User talk:Green-eyed girl/Style guide/Grand Tour

Consensus answers
I'm quite in favor of a tour recap being two or three paragraphs long, and thus worthy of its own TOC section. It was an idea that just came to me in the course of writing this, and it seems pretty natural.

I prefer the "Vuelta" table. The "Tour" table is a little more streamlined, I admit, but I think it's ugly as hell. Maybe if we could find some other way of representing the rest days than the rather visually obtrusive dark gray highlight and "N/A" repeated over and over again.

I don't think we need any flags at all, but I certainly don't want them on every stage such as exists on the "Tour" table. I think they're somewhat aesthetically pleasing for stages that leave the race's primary nation, but I don't care all that much.

I don't really care about the stage type icons, either.

I don't want the stage winner and race leader in this table, but I'm not gonna lose sleep over it.

We could probably stand to tweak the "route" cell in the Vuelta table slightly. Nosleep break my slumber 08:25, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Kevin McE's opinions
There are so many differences between the two tables that I don't know what features I am supporting by indicating a preference.

In order of how strongly I would want to argue the point:
 * No flags in destination/start point (indicate country name in brackets)
 * No icons to indicate stage type (not meaningful extra info: limited range of text options that are not easily confused)
 * Include stage winner
 * Include overall leader (both so that a quick summary of most important headlines of stage available higher up the page than extracting it from Jersey table: yes it is slightly repetitive, but in different part of page. Also more closely follows presentation in article in earlier Grand Tours)
 * Start point and destination in same column (maybe with word to rather than hyphen, as many place names are hyphenated: consider the last stage of the TdF: Montereau-Fault-Yonne-Paris Champs-Élysées) (Because we want to describe the stage, not list towns: our interest in what happens between them, not in them)
 * Rest days as per Vuelta (neater) Kevin McE (talk) 09:11, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

EdgeNavdidad's opinions
On the stage summary table: The route column is better than the two "start" and "finish" columns, for the reason that Kevin McE gives. (On the other hand, I like the fact that the finish places are aligned horizontally...) Instead of the hyphen the endash should be used, but I agree that "to" might even be better. The distance column should not be named "km" but "distance" or maybe "length", and according to the Manual of Style, conversions to miles should be given, for example "167 km".

The rest days in the vuelta example are easier for the eye, but I don't like the bold font. It makes it look like the table header which could be confusion, and makes it look more important than the stage days, while they are less important. I like the icons before the stage types (the small versions from the Vuelta are better), but I am the one who introduced them.

In grand tours where there is more than one jersey (Tour after 1953, etc.), we should include a jersey progress table, so I would prefer not to include stage winner and classification leader in the stage table. Teams and stages: the same format as the short stage race.

Jersey progress table: For accessibility, a short description of the different classifications should be here. I tried something on the 2009 Giro d'Italia article. Of course the information can be found in other articles, but for the casual reader a short description is really needed. The same for the "Jersey wearers when one rider is leading two or more competitions" section.

Because the stage descriptions are put in different articles, a sort of navigation should be there. For this, I constructed the Cycling stage recaps template, for example:

The box already existed in cycling articles, I only made this article to standardize it. Should this be part of the style guide?--EdgeNavidad (talk) 09:53, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I'll get to the other points (from both of you) in a few hours (need a catnap before Vesuvio), but I should raise a point here that I also raised on the talk page for that template - I think it looks greatly out of place center-aligned. I can't think of anything that goes in the middle of an article that is center-aligned, but honestly, it also looks weird at the bottom of an article like this. I think it would look a lot better left-aligned. Nosleep  break my slumber 09:59, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I changed the template. Thanks for letting me know about your comments, I hadn't seen them, but now the page is on my watchlist. If there are comments about the template, let's discuss them on the template talkpage, if there are comments about when or where to use the template, let's discuss it here. --EdgeNavidad (talk) 14:32, 29 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I like the new template a lot better. Good work. Nosleep  break my slumber 18:09, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Malo0178's Reply
I would prefer start and finish within the same cell, and I could go either way with the winner and leader columns. I guess that would be all the aspects of the first table (including the rest day format). I do have to disagree with Kevin McE on the stage icons. I know when I look at the table, I don't read the text, I just look at the icons. So I would say keep them or even remove the text and put it as a pop-up for the icons similar to the format for the jersey icons. Malo0178 (talk) 12:58, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

+Severo
In a similar way to Kevin McE:


 * Table
 * No flags in destination/start point (indicate country name in brackets)
 * Distance in km and miles as per MOS:CONVERSIONS
 * Start point and destination in different columns
 * Rest days as per Vuelta or similar
 * Include stage icons
 * Include stage winner
 * Include overall leader

SeveroTC 19:03, 29 May 2009 (UTC)

Other elements?
The 2007 Tour de France article, and some others, included a section on UCI ProTour points gained during the competition. Any interest in this, in its World Rankings element? If so, only at the end of the race, or updated stage by stage? Only for Grand Tours, or for all World Calendar events?

