Template talk:MedalTop/Archive 1

de Coubertin medal
I think it would be appropriate to include the Pierre de Coubertin medal in this box, but wouldn't know how to do that myself. Average Earthman 16:35, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Done. Use the  for that.  the only argument is the year.  (i.e. ).  Since this is considered by many to be greater than a Gold medal, and since it is not associated with a particular sport, please place this directly after the  template.  It's not too terribly beautiful, so if anyone wants to fix it up, that would be wonderful :o)   tiZom(2¢)  18:40, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I have changed it to make it a bit tidier, keeping everything on the one line. Let me know what you think! mattbr30 15:42, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Disqualified
If an olympian has had a medal taken away due to verified drug use (for instance, those people who appear on this list), then the &#123;{MedalDisqualified}} template may be used in place of the medal that was revoked. tiZom(2¢) 18:40, 12 February 2006 (UTC)

Color change
Why was the bgcolor changed to #E3DFE0? Looks awful. --24.205.144.125 03:48, 17 February 2006 (UTC)


 * The current color is also far too similar to that of the silver medal. I'm going to change it back to white. -- Jonel | Speak 04:28, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
 * thank you. --Pelladon 10:01, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I know, I thought it looked rotten too... The problem was that someone changed the olympic rings image from one with a white background to one with a darker background. I understand that the colors on the rings themselves are more accurate, but the background of the image should match the background of the top of the table - otherwise, it looks trashy.  I've just uploaded a PNG of the new ring colors with a white background.  Looks a little better now.  tiZom(2¢)  16:01, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Great work! -- Jonel | Speak 19:42, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

Medal Images
I must admit, I'm not too fond of the medal images - it feels a bit cluttered. But then again, it looked kind of empty before. Any thoughts on this? tiZom(2¢) 23:24, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I kinda like it, but I'm not particularly attached to it. -- Jonel | Speak 23:54, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't like them. I've noticed that they add to the page load - not necessarily on athlete pages, but on other pages - and I don't understand the significance of the design on them. Sue Anne 17:27, 21 February 2006 (UTC)

They look a little too cartoony to me. I don't know if they're really contributing to the extra bandwidth though, because they're only adding 2k each, so at most 6k to the total page size (right?). As for the design on them, there really is no significance. It's just a gold, silver, and bronze medal that someone designed with a cup on it. I particularly don't like them that much, but like I said before, I think it looks a little bland with just nothing there. Maybe if those Medals were aligned on the left? I don't know... tiZom(2¢) 17:42, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I've removed them for now. -- Jonel | Speak 00:50, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I liked them. They're far smaller than say a picture of the athlete in question. When they were removed, the chart looked like it was missing something. -- Don Sowell 01:41, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
 * I'll put it on Olympic conventions for wider discussion. -- Jonel | Speak 01:52, 22 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Oppose I strongly oppose using the medals templates that are set out to be used by this page. They are quite ugly, to be frank, and they are not bright and flashy to catch the user's eye. They are very dull. I urge you to consider your thoughts, as the cartoon-like ones used on many other pages are obviously better, brighter, and more attractive! -- Jared  [T]/[+ ] 20:58, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorting method
I'm not a fan of the proposed sorting method. I prefer sorting by sport, then year, then medal type. The advantage is that this allows quick and obvious recognition to the user of two pieces of information: the athlete's performance in each olympics that he or she competed in and the rough numbers of each medal won. With the medal types being already color coded, the reader can see quickly what the type of medals an athlete has won, so sorting by this ahead of individual olympics is overkill. -- Don Sowell 01:47, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

Athlete photo, name

 * This is a great template set. I have two suggestions for improvement: 1) Should we include a template for the athlete photo, to make things more consistent? Currently, non-experts/casual users like myself need to peek at other Olympic athletes in order to learn/remember how to include photos. And, 2) We should have the athlete's name prominently displayed (e.g., bold) immediately above the name of the sport (i.e., below the photo if one is present). Any comments? --Wernher 23:58, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

I have added to address this issue. The template takes the following arguments: The following code yields the box on the right:
 * 1) Image name (e.g. OlympicMedalist.jpg)
 * 2) Optional Size in px (e.g. 150px)

I did not add a place for a caption because this template is meant to be placed in a prominent place on the athlete's page, and the name is already shown in the title.

