Template talk:World Athletics

Iaaf_name template
<<>>

GregorB 17:45, August 22, 2005 (UTC)


 * Eh, I started a similar template about a week ago, which is just simply . I don't think "name" needs to be clarified, since the only thing listed are profiles. Admittedly the tag hasn't been used as much as this one, but it might be good to merge the projects together? Sarge Baldy 02:09, 24 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Didn't know that... I haven't seen it used, and it is somewhat difficult to browse through existing templates. Anyway: I used "iaaf name" because: 1) IMDb template uses it, so it would work exactly like an existing (and quite popular) template, 2) because the IAAF web site might offer something else in the future (I believe they already have results grouped by competitions), and 3) because might be used for something else (ironically, I was correct about that one).


 * I happen to like the way your template looks better. I didn't want to use the word "biography" because it really isn't one; "profile" is more like it. The question is whether to link to IAAF internally or externally... Perhaps internally makes a little bit more sense after all, since the athlete link already gets you there. So yes, I'd like to see them merged in one way or another... GregorB 18:43, August 24, 2005 (UTC)


 * Well, yours is in more common usage, and I suppose it is possible they'll use the page for something else. I guess I chose the shorter name because it's easier and eventually saves some amount of space. It might be best to use my wording and your name, and I can just change the template on the few pages I did tag it with? Sarge Baldy 01:56, 25 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I agree completely... Please do go ahead and do it. GregorB 02:13, August 25, 2005 (UTC)
 * Done. Sarge Baldy 02:18, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

http://www.iaaf.org --> http://iaaf.org
http://www.iaaf.or --> http://iaaf.org is shorter and easier to spell.
 * Red information icon with gradient background.svg Not done: the latter is a URL hard-redirect to the former, which results in an irritating 'loop' in browsers (click 'back' just once, and you're immediately forwarded again to where you started from). Happy‑melon 14:18, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

PT interwiki
Could some administrator edit and put the Portuguese interwiki ( pt:Predefinição:Iaaf name )? Thanks Mwaldeck (talk) 14:11, 26 January 2009 (UTC)

Name field
What exactly is the purpose of the "name=" field? It seems to work fine without... Sillyfolkboy (talk) 19:25, 17 March 2009 (UTC)
 * The template uses as the default, but this is not optimal when the article name differs from the athlete's name; see e.g. Nicholas Kemboi (1989). GregorB (talk) 08:18, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Edit request (doc subpage)
Please create the doc subpage. Thanks! GregorB (talk) 08:21, 1 June 2009 (UTC) ✅ &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 09:31, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the proposal was move per request.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 12:37, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Template:Iaaf name → Template:IAAF name – International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF)see picture Caps is correct.--777sms (talk) 12:55, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

. But since IAAF is correct, I would say "rename". Teyandee (talk) 14:23, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Comment. We already have Template:IAAF name (it just redirects to Template:Iaaf name). And it works same as Template:iaaf name:
 * Support: Acronyms should be capitalized. –CWenger ( ^ •  @ ) 17:30, 30 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Meh. Seeing as it's a template it makes no difference, but seeing as someone feels strongly about it, I guess there's no reason not to move it either. Jenks24 (talk) 02:57, 1 May 2011 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Template links
I've noticed that whilst most of the time, the template links work fine, but recently, for some strange reason, the IAAF link returns a "500 - Internal server error." with the text: There is a problem with the resource you are looking for, and it cannot be displayed. It appears to be the digit 0 appearing in the generic URL. Take the recently created stub for Gideon Trotter as an example. The template links to http://www.iaaf.org/athletes/biographies/letter=0/athcode=248166/index.html, but if you change "letter=0" to the first letter of his surname (letter=t), http://www.iaaf.org/athletes/biographies/letter=t/athcode=248166/index.html, then the IAAF biography appears on screen. Why does this only affect a small amount of biography links? And can anything be done about it? Jared Preston (talk) 22:04, 30 August 2011 (UTC)
 * The IAAF seems to have revamped its internal webpage system in the last few months (I believe they have a new webmaster?). Previously, all IAAF website pages could be viewed at a variety of urls (with bits of code that generated competition specific backgrounds etc), but now only two versions are present – the main view and the print view. This change not only affects the biographies, but also ther articles.
 * Biographies are now only visible if the url has the correct letter in the "letter=" field of the url. I am in the middle of developing a template option to correct this problem.
 * There are fortunately two upsides – first, all IAAF pages with active incoming links appear to have been preserved. Only newly linked citations will need to modified, thus no replacement scheme is necessary (thank god!). Secondly, search engine results have been radically simplified as, previously, the same article would appear numerous times at different locations, whereas now only one link will appear. In terms of updating our behaviour, we need only use my new "letter" option on newer biographies (July 2011 onwards). SFB 18:53, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from, 1 November 2011
IAAF profile for

This edit provides a necessary update to the template. Since around July, the IAAF website has changed and the default "0" option is refused on new incoming links, giving an internal error (e.g. here). The letter option will allow the entry of the first letter of the athlete's surname delivering a valid response for future entries (e.g. here) and preserving backward compatibility with older active links. SFB 19:05, 1 November 2011 (UTC)


 * ✅ -- WOSlinker (talk) 20:20, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

IAAF new site
At the moment template work (sometimes), but the athletes biographies have a new link as http://www.iaaf.org/athletes/jamaica/usain-bolt. --Kasper2006 (talk) 07:50, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
 * Please see Template:IAAF profile. SFB 16:00, 26 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I've found that we can get all the old links working again by omitting the letter part of the code. This will save masses of work. Please can the link part of the code be updated as follows? Thanks. SFB 18:29, 9 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Yes check.svg Done -- Red rose64 (talk) 19:59, 9 March 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 29 March 2013
Please make the following change to strip out the disambiguators in article titles when automatically picking up the PAGENAME.

