Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Athletics/Archive 2

Lee Troop
Hi there, Lee Troop has been nominated for deletion. I think this article could do with some expert attention to source it properly, so posting here for attention. --Mkativerata (talk) 07:09, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Long distance move
I have requested a page move and disambiguation of Long distance, which will directly affect links from long-distance track event. Please see the request on the article talk page. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits) Join WikiProject Athletics!  17:48, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Cross Country results
What do people think about listing cross country results in a new way? I've tried to raise 2009 European Cross Country Championships close to good article status as an experiment and I've applied the same size results tables to the 2010 IAAF World Cross Country Championships article.

Currently, it's been pretty much the standard to list just the medallist athletes (e.g. 2009 World XC). However, because the race attracts track/road/cross runners under one roof, the top twenty or so finishers tend to be notable. Indeed, notability criteria at WP:ATHLETE seems to suggest that just an appearance makes the subject noteworthy. I disagree with such criteria but that's besides the main point: I think it is certainly worth listing the top 10 or 12 finishers of each race. We do the same and more on the championship event results articles.

However, I think that listing all the cross country finishers of each race would detract from the achievements of the top finishers (who should be the main focus for readers). Twelve is an arbitrary number, yes, but I think it's a decent amount of info for the readers (who can check external links for more information if interested). Does my thinking seem reasonable? What do other people think? Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits) Join WikiProject Athletics!  22:20, 27 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I agree. Maybe not all participants are notable, but many are, and WCCC is a top-level event. Even listing all results could make sense for top events, provided that the full list is not unreasonably large (e.g. Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics – Men's marathon - maybe a bit too large?). For lesser competitions, top 10 or even top 3 is probably enough. GregorB (talk) 23:09, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

Notability Essay
Other sports have notability essays that are well respected at AfDs (not as much as WP:ATH, but definitely considered). I think we should do the same. WP:ATH doesn't particularly fit well for Athletics in my opinion, depending on the interpretation of the wording. Therefore, I think it would be great to to write an essay as to who is deemed notable in the sport of athletics. My initial thoughts to an essay would be to create a list of qualifications that would grant notability. Things I could potentially think of (please comment, change, or add others) are
 * 1. Has competed in a (edit: major international competition)
 * 2. Has at one time held a world (edit:or area) record in an event
 * 3. Has a mark that was in the top X marks on the world leading list at the end of a calendar year (as published by the iaaf)
 * 4. Has a mark that is currently in the top Y marks on the all time list (as published by the iaaf)

(X and Y would be determined by consensus, as would all of the points in general) MATThematical (talk) 22:12, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Many of my articles test these limits, but then I'm a firm inclusionist. I think the people I take the time to write about deserve to be part of this worldwide database of information.  We, as a group, should not be looking to provide more ways to EXclude an article with tight definitions.  I've kind of ended up on a mission to save many articles already, so I've been through a few AfD battles.  I'm getting to know my way through these arguments.  Its an unfortunate game some (insert your favorite series of expletives here) people like to play here on Wikipedia--to try to find ways to delete information, usually in a subject they know nothing about; like our sport.  I hazard to include any specific articles as examples because surely the mere mention will attract some (more expletives deleted) to try to delete it.


 * WP:ATH already encompasses Item 1 easily. I will go so far as to mention that it already includes ANY official international competition.  I have put up several articles about athletes with lesser credentials.  I would think claiming Item 2 would put a subject out of reach.  Item 4 would follow suit  I have successfully argued on item 3, down to the top 20, though this was more exceptional than that (which is why I wrote the article in the first place).  Showing up on a world list, any list that is published to whatever depth it is calculated, should be sufficient to prove one's notability.  None of these limited definitions need to be improved.


 * If we are to give better definitions of somebody's notability, we should find ways to explain the nuances of our sport to allow an outsider to understand why somebody might be significant, without fitting into a hard series of limits. For example I am thinking of writing an article about Mark Fricker.  OK, he did make the US list barely one year.  His personal achievements weren't the story.  By being a miler with little finishing speed, he had to run hard from the start in order to have a chance to win.  I've lost count how many great mile races of the 80's, ones that otherwise would not have a rabbit and would suffer into a strategic battle, were made great by his presence.  here's one example.  That is but one example of the kind of a significant character that could easily be left out by hard rules, but I think should be included.