Also, the code wasn't working :oP

There are some circumstances where it may be appropriate for a caption to be displayed. For example, in the case of a team photo, the reader may want to know which team member is being referenced. In this case, it's probably advisable to move this to the left and caption it, similar to what was done in the page for Anette Norberg. I actually find this method preferable in all cases, and have been using it for most athletes. I think it just looks better. tiZom</b><sub style="color:black;">(2¢) 01:01, 24 February 2006 (UTC)


 * You know, I'm taking a second look at this, and I'm not too sure this is the way to go. Take a look at Elvis Stojko.  See how the medal list is separated from the title "Olympic Medal Record"?  The picture just doesn't really make sense there.  Any input?  <b style="color:#08457E;">tiZom</b><sub style="color:black;">(2¢)  03:56, 24 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I suggest we change the layout as follows: At the top, above the optional photo, we put the heading "Olympic medalist" together with the rings; below the photo, we put the athlete's name (in bold) and then the text "Medal record", in regular italics---how about that? --Wernher 12:51, 25 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Done. See .  Arguments are image (name only) and image size. <b style="color:#08457E;">tiZom</b><sub style="color:black;">(2¢)  20:12, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Why not just hardcode the 150px? I mean, the table and picture should be the same width every time. And that would mean one fewer argument to type in when adding the template.  -- Jonel | Speak 20:38, 25 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Done. Take a look:

Gives the box on the right:


 * Looks great to me! -- Jonel | Speak 22:09, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

How about the recent extension I've now done to, with a third, optional, argument for the athlete's name? Check out Anni Friesinger or Cindy Klassen for examples. (In case we'd decide that the vertical layout of a name-supplied medalist box would be more balanced with a matching white line above the photo, this may probably be fixed using an "if-template".) --Wernher 13:51, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Sorry, but we're trying to avoid using meta-templates (WP:AUM). But it looks great the way it is :o)  So we'll not worry about it.  <b style="color:#08457E;">tiZom</b><sub style="color:black;">(2¢)  18:10, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Chronological record item order?
I have noticed that for some medalists where this template set is used, the order of the medals is purely chronological rather than sorted by medal valor. I wonder whether the chrono order may actually be better that the valor order presented as "official usage" in this page. Comments? --Wernher 12:51, 25 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I must say that I'm torn. With the original way, it's really easy to see how many gold / silver / bronze medals each olympian has.  But this proposed ordering will show a better idea of how the olympian has done over time.  I'd like to get Jonel's opinion, since he proposed the original method.  <b style="color:#08457E;">tiZom</b><sub style="color:black;">(2¢)  19:44, 25 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Also torn. Both are useful in different ways.  I think I'm going to go with supporting the chronological order as first sort criterion.  The color used in the left column of the MedalXXX boxes is sufficient to show how many gold/silver/bronzes--we don't have a similarly easy way of visually distinguishing years. -- Jonel | Speak 20:05, 25 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I prefer chronological order as per my comment above from February 22. -- Don Sowell 21:50, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I somehow completely missed this part of the discussion. I think there were so many pages showing up on my watchlist in the last couple of days at the Olympics, that I missed this coming up. I would prefer the medals being sorted by medal, then by Olympics, and finally by event ... basically going left to right. I personally think the medal type is much more important than showing how they progressed over time. Sue Anne 01:54, 16 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Colours (or, medal images recently) are used to display "value". Why sort on gold, silver, bronze medal when the background colour already makes it very easy to count medals in that order? Yes, I agree that most athletes would rather win one gold medal than two, three silver or bronze medals, but it already is VERY easy to count golds. And if medals are sorted by "value", that will stress that point even more. No point in doing that. I'd rather see an athlete's progression or decline, because I can count the medals within a few seconds. It takes me a lot longer to see how an athlete "grew" or "deteriorated" when the medals are not ordered/sorted chronologically.


 * As a final remark, I'd like to state that everyone who missed this vote (or was there a vote to start with, anyway?) has not had a chance to argue this, not to mention the fact that "ordering by colour" "seems" to have been decided upon by 3, 4, 5, 10, people... while there are more than one million people having made English edits. I have created several articles and had others come in and change the Olympic medal order while justifying it with "style". How can a style that only at most 10 people have voted on constitute a majority in that respect? Come on, I could start a vote and have it close 2 weeks later about use of American English, British English, metric vs. imperial, and so on, and then (based on that vote) start changing every single article that did not have the "majority" vote. In short: There is no WP:MOS-<sorting of medals/world championships/records/other championships> and so on... so since there is no official English Wiki policy on this, I strongly object to people changing the "colour of medals" order if that is the only thing they "contribute" to an article. This – in my opinion – is the same thing as going into an article and changing the date format (May 19, 1975 vs. 19 May 1975) or 12 vs. 24 hour clocks or "realised vs. "realized" or "color" vs. "colour") for no objective reason at all – the only reason being that these particular users prefer one format over another, but NOT following official Wiki policy about certain things being equally valid. To conclude... can someone please show me where it has been made official Wiki policy to list Olympic medals in order of colour? If not, then no one has the right to change that in articles I have contributed. wjmt 04:24, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


