Talk:Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Olympics/GA1

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GA Review[edit]

I'll go ahead and take this GA review. H1nkles (talk) 20:55, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Checklist[edit]

GA review – see WP:WIAGA for criteria

  1. Is it well written?
    A. The prose is clear and concise, and the spelling and grammar are correct:
    B. It complies with the manual of style guidelines for lead sections, layout, words to watch, fiction, and list incorporation:
    prose is good though limited.
  2. Is it verifiable with no original research, as shown by a source spot-check?
    A. It contains a list of all references (sources of information), presented in accordance with the layout style guideline:
    B. Reliable sources are cited inline. All content that could reasonably be challenged, except for plot summaries and that which summarizes cited content elsewhere in the article, must be cited no later than the end of the paragraph (or line if the content is not in prose):
    C. It contains no original research:
    citations are impressive if a bit singularly reliant on BBC Sport. Bringing in other sources to provide variety will enhance the article's credibility.
    D. It contains no copyright violations nor plagiarism:
  3. Is it broad in its coverage?
    A. It addresses the main aspects of the topic:
    B. It stays focused on the topic without going into unnecessary detail (see summary style):
  4. Is it neutral?
    It represents viewpoints fairly and without editorial bias, giving due weight to each:
    Good work on editing out POV statements and focus to make it as neutral as possible.
  5. Is it stable?
    It does not change significantly from day to day because of an ongoing edit war or content dispute:
  6. Is it illustrated, if possible, by images?
    A. Images are tagged with their copyright status, and valid non-free use rationales are provided for non-free content:
    B. Images are relevant to the topic, and have suitable captions:
  7. Overall:
    Pass or Fail:
    See comments below.

Pass GA[edit]

I'm happy to pass this article as a Good Article. I have reviewed the changes and edits and I am pleased with the direction this article is taking. It is a model of all the thousands of articles that fall into the category of country at year Olympics. As previously stated, what will be required in order to move this article beyond GA status is a reduction in the overall size of the article while probing deeper into the results of each event that Team GB competed in. You rely heavily on the beautiful tables, which are impressive, but which also create the enormous size of this article. They are also limited in that they do not give the feeling of the events that copy edit can give. Congratulations on a job well done. H1nkles (talk) 16:00, 29 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

GA Review Philosophy[edit]

When I do an article review I like to provide a Heading-by-Heading breakdown of suggestions for how to make the article better. It is done in good faith as a means to improve the article. It does not mean that the article is not GA quality, or that the issues listed are keeping it from GA approval. I also undertake minor grammatical and prose edits, but I don't believe in making major edits as the reviewer. After I finish this part of the review I will look at the over arching quality of the article in light of the GA criteria and make my determination as to the overall quality of the article. H1nkles (talk) 21:00, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding "Lead" Heading[edit]

  • Try not to cite too much in the lead. Considering that the lead is supposed to be a summary of the article, one would assume those citations would come up in the body of the article, thereby making citations in the lead redundant. I can't cite anything from MoS about this so I would accept a cogent rebuttal argument.
  • The lead is 5 paragraphs, only 1 of which is longer than 2 sentences. Try to combine a couple of the paragraphs and condense to 3 but no more than 4 paragraphs per WP:LEAD.
  • I would recommend a brief explanation of what UK Sport is. This will help the reader understand the last paragraph in the lead better.
  • In my opinion this sentence is redundant, "The team was made up of athletes from the United Kingdom." We know they are from the UK unless you are attempting to establish that the terms "Great Britain" and "United Kingdom" are synonyms. In the last sentence in this paragraph you refer to the athletes as from the United Kingdom, I think that would suffice.
  • Recommend rewording this sentence, "The United Kingdom will be the next host of the Summer Olympics, holding the 2012 Games in London." The subject is ambiguous, and the sentence is too wordy. Perhaps this could be an alternative, "The United Kingdom will host the 2012 Summer Olympics in London."
  • Consider rewording this line, "Great Britain's medal performance at the 2008 Summer Olympics was its best for a century". Perhaps, "...was its best in a century."
  • The start of this sentence, "It is also the second highest total medal count Great Britain has ever achieved, with only the 1908 games resulting in more medals." is ambiguous. What does "it" refer to? I would suggest instead, "Team GB also acheived the second highest total medal count in its Olympic history, again coming in second to the 1908 team." H1nkles (talk) 21:39, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Firstly my thanks for taking on the review H1nkles. I've made some of the changes you talk about, combining paragraphs, changing wording and a small explaination of UK Sport, a further explaination is offered in the targets section. The sentence "The team was made up of athletes from the United Kingdom." is necessary precisly because GB and UK are not synonyms. The team actually represents the UK which includes Northern Ireland, not just GB, but is named GB due to one of those little quirks of the IOC. There is a long discussion of this naming somewhere on the talk page. I have however combined it with the info on how Northern Irish athletes may be selected so it seems less out of place. Of the references, 2 are used to back up this point, whilst the others are merely there to confirm overall numbers that are not mentioned elsewhere, I will remove one to the infobox if that would be better. The only further suggestion I could make is moving the paragraph on the achievements, and its references, to the "medallists" section but my opinion would be that this is important summary information. Basement12 (T.C) 22:28, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for your explanation of the GB/UK issue, I accept it. Overall the lead looks tighter. I won't get too nit picky since this is a GA review. Thank you for your prompt attention to the issues raised and your explanation of why you edited as you did. Personally, if someone can give me reasonable rationale for their edits then I will usually accept it. I'll continue my review. H1nkles (talk) 22:36, 18 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding "Medallists" Heading[edit]