 * Our sport suffers enough from being ignored outside of the Olympics. Perhaps the majority of WP articles about characters in our sport are reduced to stubs about their Olympic accomplishments, rather than their career as a whole.  We shouldn't contribute to that narrow view.  Lets find ways to include MORE facits of the story of our sport, rather than to find ways to try to erase the digital history between Olympiads.Trackinfo (talk) 23:28, 15 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Let me comment briefly. Criterion #1 is already implied by WP:ATH, as noted by Trackinfo. Criterion #2 is perfectly natural. Criteria #3 and especially #4 perhaps give undue advantage to modern athletes (as opposed to, say, pre-WWII athletes).
 * Two questions: if someone is e.g. an European champion and nothing else (per criteria 1-4), is he or she notable? If someone is an area record holder (e.g. Asian record) and nothing else (again, per criteria 1-4), is he or she notable? I'd say yes. Moreover, I would even say that all current or past national record holders are notable, and that's because even the least notable people who held national records are on a similar level of performance (and, hence, notability) as the least notable people who competed at the Olympics (i.e. they are roughly the best their country has to offer). GregorB (talk) 18:53, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll answer some of that. European Champion demands that the athlete have competed in International competition.  That alone should satisfy WP:ATH and under reasonable circumstances shouldn't be challenged or should survive an AfD.  That assumes people being reasonable.  Some of the deletionists who frequently put things in AfD are not reasonable or necessarily even sane, thus my resorting to using expletives to describe them.  See comments from the BLP debate I got heavily involved in.  Fighting off such a challenge makes for unnecessary headaches.  The process can easily go unnoticed and an undefended article can easily disappear within days.  Its a scary process.


 * The question might come from somebody who achieves a National record or even an "Area" record but have never left their own soil. We have many cases where articles about such individuals don't exist, though I can't cite an example of one that has successfully been deleted.  I will note that Bo Jiang, the #2 performer EVER in the Women's 1500 metres certainly could fit that mold and does not have a Wikipedia article, nor do her country-mates who achieved their superior (though suspicious) marks behind her.Trackinfo (talk) 20:14, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
 * excellent discussion. I 100% agree that area records should count (added it above as an edit). National records may be tricky since there are small countries that may have national records that would not even be good enough to qualify for a major international meet. If a national record is good enough, I can't imagine it not satisfying #3 or #4. As far as #3 favoring current athletes, I'm not sure if thats true, while top lists only go back to 1999 on the iaaf website I figure they exist in print somewhere for quite a while back, people would just have to find them. As for #4 it definitely favors current athletes but current athlete (depending on what X and Y are) would likely be granted notability via number 3 because those more current top lists are so widely available. The #4 condition is actually there to protect older athletes who may still be on the current all time top list, but who no one can find an old world leading list 4. But perhaps we can have a separate clause for historical figures/older athletes.MATThematical (talk) 21:09, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Another reason why I like #4 is because if a great mark is achieved early in a season and someone wants to write a high quality page about the person, the editor should not have to wait until the end of the calendar year when the yearly top list is complete. If it is good enough to make the all time list, I think that is a good enough test to allow people to write the article right away. MATThematical (talk) 21:25, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

