Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Figure skating

Authorship
This style sheet was written by User:Figureskatingfan and User:Henni147. See here for discussion about the further development of this document. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 15:52, 18 June 2021 (UTC)

Figure skating bios pages: order of sections
I moved the discussion about the section order here to keep the FAC discussion at reasonable length. I hope, that's okay. The question is the following: If a skater finishes the competitive career (at amateur level) and turns professional, shall the skating technique section be placed before or after the professional career section?

I think, this is individual for every skater. My general suggestion is:
 * If the pro career has nothing to do with skating anymore, then I would place the skating technique section before the professional career section to have a clear cut. I think, this is Yolo4A4Lo's idea as well.
 * If the person continues skating as a professional, then I would place the the skating technique section after the pro career section. Usually it's the technical difficulty that gets significantly watered down from amateur to pro level, while quality and style don't change that much.
 * Hanyu is a special case, since he has announced that his skating philosophy, athletic approach, and attitude towards practice hasn't really changed by turning professional. He still has multiple types of quadruple jumps in his arsenal, even aims for a quad Axel, and managed to skate a clean run-through of his winning free skate from the 2018 Winter Olympics. So in that case, it definitely makes sense to place the pro career section before the skating technique and note that he kept all his jumps as a pro (even landed a clean 4Lo+3T combination in practice that has not yet been ratified in international competition yet).
 * If the difference between amateur and pro skating technique or style is significant, the skating technique section can be written in a comparative style or (in extreme case) be split into two sub-sections. However, I can't recall any skater, where the difference between amateur and pro tech/style is THAT big that it requires two separate sections.

That's my personal suggestion. What do you think? Henni147 (talk) 08:35, 26 August 2022 (UTC)


 * I will just copy-paste my reply on the FAC page here. For me, it's case-by-case with general guide as follows: Anyway, the way I see it, when skaters have a professional career that is still related to figure skating, either as ice show skaters, choreographers or coach, it's an extension of their career as whole. I don't know how to put it in words, so let me show you an example. Let's say we have a skater who turned into an actor then a politician. So, their career is basically:
 * Career
 * Skating career
 * Acting career
 * Political career
 * But, before they turned into acting, they turned professional first, so:
 * Career
 * Skating career
 * Competitive career
 * Professional career
 * Acting career
 * Political career
 * In that case, to maintain the order of the article, whatever subsections related to figure skating (except the list or table-heavy ones) goes under Skating Career. However, there will be too many levels of sections given career in FS most of the time divided based on the seasons, so we move up the levels on some subsections:
 * Competitive career (chronological)
 * 2001-2001 season etc.
 * Professional career (chronological)
 * Coaches and choreographers (summary)
 * Skating technique (summary)
 * - Figure skating ends here
 * Acting career (chronological)
 * Political (chronological)
 * - Career ends here
 * Other ventures/in media/ public life etc. (summary)
 * Personal life (summary)
 * Impact/Legacy (summary, if covers all of their careers, not certain career)
 * -- Other non list or table heavy sections end here
 * Records and achievements (Lists)
 * Programs (Tables)
 * Competitive highlights (Tables)
 * Filmography (Tables)
 * and so on.
 * For reference, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dwayne Johnson, Manny Pacquiao. -
 * Yolo4A4Lo (talk) 09:50, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Henni and Yolo, I'll chime in and share my opinion about the structure of FS bios. I agree with Henni; it depends upon the bio and it depends upon the skater. For example, Evan Lysacek, which is a GA but probably could use a GAR, doesn't have any content about Lysacek's life and career after skating. I suspect, though, that after more research is done about him, those sections would be added. Hanyu's article is complicated because his amateur career was long and he just retired. That being said, I like Yolo's suggestions above as a general rule that could be adapted as needed. I think that they should be presented as suggestions and not as any hard-fast policies, and that we should leave the structure of FS bios up to the discretion of the editor(s). There will be sections that are always required, of course, but any additional sections should depend upon sources and upon the skaters' lives and careers. I agree with Henni and Yolo that sections about skaters' different careers should be separate, but that lists and tables should be placed at the end of their bios. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 18:43, 26 August 2022 (UTC)
 * Comments from Yolo's articulation of this issue should be taken as well written and to the point. My suggestion would be to mainly use only biography articles which are peer reviewed for purposes of the discussion here, like Hanyu and like Tara. The Arnold article above is not peer reviewed while the Dwayne article Yolo links above is peer reviewed. Discussing policy should be oriented to Peer reviewed articles at the GA-level and FA-level. ErnestKrause (talk) 14:21, 27 August 2022 (UTC)

Question, re: infoboxes
Once the skate has retired, is it not appropriate to remove the skating club, coaches, and partner from the infobox, since they are all now technically former.

Additionally, most skaters don’t officially retire; they just stop competing. How long should we wait after their last competition to determine that they are now former competitive skaters? I’m thinking maybe three years? If, by some fluke, they do rise from the dead, we can always reverse course on their particular article. Bgsu98  (Talk)  13:32, 6 May 2024 (UTC)


 * The following decisions have been made on WikiProject Figure Skating:
 * list ALL partners (regardless if current or former) in the infobox in reverse order with the period in parentheses
 * only list the CURRENT coach(es) and skating club for skaters who are still active at competitive level and move all former coaches and skating clubs to the "competitive skating career" section in the prose part of the article
 * RE retirement: if the skater does NOT turn professional and does NOT officially announce retirement, I would wait a full Olympic cycle (4 years) after the last competition. If they have not returned to competition, I would declare them retired (and revert in the case of a later comeback).In any case, if a skater stops competing after the 2023–24 season for example, I would set 20XX–2024 to indicate a break or conclusion of the competitive career and put the addition of the retired parameter on hold.
 * Henni147 (talk) 15:30, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * So, if the skater is currently active, we only list the current partner, but if they are retired, we lost all their partners? Bgsu98   (Talk)  15:33, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * No. The partners get ALL listed in reverse order from last to first, regardless if active or not. Henni147 (talk) 15:34, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Okay, I misunderstood; thank you for clarifying. Bgsu98   (Talk)  15:34, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I just updated the example infobox and added it here too for clarification. Henni147 (talk) 15:41, 6 May 2024 (UTC)