  • I know a lot of blood, sweat, and tears has been spilt to get these tables into some sort of standardized format so I won't comment on the format, except to say that the tables appear organized, easy to navigate, user-friendly and intuitive so I say they're fine.
  • I also know that there's been a debate between the use of "medallists" vs. "medal winners". From your use of "medallists" am I to assume that this is the consensus reached by the community?
I personally proposed the use of "medalists" to standardise across all 2008 and previous pages, i believe only three editors had any feeling one way all the other and all favoured medalists (the British spelling "medallists" is used here due to strong national ties rule). I've since changed all 2500ish "Nation" at "Year" Olympics articles to this heading so it should now be considered the standard (as seen in WP:OLYMOSNAT). Basement12 (T.C) 17:43, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good, and thank you for your yeoman effort there. Sheesh that must have taken a while. H1nkles (talk) 18:18, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding "Targets" Heading[edit]

  • I notice in this section that you did not bold Team GB, the rest of the references to Team GB are in bold, was this an oversight or intentional?
The intention was that it should only be bolded in the lede, to make it stand out as an alternative team name. I've ensured all other uses are unemboldened (is that a word?). Basement12 (T.C) 17:47, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I would change "gained Britain's 13th gold medal" to "earned Britain's 13th gold medal."
  • This sentence has some syntax problems, "This led, on 20 August, Day 13 of the Games, to the British Olympic Association setting a new target of 20 gold medals due to better than expected results.[12][13]" I would remove the date/day of the Games from this sentence and word it thusly, "This led the British Olympic Association to set a new target of 20 gold medals due to...." I try to avoid verbs with "ing" suffixes when ever possible.
  • I'm a little confused by this statement, "The minimum medal expectation, of 35 medals, was passed on 20 August when they claimed their 36th medal - a bronze medal at women's RS:X, won by Bryony Shaw. The total medal target was equalled when canoeist Tim Brabants took gold in the men's 1000 m K-1[14] claiming Britain's 41st physical medal (three further medals were guaranteed in boxing at the time)." What is the difference between the "minimum medal target" and the "total medal target"? It seems (to me anyway) unnecessary to state when Team GB passed the minimum medal target. I would just keep the "total medal target", which is more prestigious. Of course that's my opinion. Also put the citation at the end of the sentence rather than in the middle, just to make it more readable.
A little explaination (i will change some of the statement anyway)... basically it was predicted that there were a total of 41 medals that the team had a good/realistic chance of winning, but allowing for bad luck and other nations over achieving in a few events, and to give themselves a better chance of looking successful i guess, the main target was set at 35. Thus passing the 35 medal minimum target was seen as good but passing 41 was considered an excellent achievement beyond realistic expectations. i think, but am not sure, that these numbers were all based on performances in the most recent world/european championships in each sport. I'll play with it a bit so its clearer in the article. Basement12 (T.C) 17:56, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • You mention that Team GB did not meet some medal targets but exceeded others. You then go on to talk about the instances when they exceeded or met medal targets. To maintain NPOV you should probably also talk about the sports in which Team GB fell short of expectation. I know you display it in the table in this section but it would be more neutral to also highlight it in the paragraph, that way you give equal light to both sides.
I've added a few sentences on the failure of the archery team and their criticism of their coaches. Other than that its hard to write anything other than that sport X didn't reach the target set which doesn't add anything that can't be seen in the table. Basement12 (T.C) 18:24, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • The paragraph is quite long, consider breaking it into 2.
  • In regards to the † section under the table, this statement is redundant and just an expansion on the comment under the Medal Table. I would recommend either combining them into one reference to the Chinese Gymnasts' age controversy or removing this one altogether. Personally I think it makes more sense to keep it under the Medal Targets table but that's just me, it could really go in either place but should not be in both. H1nkles (talk) 16:06, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding "Archery" Heading[edit]