 * May I add one more thing? Some people seem to want the English Wiki to reflect only their personal preferences. I have had people edit only the format of dates (while mine were equally valid as per the English Wiki) because they apparently preferred seeing dates in a certain (equally valid) format. Come on. Is that cooperation? That is so much against what Wikipedia stands for... to have a single repository for all human knowledge. If I wanted to have my own "niche" of things I am interested in, I'd copy the articles in question and keep them on my own hard drive. But it is completely against Wiki policy to impose one preferred format over another when the official policy on which formats are equally accepted states otherwise. Come on, this goes so much against Wiki policy and next time someone tries to impose his or her personal preferences on an article I stumble upon, while there is NO official policy for this, I'll revert that article the moment I see it. I don't care if that person has many more edits than I do or if that person is an admin. We are all peers here and there is only one English Wiki. Nobody owns Wiki. And if one or a few persons try to impose that on Wiki, then that makes them entirely against the nature of the beast.


 * Once more... tell me where "sorting by value" has been made Official Wiki Policy and I'll comply. But if someone from now on changes it in articles I contributed while it is not official style policy, I'll revert. I try to keep to the guidelines, but I expect the same thing from my peers.


 * Check template talk pages before using those templates. Said talk pages typically contain advice and discussion on usage and are a much more reasonable place to expect discussion than on the talk page of an article you created today (Talk:Karin Enke).  If you disagree with such advice or discussion, simply say so and attempt to convince people of the strength of your argument by reasoned discussion.  If you feel that year-event-color (rather than the current color-year-event or the above suggested year-color-event) is the proper sort order, convince us.


 * This is not, nor has it ever been, a vote. It is a discussion.  You have missed nothing.  It is all right there above your comments.  You, and any of the other million people who want to, still have every opportunity to argue your position.  The sort order was, essentially, chosen by me when I created these templates as it was what made the most sense to me at the time.  As you can see if you read my comment above, I have no personal attachment to it.  However, this is something that I feel should be standardised, whichever way we do it.  Sue Anne's comment, and the fact that there are editors out there who do go to the trouble of changing orders to fit the recommendation, show that there is support for sorting by medal color.  Unless someone feels that there is agreement to change the sort order (something I don't personally think is in evidence), it's probably going to stay the way it is.  At least unless we create the sort of comprehensive guide to Olympic editing that Tom has suggested elsewhere.


 * And since the MoS and official policy don't Olympic medal order, it falls upon Olympic editors such as you, me, and everyone else here to determine it. So please stop yelling about policy.  Especially when your last two paragraphs suggest that you might want to reread WP:OWN, which is official policy, yourself.  While Darius's changing of date formats is pretty much pointless, your reversion of it was equally pointless.  And your long diatribe on his talk page stretches WP:CIVIL. -- Jonel | Speak 05:26, 18 March 2006 (UTC)


 * OK. I guess I'm not "fit" enough to edit on wiki. I'll delete my account now. wjmt 06:40, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Some points ... Sue Anne 08:02, 18 March 2006 (UTC)
 * 1) If you take notice of the discussion that occurred during the initial setup of the templates, there was specific discussion about sorting by sport, medal color, year of Olympics and then event. Having completely missed the second discussion – that for the most part seemed rather ambivalent about the issue – I thought that the standard was still to sort by medal color after sport.
 * 2) I didn’t purposely go looking at any page to specifically sort the medal table. I was already on most the pages either adding categories and/or making certain categories more specific. (For example, changing “Competitors at 2006 Winter Olympics” to “Alpine skiers at 2006 Winter Olympics”. Seeing that the medals table was out of sort, in my opinion, I resorted the rows.)
 * 3) Since Tomtheman5 alerted me to the discussion I had previously missed, I have not resorted any medals table.
 * 4) Also, I agree that there is no MOS or anything of the sort regarding the use of these tables. Since working on these Olympics pages, the ones that do exist frequently contain errors or people creating a table with no specific order. It was not my intent to revert anyone’s decision (again, refer back to the fact that I have not “resorted” any tables since realizing that I was in error about that fact.
 * 5) As for other things, I think Assume Good Faith is a good standard to follow. Darius Dhlomo drives me a bit batty. He never uses edit summaries and he does things that I find unnerving at times. But, overall he’s working towards building a better encyclopedia and building up the Olympics sections of Wikipedia, which I would argue is a noble goal.
 * 6) Other than that, I stand by pretty much what Jonel said.
 * 7) Finally, no one said that you shouldn’t be an editor any longer but that maybe you needed to take a deep breath about some of these issues ...

