matter) whose name can be directly tied to the Olympics by a large amount of people, they should be listed as "High Importance." I hope this clarification is what you were thinking of, Sue Anne. └Jared┘┌talk┐  23:56, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
In my early days on this project, I suggested that we only consider medal winners as notable and do not wikilink every athlete in results listings, but was roundly shouted down. I understand that just getting to compete is notable today, but this poses a problem for past Games. I would estimate that there are probably around to 100,000 different people who have ever competed at any previous Olympic Games. If we say that a goal of this project is to create an article for every competitor in every Games, we're talking about a significant percentage of the entire article space!! Andrwsc 23:58, 7 March 2007 (UTC)
Is this the assessment criteria for Olympians' bios, then?
Competitors Importance
Medalists Historical Jesse Owens
Dawn Fraser		 High
Non-historical Fani Halkia
Otis Harris		 Mid
Non-Medalists Low
I think assessing non-medalists is undertaking a herculian task and even distinguishing notable from non-table non-medalists is beyond necessity. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 02:09, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
I would, respectfully, disagree. Many of the articles are going to be created by people not interested in being part of this discussion (i.e., Darius Dhlomo), and I think it's important for those articles to have a WP:Olympics tag and a low assessment. Having some system in place pre-2008 is going to help with the flood of new articles that are going to hit. --Sue Anne 02:21, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
When I was making up the table, I actually put a row for the non-medalists assessing their articles as "low-importance"; but then I thought (and still think) it would be a very extenuous task, even if they deserve it just for being Olympians. My doubts lie mostly with this category of competitors. Anyway, I've put another row in the above table. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 02:37, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
I'd definitely agree that all Olympic competitors should be tagged as falling under this project. Yes, there are a lot of them, but Wikipedia is not paper and there is no deadline. Most of the article creation is done by those who don't follow these discussions (Darius is, of course, the most prolific though the 2008 Games are quite likely to bring a whole lot of temporary enthusiasts). I don't think we really need to push creation of competitor stubs, though I am of the opinion that it would be good to have articles on all of them and have created quite a few myself. But we really should tag them and have at least a few eyes on them. -- Jonel | Speak 06:01, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
If we're looking for three tiers (low/medium/high), then I think these definitions make sense. It will probably be tricky to distinguish between the "historical" and "non-historical", though. Also, I think there is a huge difference between a medalist in an individual sport (or as part of a "small" team like relay, doubles, etc.) and a medalist in a team sport. Andrwsc 06:45, 8 March 2007 (UTC)
Uuh, yes, there's still the importance of an Olympian as an individual and part of a team. In this case, perhaps the impact status of the team should reflect on their members? Parutakupiu talk || contribs 16:51, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikiproject independence

So Jared, how are things with the "independence" of the project from the Sports "father"? Do we need an authorization or can we simply change the name and address all consequent changes? I wanted to start installing the new layout for the project, even if it's still a draft. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 03:44, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

We're good. I left a note on the WP Council talk page and on the WP Sports talk page and it looks like everything is OK. There's apparently no process.
It doesn't look like anyone got my joke though! I did that Declaration of Independence thing, but I guess they took it to mean that we don't want to have anything to do with WP:SPORTS. Well anyway, I think we're good. If I don't get a negative response on this page by anyone within a reasonable time (by later today, maybe), I'll do the move of the pages.
And by the way, your new layout is looking good! └Jared┘┌talk┐  20:53, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
Hi! I see you went ahead and started changing the name and implementing my layout. Great. The graphical portion is pratically finish, so it is mostly the data content (rules, documentation, guidelines) that needs to be added in time. I'll try to remove the "Sports" from other pages you left behind. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 18:51, 11 March 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, the big thing will be the categories, because you can't really just "move" them. There aren't too many though, and most pages are categorized through {{OlympicsWikiProject}}. └Jared┘┌talk┐  19:05, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Gambia at the Olympics

You may remember me from the discussion of "NationsinOlympics" some months ago. I just was notified that someone had proposed deletion of Gambia at the Olympics for non-notability. I'm not aware of what you as a project have decided about these articles, so would some of you project members please comment on the talk page? Thanks! Nyttend 14:02, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Membership update

You've already been "warned"... so what do you think of it? Parutakupiu talk || contribs 03:32, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Seems like a good idea. I don't think it's so much a way to get rid of those who don't contribute, but a way to keep tabs on who is able to help out when help is needed (but that's pretty much the same thing). Anyway, I reapplied, but I see you haven't yet! (You must still be trying to get out of doing the rest of those pictograms! Haha, just kidding!) └Jared┘┌talk┐  10:47, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
No, no. Not in that way. It is just a way to check who is really interested ;) (Don't worry, I'm not running away :P) Parutakupiu talk || contribs 17:37, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Naming issues, etc.