Age group records: Perhaps notability should be granted to people who have broke world/area age group records junior, masters records (and potentially season leading lists, although if we did this I would imagine X and Y would be much smaller for the age group runners). What do people think about this?MATThematical (talk) 21:20, 16 April 2010 (UTC)
 * You're right on #3: it doesn't favor current athletes in an absolute sense, it only makes proving the claim progressively harder as one goes back in time, as I gather that world rankings either were not officially compiled, say, 50 years ago, or are more difficult to obtain as a reliable source.
 * There was a discussion about a junior athlete some time ago (an AfD, if I remember correctly). Basically - again, IIRC - there was an agreement that a World Junior Champion is certainly notable, but mere participation in a WJ Championship is not enough. Also, by extension, WJR holder - former or current - should be notable.
 * Nevertheless, it is not necessary to cover absolutely all corner cases; whatever criteria are devised for track and field athletes, they should be construed as a definition of what is sufficient, not what is required, which means that even athletes that do not meet those criteria may still pass WP:GNG and be accepted as notable. GregorB (talk) 21:40, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I have created the Notability essay WikiProject Athletics/Notability, taking into account everyones comments, feel free to edit and discuss on the talk pageMATThematical (talk) 00:00, 17 April 2010 (UTC)

WP:ATH major Revisions going on that affect Athletics/Track & Field
There is discussion ongoing at Wikipedia_talk:BIO debating possible changes to the WP:ATHLETE notability guideline. As a result, some have suggested using WP:NSPORT as an eventual replacement for WP:ATHLETE. Editing has begun at WP:NSPORT, please participate to help refine the notability guideline for the sports covered by this wikiproject.

New track and field article started
I've been (very) bold and separated the topics of "Athletics" and "Track and field" so that we now have articles for both. For more discussion please see Talk:Athletics (sport) where I have moved the article that was previously at track and field athletics. All thoughts and ideas welcome. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits) Join WikiProject Athletics!  12:06, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I really appreciate the effort, but even after having read "The big overhaul" section I cannot understand how and why two separate articles are needed, useful or, in fact, even possible.
 * "Track and field" has two meanings:
 * "Athletics", as in International Association of Athletics Federations
 * Literally "track and field", i.e. a subset of 1) limited to events that take place either on track or on field.


 * So, no - "athletics" and "track and field" are not separate ideas, regardless of how we construe "track and field". For example, if we take a look at athletics at the Olympic Games, all athletic events except for marathon and racewalking are track and field events. How is it possible, then, to have an article on athletics, and a separate article on track and field, when there's really 80 or 90% of overlap between the two? Track and field events are the core of what is today understood as athletics.
 * The fact that Athletics is currently a disambig page is bewildering: who would, in their right mind, go to Athletics, and expect to see anything other than what is now Athletics (sport)? (Moreover, as you've noted yourself, Athletics (sport) is not a good title to begin with, since "sport" is hardly a useful disambiguating context here.)
 * The only reasonable solution (well, according to yours truly) would be:
 * Merge Athletics (sport) and Track and field into Athletics
 * Provide Athletics with a disambiguating hatnote that points to Sports or what have you
 * Once again, great work on the article(s), but I still don't think it's the best solution. GregorB (talk) 17:55, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll chime in here too. The double article does present a confusion.  While we have a difference of the American definition of Athletics-- a very generic anything related to games or sports; and the UK version which is the sport we yanks call "Track and Field" this doesn't appear to be the motive for the double article.  I think the merging of the two is a better idea.  If WP follows UK dialect, I don't have a problem with it being called "Athletics" as it is by Olympic designation, with multiple other terminology for the sport routing to the appropriate article.  There should be a disambiguation header to the generic sports definition maybe "Athletics (sports)", and certainly we have the Baseball team of the same name.  American will get confused--we have a department at every High School and College called "Athletics" that only sometimes will have a Track coach as a member.  But Americans are alway outside the norm in this sport--we still can't do any meaningful measurements in metric.  The previous double name "Track and field athletics" didn't bother me.  Its links are spread throughout WP articles, which bots are now changing.  Oh the humanity.  Having some information spread around two lead articles (but which one has which?) is far more confusing.  By the way, the Track and Field article seems stronger, though there are too many red links--Combined Events?  Starting blocks?  Track and Field meeting?  I thought a great new article would be coming out to improve our information, but there is more work to be done.Trackinfo (talk) 20:57, 21 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I understand the concerns noted above, but I think Sillyfolkboy has taken a step in the right direction. As someone primarily interested in road events (and an American at that), I'm glad to see "Track and field athletics" go. If we are attempting to develop some sort of consensus, I support GregorB's idea to merge/disambiguate as he has outlined in the two points specified above. Location (talk) 03:31, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Just to point out – "Track and field athletics" was a completely inappropriate title to cover the sport of athletics because that term means just "track and field", never "athletics". The only way to deal with the two topics within the same article is under a title which features "athletics", but does not feature the words "track and field". Wikipedia does not really provide titling conventions for articles that cover two different topics – obviously, most people write articles for each topic – the only truly logical way to have them both as the primary topic under one article would be as Athletics and track and field (I'm sure no one wants that!).
 * The two terms are not interchangeable thus any comparison to examples such as Football (soccer) or Elevator (lift) are entirely incorrect. A better approximation would be United Kingdom (England). There is plenty of cross over between the articles of the United Kingdom and England, but that doesn't mean we can't treat the two topics separately.


