User:Yboy83/Records in swimming project

This page details a project to attempt to create a uniform format for presentation of records in swimming articles.

Introduction and current styles
There is a growing number of XXXX records in swimming articles now on WikiPedia with general main formatting styles being used.

Style A
 * European
 * Oceanian
 * Olympic Games
 * World Championships
 * European Championships
 * Oceania Championships
 * Australian
 * Japanese
 * British
 * New Zealand
 * Swedish
 * Venezuelan
 * World
 * Commonwealth
 * French

Style B
 * African
 * Americas
 * Italian
 * South Afrian
 * USA

Style C
 * South American
 * Dutch
 * Argentine
 * German
 * Hungarian
 * Commonwealth Games
 * Pan American Games

Other
 * IPC World
 * }

Project area 1: Sections/sub-sections
The major differences in styles as I see them are in the sections/subsection headings Questions:
 * Styles A and C have sections/sub-sections for men's LC, women's LC, men's SC and women's SC
 * Style B lists sections of men and women, with LC and SC side-by-side within each section
 * Which style is preferred - is one more readable than others?
 * Should bgcolors be used?
 * What order should the sections be in: men before women?; LC before SC?

Project area 2: Fields displayed
Whilst all of the fields used in the articles are the same vital information for each record, there are a number of other fields which occur in a number of the articles. A standard list of fields to be included should be decided upon, split into those required, and those optional.

Fields currently in use are: (italic: infrequently used)
 * Event
 * Time/Result
 * Name
 * Nationality (sometimes combined with Name)
 * Date
 * Location
 * References/Notes
 * Championship / meet / games
 * Heat / semifinal / final / relay lead-off leg
 * Club

Project area 3: Event naming, higher level record notations, time and date formats
I propose to standardise these small formatting issues across the articles:
 * Event naming:
 * {distance}&amp;nbsp;{unit} {stroke}
 * Stroke should be in lower-case lettering as they are not proper nouns
 * Relays should be 4×{distance}... not 4x{distance}...
 * Higher level record notations:
 * A decision to be discussed and made on how to recognise higher level records
 * Time format:
 * All times should be in the format: m:ss.00
 * Decision to be made on whether leading minute should be included for events lasting less than one minute - what is the Wikipedia standard
 * Date format:
 * The project should investigate the standard format for dates within Wikipedia

Project area 4: Referencing
All records should be referenced, however work on completing this should come after preparing the standard formatting for the articles.

Plan
Before making major changes to the formatting of articles, we should discuss the above project areas, before coming to a consensus, then allocating tasks to individual editors.
 * User:Yboy83/Records in swimming project/Discussion
 * User:Yboy83/Records in swimming project/Template Development
 * User:Yboy83/Records in swimming project/Task List and Progression