Hello all. I've been assessing articles and trying to populate the GA category as much as possible recently. I've gotten 2012 Summer Olympics bids GA'd and have two more on the GAC list as we speak, and I'm working on editing some more. A problem I'm facing, which is semi-related, is the naming of the bids pages. For example, the name 2012 Summer Olympics bids rolls off the tongue nicely, but I think it is incorrect; it should probably by 2012 Summer Olympics bids. If not that, something that has Olympics with the "s". Also, the "subpages" of the main page, like London 2012 Olympic bid work out fine, because "Olympic bid" describes "London 2012" but if we were to change the main page, we'd have to change this one too, and we'd have to add in "Summer." I don't care how we do it, or if we even do anything at all, but I just wanted to point out that these pages were probably created a while back and this (possibly) incorrect style has been used ever since. Comments?

Also, I'll probably try to FA Olympic sports pretty soon, and I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions. I'm trying to source some of the stuff, but if anyone can find any relevant pictures, material, etc, to add, that'd be helpful. Also, I was not sure whether I should link each one of the "dots" on the tables. It'd be a lot of work, but I think it'd be the best thing to to because it is a list. And we need to make a better system in regards to the demo sports.

And FYI, we're at about 2000 articles assessed, but something tells me there are a lot more out there... a lot more! └Jared┘┌talk┐  17:34, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Congrats on the recent nominations and good luck with the future ones ;) About the naming, the two possible choices are "Year Season Olympics bids" or "Year Olympic bids". Anyway, I don't think you have to "mess" with the specific bids' article name; just because the main page refers "Summer Olympics", the particular bids don't have to, since a viewer will reach them through the main page, knowing they are Summer bids. If not, the bid's article lead will say it so. So, imo, you just have to correct "2012 Summer Olympics bids" to "2012 Summer Olympics bids".
As for the Olympics sports page, I'll take a look and see what can be improved. But, once I asked if I should link the dots on the Diving at the Summer Olympics event table, to each event page, but was adviced against, so I don't know...
More than 2000 - woohoo! - and currently there aren't unassessed articles! Great job, people! And yes, there are MANY articles left, mostly the "Country at the Year Season Olympics" type. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 20:31, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
BTW, shouldn't Olympic sports be ranked "Top" importance, instead? Parutakupiu talk || contribs 20:40, 18 March 2007 (UTC)
Y Done (I don't know why it wasn't!) └Jared┘┌talk┐  21:11, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Diving Qualification

Hello, I just added the first qualified teams for the Diving synchronized events. But there's a problem. China as the host nation is automatically qualified, but China also qualified as one of three medal winners in at least two competitions during the World Championships. Does this mean the 4th placed teams at the WC also directly qualify for Beijing, or will the additional place be given at the World Cup as well. Here are the qualification standards . But I don't think, they are all that clear in this regard. Neville Longbottom 14:02, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I've found the answer myself. A PDF document on the FINA website said, that the top three finishers plus the host nation qualify, this has to mean the fourth ranked team is qualified as well. Neville Longbottom 14:17, 19 March 2007 (UTC)

Deletion nomination

List of cities that failed in their bids to host the Olympics has been nominated for deletion (nomination page) as redundant to Bids for Olympic Games and Bids for Olympic Games (ballots). -- Jonel | Speak 21:32, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Voted. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 04:56, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

AfD

It's not too important, but I'm just putting it out there that List of cities that failed in their bids to host the Olympics was nominated for deletion. I would really have no problem with it, but I wanted to see what you thought. └Jared┘┌talk┐  21:34, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Too slow! I got in 2 minutes ahead of you ;). -- Jonel | Speak 05:15, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
Haha. I didn't even look! └Jared┘┌talk┐  22:09, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Made a listing of multiple olympic gold medalists