  • Section looks good nothing to add here. H1nkles (talk) 18:03, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding "Athletics" Heading[edit]

  • In this sentence, "one gold, 2 silver and 1 bronze. The failure to meet the UK Sport target, of winning five medals,[11]" you should pick either to write out the numbers or represent them numerically but not both.
  • I would reword this sentence, "The failure to meet the UK Sport target, of winning five medals,[11] was a contributing factor in UK Athletics performance director Dave Collins standing down after the Games.[24]" It is too passive. Instead something like, "UK Athletics performance director Dave Collins resigned after the Games. This was due in part to the Athletics team's failure to meet the UK Sport target of winning five medals." H1nkles (talk) 18:15, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done Basement12 (T.C) 19:20, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding "Badminton" Heading[edit]

  • "Great Britain were represented in 4 of the 5 badminton events by 6 athletes". Two things, first is it "were" or "was", I think it's "was". Second, put the subject - six athletes - in the front of the sentence rather than the end, like this, "Six athletes represented Great Britain in four of the five badminton events." I'm trying to remove the passive voice from the sentence. I would then end the sentence there and start a new sentence with, "They did not win a medal, thereby failing to reach the one medal target set by UK Sport."

Done Basement12 (T.C) 19:20, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding "Boxing" Heading[edit]

  • I made a couple comma corrections otherwise good section.

Regarding "Canoeing" Heading[edit]

  • "Anna Hemmings and Jessica Walker in the K2 were added later after complications with the Spanish team.[31]" Change K2 to two person canoe or something that is a little more generic for the layman. K2 is a little bit of jargon.

Done Basement12 (T.C) 19:20, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding "Cycling" Heading[edit]

  • Again, several times you write out the numbers and other times you write them numerically.
  • "Chris Hoy's became Scotland's most", I think it's Hoy not Hoy's. It's wikilinked so I won't change it. Speaking of which you already wikilink Hoy in the previous paragraph, you don't need to link him twice. He's also wikilinked in the medal tables so you could probably get away with not linking any of the cyclists' names, except Cavendish - by the way, what happened to Cavendish? He was rockin' in the Tour De France and then he drops out to be fresh for the Olympics and can't get it together. Maybe he was fatigued from the tour. Sorry that's a side bar.
I think many readers will skip straight to the section on the sport that interests them, thus ignoring the medallists section, so I think leaving the links could be useful, i will however remove them as there is already a critical mass of blue in this area. By the way I think Cavendish was fine, the problem was that his team mate Wiggins was too tired from his other medal wining exploits to be able to compete at the top of his game :) Basement12 (T.C) 19:13, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough, I would say remove wikilinks of people already linked w/in the section. Also I loved watching Cavendish in the Tour and look forward to his participation next year. Lance will be there next year, which will make for a very interesting Tour. H1nkles (talk) 19:55, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I recommend moving cite #32 to the end of the sentence rather than the middle. Just makes the article more readable when in-line citations are not in the middle of sentences. H1nkles (talk) 18:42, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The reference in question only refers to the first part of the sentence, the references at the end of the sentence to what comes afterwards. I think, but am not sure that in cases like this the style guidelines say the reference should go directly after the information it backs up? If i'm wrong on this i will change it. Basement12 (T.C) 19:13, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not 100% on what the style guides say, I'll look into it and let you know. H1nkles (talk) 19:55, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • According to MoS (see section 8.12) citations should be after punctuation including commas, so as long as there is a comma dilineating a certain thought then go aheand and keep the in-line citation where it is. H1nkles (talk) 20:01, 19 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding "Diving" Heading[edit]

No problems, good section.