It might look something like this (though probably with narrower columns: I'll work on that if there is support)

etc etc Kevin McE (talk) 09:23, 30 May 2009 (UTC)

I like the idea. If aesthetics suddenly matter again, then it might be best to tweak the column sizes a little. Nosleep break my slumber 19:40, 30 May 2009 (UTC)
 * I think that in general it adds information that is relevant to the article. However, the distinction between stage points and final classification points is irrelevant, I think. The last column, points at end of race, is also irrelevant here. What does it show? It shows that Menchov has the most points of the cyclists that joined the 2009 Giro. From this information, you can not see if he is ranked first or thirteenth overall. I would only keep the cyclists column, the team column and the points earned during the race. Less is more. --EdgeNavidad (talk) 14:39, 1 June 2009 (UTC)

Culling above opinions
It would be nice to get this nailed down before the Tour starts. Can we agree on what I've culled here?


 * No flags - seems agreed upon, though only Kevin and Severo actually commented on this


 * Include stage winner and GC leader - 1 don't care, 2 yes, 1 no, 1 no but don't really care (me). Oy. Shall we call this a yes?


 * Icons - 1 no, 3 yes, 1 no but don't care. I think we can call this a yes.


 * Route cell vs. individual columns for start and finish - 4 for route, 1 for columns. Looks like route it is


 * Rest days - Clear preference for how they appear in the "Vuelta" table on the style page, but should the font be changed?


 * Distance conversions - This one's not an option. We all need to get a little better at this. Severo provided a template on one of the other pages, I'll try to get in the habit of including it in my writing.

And there's also the matter of the race overview, which no one commented on here, but honestly it seems like a matter of common sense. Our articles, on Grand Tours certainly, act as previews for the event for weeks or months before the event takes place. This is not a bad thing, but it makes it a bit weird as to how to present all information after the race. I inserted a race overview on 2009 Giro d'Italia that I think neatly sums up the race, but it's directly followed by clearly "preview" sort of information (even though it's phrased in the past tense). How do we address this? I would not be in favor of drastically rewriting an event article after it takes place, but neither would I be in favor of limiting ourselves to bare bones info before a race. Hopefully those aren't the only options. What does everyone think? Nosleep break my slumber 00:24, 29 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Nosleep, I hadn't been to this page before, but I thought there was consensus previously (when this was discussed during the Giro) NOT to include the stage winner and GC leader in the stage table. I'd vote not to put them in, but I really don't care.  If the rest of you want them, then add them.  The rest of this looks OK. - AyaK (talk) 00:06, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Jersey progress table
Some changes have been done in the 2009 Tour de France article, to the Jersey progress table.


 * 1. The name has been changed to "Classification leadership"
 * 2. The headers with the jerseys no longer have background color.
 * 3. The font size is changed from "smaller" to "95%".
 * 4. The stage number is now bold.

This is something that would fit into the styleguide description here.

My opinion on these changes:
 * 1: It's a real improvement: not all the classification have jerseys, and it solves the problem of a how to describe cyclist wearing multiple jerseys.
 * 2: I would have never thought of this, but it makes the table easier to read. This is just a matter of taste, but I like it.
 * 3: No real opinion on this. But I thought that the Manual of Style said somewhere that the font size should only be changed in special cases, and I don't think this is one of them.
 * 4: I see no reason to make it bold, so I would propose to go back to the old style with this.

I added the two tables to the styleguide, to make it clear. --EdgeNavidad (talk) 12:26, 8 July 2009 (UTC)


 * Kevin McE's comments
 * 1 It was me who did this, and I've done it on a couple of other recent races, so obviously I'm in favour.
 * 2 I thought this made eminent good sense.
 * 3 and 4: I feel thoroughly neutral as to whether these are improvements or not.  I am surprised at Edge's comment that the font size has been made smaller: it's larger, and therefore clearer, on my screen.Kevin McE (talk) 12:53, 8 July 2009 (UTC)
 * My mistake. You are right, the font size has increased. I think we should increase it more, from 95% to 100%. (Not a big difference, but the Manual of Style might require it.)--EdgeNavidad (talk) 14:22, 8 July 2009 (UTC)