New images
Thanks to R.Koot for uploading new medal images. I like them a lot better than the old ones. However, the only thing that concerns me is that we really need a consensus on ALL the instances where we will be showing a gold/silver/bronze medal. For example, the cells in the table in Ski jumping at the 2006 Winter Olympics should match the cells in the table in Ski jumping at the 2006 Winter Olympics - Normal Hill (K90), which should ultimately match the cells in the medal table for Lars Bystøl. It just seems off. I think that the Medal Table should be bolded, with no picture. Anyone else have any input? <b style="color:#08457E;">tiZom</b><sub style="color:black;">(2¢) 19:41, 25 February 2006 (UTC)


 * No opinion from me on whether or not there should be images, but I just hated the background colors. Also I think the column containg the medals should probably be left-algined, not centered. —Ruud 21:13, 25 February 2006 (UTC) (R.Koot)


 * Yeah, the new medals look better than the old ones. - Nick C 22:07, 25 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Agreed, much better (though I kinda like the background colors). -- Jonel | Speak 22:12, 25 February 2006 (UTC)


 * You happy bunch of Firefox users :) —Ruud 22:14, 25 February 2006 (UTC)

Oh wonderful - the images are working now - they weren't working on my browser before. Thanks, R.Koot (for whatever you did!). Anyway, I changed the colors so they're a little truer to life. Hope you all enjoy :o) <b style="color:#08457E;">tiZom</b><sub style="color:black;">(2¢)  00:07, 26 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I converted them to GIF files, which unfortunatly means we can't use a background color which differs too much from white or light gray. Cheers, —Ruud 00:12, 26 February 2006 (UTC)
 * Can we get the best of both worlds and have the new medal pictures and the background colors using a different file format? -- 24.17.161.101 21:50, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

How about these medal images, though? I think they are very intuitive and clear-looking. Arguably, one might remove the numbers, but also, they supply an extra 'layer' of information (superfluous?). --Wernher 01:14, 27 February 2006 (UTC)
 * So it's this


 * vs. this
 * (with or without backgrounds)


 * I must admit that I personally like the second one, as (1) it adds a little graphical appeal to what we previously had, (2) matches the same background colors very well, and (3) still matches all the millions of other WP pages on the olympics.


 * If we did this though, we are going to need to tweak the images a little bit so you can't see the white around it - something that I can probably do with MS Paint or something, and also we'll need to license the images (I haven't the faintest idea what to license this image as...so I left it blank until I can get some input on it.) And also, yeah, maybe the numbers are too much :o\  Also, not really a big deal though.  <b style="color:#08457E;">tiZom</b><sub style="color:black;">(2¢)  06:30, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I don't like the muted versions of the gold, silver, bronze colors in the first box. The ghosting around the images on the second box is really bad. Sue Anne 18:10, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I can fix that sometime when I get access to a good paint program. I like the second version better.  Let's do that.  <b style="color:#08457E;">tiZom</b><sub style="color:black;">(2¢)  18:28, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I can pretty much assure you that those images can't be used on Wikipedia, also i think the background colors in the second box are very... uhm... unsubtle. —Ruud 19:03, 28 February 2006 (UTC)


 * Re: the "can't be used on Wikipedia" statement: so the following passage from the originating website is to be ignored, then? "you are free to copy from this site in whole or part, provided that proper acknowledgement is given to Sports123.com, all rights reserved" . I thought that simply including such an acknowledgement on the page of each medal image would make it OK, then? Or we could ask the site's administrators explicitly for permission. Just wondering; as IANAL. --Wernher 11:09, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