 * England's population makes up five sixths of the UK population (just as track and field makes up the majority of athletics events).
 * Due to this size, many of the most prominent UK people are English (just like track and field athletes in athletics).
 * England has no Parliament but instead it has its highest form of political representation included within the full UK Parliament, even though Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have their own political assemblies (just like the relationship track and field has with the World Championships in Athletics, yet we still have the IAAF World Cross Country Championships, the IAAF World Race Walking Cup and the IAAF World Road Running Championships).
 * The England article deals with England-specific information while the UK article deals with UK-specific information and incorporates information from the four constituent countries. What is wrong with having a track and field article dealing with track and field-specific information, and an athletics article dealing with athletics-specific information while incorporating information from the four constituent sports? In retrospect, I sincerely regret writing the track and field article and putting it here before having a full athletics article written so people could actually see the difference. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits) Join WikiProject Athletics!  15:41, 27 May 2010 (UTC)
 * For ease of discussion, let us use Talk:Athletics (sport) only to discuss whether we should have both a track and field and an athletics article, or whether would should have just one combined article. Cheers. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits) Join WikiProject Athletics!  11:41, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Good idea, these are really separate issues. As for having two articles: let's wait and see what happens. No harm done either way. GregorB (talk) 15:57, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Track and Field event pages
All of the track and field pages I have seen have only world records and world leaders, usually the whole progression. I think we should also include area record holders, and national record holders for some of the top countries, perhaps even NCAA record holders (since these days athletes from around the world attend US colleges), of course for these records we would only include the current record holder and not the whole progression as to not clutter the page. What do people think --MATThematical (talk) 22:17, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Are you saying this for notability status? Certainly NCAA, I thought we even had High School National Record-holders considered as notable earlier.  How did that get scratched?  Considering the level of that competition at least here in the U.S., I'd say they are.  Look at the coverage they get, when we are talking about records, that goes well beyond local coverage.  And there are going to be some names of high school athletes who were exceptional, then flameouts.  I have written articles about some of those cases like James Stallworth (athlete), which will show up in AfD as soon as this goes into effect.  On the other hand, not all elite level programs have elite level athletes as record-holders, like a Jamaican Long Distance runner, or an Ethiopian sprinter.  I think we'll lose our credibility if we stretch that far.Trackinfo (talk) 01:42, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * MATThematical, I am OK with what you are proposing; however, there could be some bias when it comes to what constitutes "top countries". Regarding "area record holders", you may recall that in an earlier discussion we identified a bit of a contradiction within the material published by the IAAF. Prior to the 2009 World Championships in Athletics, the IAAF published a handbook that lists all sorts of statistics, including " Continental records". (For reference, see Part I and Part II of that handbook.) On-line, however, the IAAF notes " Area records": IAAF's statistics page. In one of these references, they lump North America, Central America, and the Caribbean together; in the other, the separate North America from Central America and the Caribbean. I imagine there is a huge amount of overlap, but a decision might need to be made on which reference to follow. Location (talk) 05:47, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The PDF file lists NAM (North Am), SAM (South Am) and CAC (Central A & Caribbean) separately, while the online stats lump NAM and CAC together. That is a difference, but not what you're talking about... I think instead of giving "top national records", we should give area records (no opinion on if we should treat NAM and CAC togtether or not) and, say, a top 10 or 15 all-time performers list (which will necessarily include any truly top national records). That won't even involve much extra work since all pages I've checked so far already have a top list! Maybe we should also mention world junior records? Sideways713 (talk) 10:49, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Firt, to Sideways, all of these records are notable, its a question however whether they should be in the main event pages. Perhaps we could start a page for example called "10,000 metres in the USA" which would include national, NCAA, and high school records. Certainly high school records should not be in the main 10,000 page because of the country issue (for what country, do all countries even document high school athletes), NCAA maybe, but I think that may also be a stretch. --MATThematical (talk) 18:21, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I suppose you meant Trackinfo and not me? Sideways713 (talk) 19:25, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