Records table
A few comments on this table. I feel the first column (numbering) is unnecessary. The first column should be the dates, followed by the segment, score, event, notes (if applicable), and then references (if not bundled). I have adapted this table elsewhere - for example, on event articles to indicate records scored at a particular event. In that case, the skater and discipline come after the date and the event column is deleted.

Additionally, I would use the full spellings of Short program, Free skate, etc. instead of abbreviations that require a key placed above. The table is not so wide that abbreviating Short program to SP is really necessary. Bgsu98  (Talk)  16:42, 6 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Thank you very much for your suggestions! I tried to adapt them, removing the first column and replacing the abbreviations with the spelled-out terms in the segment column. A compact example without the "Notes" column would look like this:


 * Important notes: the correct official terms for the competition segments are "short program", "free skating", and "combined total". "Free skate" should only be used for a single program/performance, not the full competition segment. The ambiguous term "total score" should also be avoided because the "total segment score" or "total element score" are also total scores. You are always on the safe side with "combined total".
 * If needed, I can create the same template for competition articles with the columns "Date", "Discipline", "Skater(s)", "Score", "Segment", and "References".
 * Note: I noticed that the current formatting of most tables in competition articles violate Wikipedia's MOS regarding accessibility and table formatting left and right. The competition infobox is a disaster as well. This will definitely require a full brush-up if we want to nominate them for FA or A class. Henni147 (talk) 19:44, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The following competition articles should be formatted properly:
 * 2024 World Championships
 * 2024 European Championships
 * 2024 Four Continents Championships
 * 2024 World Junior Championships
 * 2024 U.S. Championships
 * 2024 Canadian Championships Bgsu98   (Talk)  20:42, 6 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Do you think, it would help to have templates for all standard tables in competition articles? It would ensure a uniform format that satisfies all Wiki MOS guidelines, and it would make the editing much faster and easier, too.
 * If needed, I can create all required templates this week. There are so many competitions every season; I think, this is worth a go. Henni147 (talk) 06:36, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Templates can be daunting for new users. If we have properly-formatted tables on these most recent events, we can simply copy/paste the format forward onto subsequent events. I believe all of the tables on these articles are correct. Bgsu98   (Talk)  06:40, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Most of the tables violate Wikipedia's MOS regarding table caption, accessibility, bold font usage, and the explanatory legend (which must be placed ABOVE the tables, not below them). Also, many column headers use outdated or incorrect terminology. The tables pretty much all need to get re-formatted if we want these articles to get promoted to FA/A class. Henni147 (talk) 09:10, 7 May 2024 (UTC)

Note: I just checked the article for the 2024 World Figure Skating Championships, and I noticed the following issues: The focus should really be more on the quality of the prose, which is missing in almost every FS competition article I checked. Henni147 (talk) 10:28, 7 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Assessment: No competition article should have an assessment status higher than start class (but rather stub class) that only consists of a lead and statistics tables. The minimum requirement for C-class must be the existence of a prose summary for all competition segments. See the featured 2018 World Snooker Championship article for comparison.
 * Excessive amount of tables: The current 2024 World Championships article has nine different types of tables. In relation to the expected prose length of the article, this is too much. The minimum TES, nations' entries per discipline, medalists, and scoring results should be more than sufficient.
 * Schedule: I checked multiple different sports, including, the World Aquatics Championships, tennis Grand Slam tournaments, and snooker tournaments. None of them lists the exact start/end time for each event on the main page of the competition. We can keep the schedule table to list the events for each day, but if we have proper prose sections for each competition segment, it may not be needed at all. Snooker does not have schedule tables either.
 * Entries: Is this table really needed? It is extremely huge and bulky, and the participants are already listed in the results tables. This is duplicate information and no other sport I checked lists all scheduled athletes in a seperate table. Changes to preliminary entries should generally be mentioned in the prose or added as bulleted lists, not as tables.
 * Medals by country: are these tables really needed? There are not that many medalists at FS competitions. One look at the medalists tables already tells you which countries won the most medals. This is also kind of duplicate information, unnecessary blowing up the stats section of the article. It is fine to add cumulative medal counts by country for the World Championships in general, but I don't see much value in it for single editions (especially not for small medals).
 * Sortable tables: The FS skater template may not be suitable for sortable tables because it is not really compatible with any sorting key. Those tables may need to get separate columns for each partner and use the template sortname to properly work, but I have to take another look.


 * Is it possible to build the sort feature into the template? I have added the sort feature to the men's and women's tables at 2024 World Championships.
 * As to your other feedback: I have made sure that all tables have captions. I have removed the tables for small medals by country as I agree they are unnecessary and pedantic. There is an argument about not needing an Entries tables once the competition is complete, but it is useful before the competition begins or is in progress. Ditto for the time schedule, which is included in Olympics articles. Bgsu98   (Talk)  12:28, 16 May 2024 (UTC)
 * NOTE: I have copy/pasted this potion of the conversation over to the Project's main talk page as it is more appropriate there. Bgsu98   (Talk)  12:35, 16 May 2024 (UTC)