Regarding "Equestrian" Heading[edit]

I made a minor grammatical correction otherwise no problems here.

Regarding "Fencing" Heading[edit]

  • The only correction I would make would be to spell out FIE rather than have it abbreviated in the body of the article, then put (FIE) after it with a little explanation of what FIE is. This is absolutely a personal preference to avoid jargon, not a hard and fast rule. H1nkles (talk) 15:31, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Done, seemed sensible to me as I didn't know exactly what the FIE was before following the link. Basement12 (T.C) 18:20, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding "Gymnastics" Heading[edit]

  • Consider specifying that the gymnast was out due to a slipped disk in her back. Some readers may not understand "slipped disk".
  • You have another blurb about the gymnastics age controversy, this should be removed. H1nkles (talk) 20:12, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I have specified "in her back" and also wikilinked slipped disc. I've substantially shortened the note on the age controversy but feel it is necssary to leave a short explaination here, with the references from above repeated, as a reader may just read this section and not the whole article. At some stage, when the situation is resolved one way or another, there will need to be a note there anyway (like the one found for the changes in the heptathlon rankings). Hope that is an ok solution. Basement12 (T.C) 21:22, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That's a reasonable solution. I was thinking after I wrote the suggestion that as long as the note wasn't a verbatim copy of the previous note then it would be fine for the same rason you stated. H1nkles (talk) 00:18, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding "Hockey" Heading[edit]

  • Everywhere else in the section you refer to the event as "Field Hockey", therefore, I think the heading should be retitled "Field Hockey".
  • I fixed a few minor grammatical errors otherwise it looks good. H1nkles (talk) 20:22, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I think "field" hockey is only used in the wikilinks to other articles. In the UK the sport is known only as hockey, confusion with ice hockey isn't really an issue, so i would suggest that the heading be left as is. Basement12 (T.C) 21:12, 20 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You would have a better cultural insight than I would. The suggestion was to remove ambiguity even though I'm sure very few would think that ice hockey would be played at the Summer Olympics. H1nkles (talk) 00:21, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
You may be suprised at the lack of thought some people are capable of then :), i'm sure any British reader would look alphabetically for "hockey", which would just about be covered by WP:ENGVAR. Basement12 (T.C) 00:39, 21 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I have updated this section to use the roster and tournament statistics tables proposed for team sports by WP:WikiProject Olympics, replacing the roster and match summary tables that had previously been used. Please let me know if there is strong objection to this. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 15:10, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding "Judo" Heading[edit]

  • "Team GB were represented by seven athletes in the Judo events.[51]" Is it "were" or "was"? I think it's "was" represented since in this sentence Team GB is singular.

Regarding "Modern Pentathlon Heading[edit]

No problems good section.

Regarding "Rowing" Heading[edit]

  • Consider revising this sentence, "Medals were won in 6 events, including gold in the coxless fours for the third successive games, meaning GB topped the rowing medal table.[54]" The last part should read, "which meant GB topped the rowing medal table."

Regarding "Sailing" Heading[edit]

Aside from a minor grammatical fix it's fine.

Regarding "Swimming" Heading[edit]

  • Consider wikilinking the 2008 World Open Water Swimming Championships.
  • You run into the problem of numbers spelled out and written numerically here.
  • "Britain's first Olympic swimming title since 1988, and the first swimming gold by a British woman since 1960. Her second Gold in the 800 m" you have Gold capitalized and not capitalized, I think not capitalized is more correct.
  • In the tables you bold CR and ER but not NR, is there a reason for this? Also I note that you do not have any of them bold in the records table below. Consider unbolding for consistency.
Fixed everything apart from the wikilinking. As far as I can find out there is no article for the 2008 World Open Water Swimming Championships, if one were to be created I couldn't say for sure what exact name it'd be under either (could be 2008 or 5th championships or it could include the name of the governing body, FINA). I think for now no link is better than a long, red and possibly incorrect one? Basement12 (T.C) 21:25, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
That's fine, I assumed there was one, that's what I get for assuming. H1nkles (talk) 21:37, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding "Synchornized Swimming" Heading[edit]

Fine.