 * The problem here being that sports123 does probably does not have the copyright on the images on their website. —Ruud 18:52, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I'm in favor of option number 2, using the images that they use on the IOC site. It's clear, it gives the user an instantaneous view on how that athlete has done, and the connection to the IOC site is a nice touch. - Don Sowell 17:27, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I am in favor of the 3rd table. This is on most of the pages currently, and they are more animated and drawing-like. The colors of the top one are quite ugly (as I mentioned above in a different section) and the second one is not so Olympic-like with its numbers. I urge you to consider using the 3rd option poermanently, as this is obviously the best option. -- Jared  [T]/[+ ] 21:04, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
 * I don't think they are obviously the best option as they are very pixelated and I don't think think their cartoonish style really fits in with the rest of the Wikipedia interface. Also might I again suggest not using background colors. Not only because I don't like them estetically, but because they make the text harder to read for people with vision problems or when printed with a black-white (laser) printer. —Ruud 21:26, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Ok, how about this one? I found this on the Michael Phelps page, and I liked it a lot, so I borrowed it. It addresses the following issues: Does this work? I'd really like to get this finished. <b style="color:#08457E;">tiZom</b><sub style="color:black;">(2¢) 23:17, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
 * It looks very informative and professional without looking cartoon-like.
 * It is extremely easy to distinguish - one glance, and you know exactly what is going on.
 * No copyright problems
 * It matches precisely the other Olympic pages
 * The colors aren't as "unsubtle" because they are no longer touching each other (I think that was the biggest problem)


 * I've always been against using any images, so I think this looks good. My only nit would be to center the "gold", "silver", "bronze" headings as with everything else centered and those to the left, it doesn't look right to me. Sue Anne 23:26, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

Fixed. I was thinking that too, after I looked at it. Won't be so much of a problem once we get some substance in the other cells, so that the left-most column shortens. Does anyone have a problem with the shading, and the fact that this is a non-standard infobox? I enjoyed the way the shades sort of guide your eyes down the chart. <b style="color:#08457E;">tiZom</b><sub style="color:black;">(2¢) 23:30, 1 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Since we can't use the rings image, I think shading works well. Sue Anne 23:33, 1 March 2006 (UTC)

If anyone has any problems with this, please say so here. Otherwise, I'll change it tomorrow. Thanks! <b style="color:#08457E;">tiZom</b><sub style="color:black;">(2¢) 00:25, 2 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Looks great. -- Jonel | Speak 22:47, 2 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Wait a minute, you can't just do that. There are like 10 people who wrote comments above (me inclusive) that may not agree with you. Please think about what you do before you do it. Other Wiki members have their say, too. -- Jared  [T]/[+ ] 23:25, 2 March 2006 (UTC)


 * First, let's not exagerate. In total, there are 9 people involved in this discussion. At least three of us seem to be on the same page regarding how the boxes should look. There is major disagreement about a) whether images should be used or not and b) if images are going to be used, what images should be used. Personally, the best course of action is to have the current template have no images - the way it was when Jonel created it before someone added the cartoony images with the cups - until we decide as a community a) if any images should even be used and b) what the images are going to be. Sue Anne 00:49, 3 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Heh, that was actually me that added the cartoony images (they were the only ones I was aware of us having on WP at the time). I also removed them (I think the bgcolor with no image does look best). -- Jonel | Speak 03:57, 3 March 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, Jared, I decided to be bold in bringing this to a base state upon which we can make additions. Please understand that I also took into consideration that in the Olympic conventions page, there is a 7-3 vote against the images. <b style="color:#08457E;">tiZom</b><sub style="color:black;">(2¢) 02:17, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
 * That's quite alright. Actually, I'm starting to get fed up with this whole Olympics thing; its quite overwhelming! I guess that box looks good enough. -- Jared  [T]/[+ ] 02:30, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Heh, try figuring out just exactly what was going on in the Sailing at the 1900 Summer Olympics competitions--that'll drive you bonkers. Bunches of events, not all Olympic.  Some of the best-known Olympic historians list some of the events; the IOC medals database lists some of those events and some others.  Even when they do overlap on which events are Olympic, they have different names for the sailors in a lot of the boats.  And it's never quite clear whether someone with the notation "{owner}" next to their name competed in the boat they owned or just sent the boat.  Throw in a mixed-nationality team or two, and the fun really begins.
 * And that's when you realize that you're still on only the 2nd edition of the Games and that there are plenty more with actual red links to Sport at the Y Olympics pages that you haven't even touched yet. That's when you take a step back, take a deep breath, and remember that there are a bunch of people working right along with you earnestly trying to improve WP's coverage of the Olympics. -- Jonel | Speak 03:57, 3 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Yeah, that pretty much hits the nail on the head! -- Jared  [T]/[+ ] 12:02, 3 March 2006 (UTC)