I've worked my way through lots of Olympic results and statistics and made List of multiple Olympic gold medalists. It lists about 300 athletes who have won 3 or more Gold medals in the Olympics. Idealy we should maybe list them all, but they are simply too many, so I had to stop somewhere and decided on 3 gold as a good cut-off point. The list is then 46k, which is acceptable. The table is sortable every way, so it's usefull also to easily look up which athletes are the most winning from a particular nation, sport or period. I'm happy with it myself, but would like input on any way it can be improved. And in particular I'll be thankful for any corrections or additions. I've tried to double-check everything, but I'm sure there are still typos or mistakes in there. And there are most likely still some athletes missing. In particular I expect there are maybe a few sailors, rowers and maybe some less famous teamsports athletes that are still missing. There are also 5 redlinks, meaning that we still lack articles on at least 5 athletes who have won 3 gold medals in the olympics. I couldn't find any list like this on the net (that would have made my job much easier...) but if anyone knows about a list like this, it would be interesting to see it so we can compare and see who I've (or maybe they) missed. Thanks! Shanes 21:44, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

That's a great list, Shanes. In fact, this could perfectly be a see also article for the Olympic Games section Olympic champions and medalists, since there is also a summarized tabled list of the type. I think your "3 gold medal" lower limit is quite accceptable considering the reasons you mentioned. Great job! I'm going to tag it for the project. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 05:06, 21 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! There doesn't seem to be any objections to the list, and after further proof-reading I've gone ahead and added the link to the Olympic games and Lists of Olympic medalists articles. Shanes 13:35, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

Old shooters

How are the many medals won by old shooters in the early olympics treated in statistics and such? I've found that there are quite alot of them, especially American shooters, who in various team-events up until 1924 took home quite alot of gold. But do they "count" all of them? I'm a very confused, because sources list varying numbers. Say you want to answer the question "Which American has won the most olympic medals?" The answer that most trivia nuts will give you is Jenny Thompson with 12 medals. And the article on her also states this. But if we're to believe olympic.org's statistics this is wrong. Who is it then, you ask? It's Carl Osburn. (Yep, that's a redlink). He won 13 medals from 1912 to 1924, 6 of them gold. Impressive, and we don't even have an article on him. An American. But do all of these medals "count"? The other source I use when I look for stats is the quite reliable, but much less oficial, databaseOlympics.com which lists him with "only" having won 11 medals[4]. Olympics.org lists him with 3 medals in 1924, while databaseOlympics.com lists only one, it doesn't mention two team events in 1924.