Regarding "Taekwondo" Heading[edit]

  • "entered three entrants" an awkward wording here, entered-entrants. Consider athletes or competitors or a noun that doesn't have the same root as the verb.

Regarding "Tennis" Heading[edit]

  • As with fencing, consider spelling out ITF and explaining what it is.
  • Is there a table for world rankings in tennis that could be wikilinked in reference to Andy Murray's world ranking?
I've linked to the relevant section of Tennis at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Qualification as this should be a permanent record of his ranking at the time, plus I don't think Wikipedia keeps a record of the current rankings. Basement12 (T.C) 21:29, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding "Triathlon" Heading[edit]

  • Same as Tennis and Fencing, spell out ITU and explain it.
  • Also consider wikilinking the 2008 Triathlon World Championship.
Same issue as for swimming with the wikilinking here, no article on that year's championships or the event in general. Basement12 (T.C) 21:35, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding "Weightlifting" Heading[edit]

  • "The only British weightlifter to qualify for the games was Michaela Breeze who competed in her second Olympics games.[63]" I think you mean, "...her second Olympic Games." Remove "s" from Olympics and capitalize Games. H1nkles (talk) 20:49, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding "Other Sports" Heading[edit]

  • This sentence doesn't make sense to me, "British representatives participated in the qualifying tournaments of a number of other Olympic sports in the lead up to the 2008 games, only for outside events to prevent their further participation in the games." I'm looking at the last section about outside events. What are you trying to say?
  • In the Football subheading you don't wikilink Portugal, Italy, Sweden and Denmark. Is there a reason for this?
The opening sentence is saying that British athletes would have been entered into other sports if not for issues outside of their own control, issues of team funding for baseball and lack of agreement on team make-up for football that the athletes themselves could not influence. I've made a small change to clarify this. The links to relevant team articles are done. Basement12 (T.C) 21:48, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Why is this section needed? Why aren't basketball, handball, softball, volleyball, water polo, or wrestling mentioned? Surely GB had entries in pre-Olympic qualification tournaments for some of those sports also. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 15:17, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
The stories behind these particular sports and why there were not British entries are controversial. The whole issue of a GB football team has been a massive talking point in the British media. The reasons behind these sports not being contested goes beyond the simple failure to qualify explanations for the other sports you mention. Basement12 (T.C) 15:25, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Ah, ok. For baseball, the lack of funding prevented participation in the final qualifying tournament, but they would not have necessarily finished ahead of Canada, Korea, or Chinese Taipei to qualify for the Games themselves, so that is certainly a different situation from football. Does it warrant the same weight? My feeling is that "Other sports" looks out of place, and perhaps should be replaced by a "Football" section that explains that situation alone. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 15:43, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It probably doesn't deserve equal weight with the football issues, at least interms of the coverage it recieved, but then the section is already far smaller. I feel that as we have the information and a suitable reference it deserves to be included. Either way I think just a football section gives the wrong impression, seeing it in the TOC may make a reader think that a team did qualify. Perhaps changing the heading to something like "Sports not contested" (thats a crap name but something like that would be the general idea) and adding a short sentence listing the other sports at the games that GB didn't qualify for simply because they weren't good enough? Basement12 (T.C) 16:01, 23 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding "Records" Heading[edit]

I made a minor grammatical change, otherwise it's fine.

Regarding "Media Coverage" Heading[edit]

  • I would take this out, "and other countries to view delayed highlights". It makes a run-on sentence way too long and really doesn't add to the context of the paragraph. If you really want to keep it then split the sentence so that it isn't a run-on sentence.
  • Cite the paragraph about who anchored the Olympic media events and who provided expert commentary. H1nkles (talk) 21:35, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • The Eurosport and Radio coverage sentences are stub paragraphs, consider combining with the previous paragraph. Also in-line citation # 87 is not after a punctuation mark per our above discussion and and MoS section 8.12 regarding citations within a sentence. H1nkles (talk) 21:42, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
All done, i've covered the enire paragraph on anchors and commentary with a single press release that lists all of them (plus many more commentators). In case you were wondering I think what seperates the commentators listed from those not listed is that they are all past Olympc gold medallists. Basement12 (T.C) 22:02, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Sounds good, and how did you Brits get Michael Johnson to do Athletics commentary, when the US got Ato Bolden? Nothing against Ato Bolden but he's no Michael Johnson!