IAAF profile for

Thanks. SFB 22:25, 29 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done -- Red rose64 (talk) 12:29, 30 March 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 22 September 2013
Please edit this template to place the external link at the beginning of the line. That is the standard format used by most templates located in Category:Sports external link templates and Category:People and person external link templates. I have placed the updated code in Template:IAAF name/sandbox. Examples:
 * (current template)
 * (sandbox template)

-- Zyxw (talk) 09:14, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done -- Red rose64 (talk) 13:35, 22 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Thanks -- Zyxw (talk) 14:36, 22 September 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata
, great job linking IAAF name with Wikidata! Would you consider adding tracking categories such as "IAAF id different in Wikidata and Wikipedia" and "IAAF id not in Wikidata"? I also feel migration of ids to Wikidata is the way to go, and these two categories might help - see e.g. Official website. GregorB (talk) 16:58, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Great idea. I've added them on now. Thanks to the work of MATEUSZ on, everything has been set up for some time and thousands of athletes have their IDs in WikiData already. I've made a property proposal of my own to incorporate personal best data there. We'll see how that goes: if it works it should radically change and simplify how we include personal best info, across languages. SFB 18:32, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
 * , it seems that the template is currently querying P856, which I suppose is a C&P error - it should use P1146 throughout. GregorB (talk) 19:30, 20 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Ha ha - what a dumbo! Cheers for picking it up. SFB 20:26, 20 October 2015 (UTC)

Problem with IDs beginning with 0
I've noticed that whenever an athlete's ID begins with 0, the generated link does not lead to the athlete's bio, but redirects to the Athlete search engine at the IAAF's site. Take as an example Natta Nachan with the ID 014302687. Any ideas? Pietaster (talk) 16:10, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
 * If that's of any help, in this athlete's case the search engine doesn't show the typical redirect link, such as https://www.iaaf.org/athletes/athlete=56220 but the full url https://www.iaaf.org/athletes/thailand/nachan-natta-014302687. Pietaster (talk) 16:19, 13 May 2019 (UTC)
 * If this is still an issue, one workaround for this would be to use the format https://www.iaaf.org/athletes/_/014302687 instead of https://www.iaaf.org/athletes/athlete=014302687. It seems like a better plan going forward, but I haven't tested this redirect extensively with other IDs. --Habst (talk) 15:26, 22 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Update: I added a new conditional to the sandbox so it uses this new URL format only if the ID starts with 0, otherwise it continues to use the old format. This way there's no chance of any old URLs being broken, only the already-broken ones will be fixed. I also added new testcases to IAAF name/testcases to test this, and it seems to work fine. So I'm going to make a quick edit request here to implement my changes:


 * Feel free to let me know if there's any issues and I can try to fix. Thanks. --Habst (talk) 23:06, 23 May 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 19:55, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

Not working?
Hallo, I don't usually edit sports articles but was working on Mariam Mamdouh Farid, found her profile at https://www.worldathletics.org/athletes/qatar/mariam-mamdouh-farid-14760443 and wanted to include it as an External Link. I found this template and added but it didn't work:  it led me to https://www.worldathletics.org/athletes. Have they restructured the database perhaps? The German article has a link which reaches https://www.worldathletics.org/athletes/_/14760443, which appears to be a different URL for the page I found. All rather puzzling. Over to you: I've linked to the stats page without using the template. Pam D  08:38, 4 June 2020 (UTC)
 * I think the next post solved this problem. Thanks. Pam  D  07:38, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Edit request on 08 August 2021
Please replace the forward slash in front of the   query parameter on line 3 of this template with a question mark  as in my edit to the sandbox. Rationale: This template currently generates a URL of the form, which leads to a 502 error. Using a question mark, the usual query string separator, instead, correctly leads to the athlete's entry:. Presumably, the site's URL format was changed. – Rummskartoffel 21:49, 8 August 2021 (UTC)
 * ✅ firefly  ( t · c ) 06:42, 9 August 2021 (UTC)

Change URL format to unconditionally use https://www.worldathletics.org/athletes/_/ID
Please change the URL format to unconditionally use use, rather than conditionally using it only if the ID starts with a '0'. This is because some IDs don't start with a '0', but still require the new format, like. Currently this produces a blank page with the old format.

Four years ago I cautiously made the new format conditional, but it looks like I was too cautious and we will have to change to using the new format in all cases now, until we find some issue with it.

I made the change here: and tested it on the testcases, all working.

-- Habst (talk) 23:39, 22 April 2023 (UTC)


 * ✅.  P.I. Ellsworth &thinsp;, ed.  put'er there 10:48, 23 April 2023 (UTC)