Does anyone know what the deal is with all these shooting medals? Shanes 02:48, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, what I can say to you is this: as far as medalists data is concerned (who won which medal and how many), we use the IOC's database as main reference, since it's the official source of the Games (even though I sometimes suspect some mistakes concerning some events in earlier Games). But you can always double check any of the varying numbers you find with the official reports which are archived and available here.
Suspect? There are some blatant errors in there (usually along the lines of giving two different nationalities for the same competitor), as well as plenty of missing team data. But it is still official, so... -- Jonel | Speak 05:15, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
I believe they even "obliterated" some diving events, just for the sake of labeling them with the same name. But it got quite confusing with different sources giving different names for events won by the same divers... I didn't want to "dive" any deeper. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 05:30, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
Hope this helps. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 04:50, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
I followed my own advice (curiosity) and checked the 1924 Paris Games report and found out why databaseOlympics.com list only 11 medals whereas the IOC lists 13 medals. Despite being part of the American medalist team in two shooting events, Osburn didn't actually participate (no shots on target), so formally he didn't contribute for that result. My guess is that the IOC gives him the medal for being a member of the team, but databaseOlympics.com does not because of his non-participation. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 05:05, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
Thanks! I didn't know about those reports. Yes, that he was on the team but didn't actually shoot must be the reason for the conflicting stats. That IOC lists him as still winning the medals could be just a mistake, but it could be that being part of a team was seen as important enough that he earned the medals by simply being available to shoot and giving support and advice. I don't know much about shooting, but it could be that some shooters were better at shooting in some conditions (wind for instance), and the whole "who shoots next" is decided by the team there and then, but who ever shoots they all get the medals. But that's just speculations. Another explanation could be that they've been awarded recently. I think I remember something about IOC changing the rules for at least some team sports (soccer in particular), where everyone on the team now get medals even if they haven't played. If this is correct, it could be that they also gave previous non-participating team members medals. I don't know. The simplest thing for us is probably to just take the IOC-stats as facts and go with them. But I must say I don't feel like removing the "most medals" part from the Jenny Thompson page just yet. It's even the first thing mentioned on her US-team profile page[5]. I bet she's proud of that feat and that she haven't even heard about Carl Osburn :-). But I'll go with the IOC-numbers for the List of multiple Olympic gold medalists page. Whoever writes the Carl Osburn article will have the task of explaining the medals. The bonus, 13 medals or 11, is most likely a WP:DYK there for whoever writes an article on that forgotten sharp shooter. Shanes 06:07, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes, I agree it's better to follow the IOC stats. In terms of medal attribution, I think there aren't any controversial mistakes (unlike with some sports events and nationalities). Parutakupiu talk || contribs 15:14, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
The whole pre-1932 Olympic shooting programme was a mess. And the sources for it are confusing as heck. Events tend toward an average of 2.7 names apiece, depending on which source you look at, usually with substantial disagreement on the distance the shots were fired at. Adjectives such as "free", "military", "army", and "rapid fire" are tossed about seemingly at random. Good luck figuring anything out for sure when it comes to early shooting contests. -- Jonel | Speak 05:15, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
As Jonel pointed out, there are a lot of inconsistencies between even the IOC medal database and the official Olympic reports, both of which are our primary sources. I believe that any other references should be treated as secondary, but copious footnotes can help explain situations where these secondary sources are probably more accurate. Some examples of where we've done this:
  • In athletics at the 1904 Summer Olympics, Albert Coray is described as a "Frenchman" in one of the reports, but the IOC medal database shows him winning the silver medal in the marathon for USA, but also winning a silver in the 4 mile team race as part of a mixed team (which implies he wasn't American...). Despite the inconsistency, we follow the IOC medal database with respect to whether FRA or USA gets that marathon medal, but we have footnotes to describe the situation. We also have explanatory text at France at the 1904 Summer Olympics.
  • In Figure skating at the 1908 Summer Olympics, the IOC medal database shows the silver medalist in ladies' pairs (Dorothy Greenhough-Smith) as from GER instead of GBR, and this error carries through to make the overall medal count inaccurate. I put an appropriate footnote on 1908 Summer Olympics medal count to explain this.
  • In Athletics at the 1900 Summer Olympics, the winner of the marathon (Michel Théato) is still shown in the IOC medal database as from France despite later research discovering his nationality from Luxembourg. Therefore, we still attribute that medal to FRA with respect to medal counts, but explain the situation on pages like Luxembourg at the 1900 Summer Olympics.
Good luck sorting through all this data! I'm currently working on creating per-sport and per-Games medal tables for each nation at the Summer Olympics (similar to what I did for the Winter Olympics on pages like Switzerland at the Winter Olympics) and I'm finding (and fixing) errors on our Wikipedia pages for every Games I've examined so far. Let's just say that our WikiProject is quite challenging with respect to ensuring accuracy... Andrwsc 15:49, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
Yeah, I'm starting to understand that. Explaining possibly confusing or wrong information in the primary sources in footnotes sounds reasonable. I'll try do that myself. I'm thinking about writing the IOC to ask them about some of the biggest inconsistancies. Has anyone done that before? It could be that I'll never get an answer, but maybe they'll be glad to correct any mistakes in their database. I think I'll just ask about Carl Osburn first, and if they respond, we could prepare a whole list of conflicting information, like the examples you mention, and see if maybe both us and them can get it all straighten out, or at least some of it. Might be worth a try. Shanes 16:16, 22 March 2007 (UTC)
Good luck with getting any info out of those copyright-obsessed :P Parutakupiu talk || contribs 16:42, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

Peer reviews

Hey, a request has been made for a peer-review of Rugby union at the Summer Olympics. Could some of your please have a read of the article and give any feedback? Would be greatly appreciated. The comments page can be found here. Thanks! - Shudda talk 01:41, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

(Changed heading to reflect this -->)Also, I had nominated 2012 Summer Olympics bids for PR, which is located here. └Jared┘┌talk┐  11:17, 23 March 2007 (UTC)
Partial comments given. More to come ;) Btw, I raised a question on Talk:Olympic sports. Parutakupiu talk || contribs 17:40, 23 March 2007 (UTC)