Overarching Comments[edit]

  • Very well-done. The article is comprehensive and well-written. The linking and citations look good.
  • Regarding the images: I think you should move the Ohuruogu photo, it is awkward where it currently resides. I think placing it in the Athletics Heading would work although you're going to likely run into formatting problems with all the tables you have in this article. If the photo could be reduced in size to match the margins of the tables above it then it would be fine where it is but it is an awkward size and does not seem to really fit where it currently sits. I refer you to MOS:IMAGES. It recommends staggering the photos starting on the right and then left and so on. Again, formatting may be so nightmarish that you may not want to do that, I'll leave it up to you. The copyrights check out, though I'm not an expert on this.
  • Citations appear credible. Check the formating on cite # 23, it appears to be incorrect. You rely very heavily on BBC Sport, which is fine for a GA, you probably want to diversify if you are going to move on to FA candidacy.
  • Speaking of FAC. This article could certainly qualify with some more work. The key in my opinion, would be to enhance the commentary on each discipline that the UK competed in. Instead of relying solely on tables to show results, explain some of how the events played out. This article could be more than just a compilation of results but it will take some dedicated effort similar to what has already been put into the article to get it to this point.
  • About the tables - If this is going to be the accepted format for all such articles then I can only imagine with the US or China articles will look like, countries that have entrants in nearly every sports discipline competed at the Games. To reduce the size of the article, if this is a concern, consider removing the country flags from the tables that have them. They are very colorful and really add to the look of the article but they are redundant since you have the three-letter country abbreviation immediately after the competitors name already. I'm speculating that the article size will be a hinderance should it be promoted to FAC as it currently stands. As I've previously said, I know a lot of work has been done to make the tables consistent across all nations, I don't want to go against community consensus on this issue. I think that is all I'll say at this point, I'll give time to make edits and corrections and then give my decision regarding GA status. Well done! H1nkles (talk) 22:09, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I fully understand what you are saying about the article length, it was a concern of mine also, this article currently stands as the 55th longest on all of Wikipedia on the list of long pages, with the equivalent US article in 5th and China in 8th (not sure if this would make it the longest GA if it gets promoted?). Obviously due to the sheer amount covered these articles will always be long but it may well become necessary to discuss ways of cutting them down. The idea of removing flags is an interesting one, however it should be noted that the flag and three letter code appear as part of the same template and i think both would need to appear together or be replaced with the full country name (discussed in Wikipedia:Manual of style (flags)). As for FA status its something i'd like to work towards. Expanding and diversifying a few references would be easy enough, articles from The Times, The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph are readily available if necessary, though few non-UK sources would be possible. I imagine however that it would fail on the issue of length. My counter argument would be that WP:SIZE is mainly concerned with large amounts of prose, and it only deals with specific problems for articles over 32Kb (a size this could never be cut down to) and 400KB (which it shouldn't reach), i doubt at its current length it could be linked to from the mainpage but i don't think that should stop it from being promoted entirely. Anyway that is for the future. For now I believe I have addressed all the points you've made that i'm able to. Thank you for all your suggestions and help Basement12 (T.C) 22:59, 22 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Further Comments[edit]

It appears as though edits continue on this article. I am seeking further comments from other editors who have an interest in this article. If I get no further input over the weekend then I will make my determination regarding GA status on Monday 9/29. H1nkles (talk) 20:00, 24 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Title[edit]

This may be completely asinine and if there is already consensus to the contrary on this then ignore it, but I was thinking since the title is so long that it might be wise to delete "Summer" since there is only one Olympic Games in 2008. Any thoughts? H1nkles (talk) 21:34, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

We have over three thousand articles of this form ("Nation at the year season Olympics"), so it would be a very sweeping change to go to a different naming scheme. There is also some merit in keeping consistency for all Summer Games to have "Summer" in the title, whether it is truly necessary (1924–1992 inclusive) or not (1896–1920, 1996–2008). If you want to pursue this idea, please, please, please start a discussion thread on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Olympics and not just make a decision here. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 22:04, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • I figured that there would be quite a discussion, no decision made, just a suggestion. I'll think about it a bit more. Thanks for helping me see the ramifications of such a change. H1nkles (talk) 22:25, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    Ok, great! — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 22:51, 25 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]