IAAF federations and records
According to the IAAF website, the IAAF has a total of 213 "National Member Federations" divided into 6 "area groups" or "area associations"  : 1) Africa, 2) Asia, 3) Europe, 4) North America, Central America and Caribbean, 5) Oceania, and 6) South America. As noted above, the IAAF website notes "area records" for each of the six areas. Also as noted above, the statistics handbook released prior to the 2009 World Championships references seven "continental confederations" and notes "continental records" for seven areas: 1) Africa (AFR), 2) Asia (ASI), 3) Europe (EUR), 4) North America (NAM), 5) Central America and Caribbean (CAC), 6) Oceania (OCE), and 7) South America (SAM).  Given that the IAAF provides contradictory information, how should this be addressed in articles that address area/continental records? Location (talk) 02:05, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll try to add some examples to stimulate discussion:
 * According to List of North American records in athletics, Tyson Gay (United States) holds a NAM "continental record" in the 100 metres. According to the IAAF website, Usain Bolt (Jamaica), not Gay, holds the "area record".
 * According to List of North American records in athletics, only Chaunte Lowe (United States) holds a NAM "continental record" in the high jump. According to the IAAF website, she shares the "area record" with Silvia Costa (Cuba).
 * Is there enough information out there to determine whether it is preferential to note area records (NAM combined with CAC) or continental records (NAM separate from CAC), or should we confuse readers and ourselves by noting both? Does anyone have any information on how the IAAF divvies up the countries that make up NAM, CAC, and SAM? Location (talk) 03:35, 2 June 2010 (UTC)
 * From what I see, the NACAC is a recent invention of IAAF, showing up in their 2009 constitutional amendments. That is the current situation, a list of records for which we at WP do not yet have a list.  Saying this will probably make somebody create it.  Our current lists are based on the format before that change, and I still question the positioning of Mexico in that recently revised arrangement.  With the sourcing for the previous alignment of countries being mooted by the constitutional change, I'm not sure how we could go about correcting that historical list.  Perhaps it is that ambiguity and confusion that IAAF hoped to clean up with the revision, though I suspect it was more political in true intent.  Obviously the inclusion of, particularly, Jamaica and Cuba into the NACAC area pushes a lot of Americans out of area records.Trackinfo (talk) 18:31, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the link. I'll take a look at more closely when I have more time. I did notice that Montell 74 recently created List of North, Central American and Caribbean records in athletics, which appears to reflect the new IAAF organization. List of North American records in athletics should still stick around until we find out what records/stats the IAAF next publishes. Location (talk) 19:03, 6 June 2010 (UTC)

2000 Olympic results messed up
Just a note to point out that I've noticed are a few mistakes in the results within the 2000 Summer Olympics articles - such as Athletics at the 2000 Summer Olympics – Women's 400 metres. I think User:IARXPHD has left a few things half finished and no longer edits any more! We'll need to check through them all at some point. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits) Join WikiProject Athletics!  13:20, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

Lists of records and performances copied from other sources
I am wondering if there is a limit to the number and types of lists we create that reflect athletic records and performances, and what Wikipedia policies or guidelines are relevant. Some of these trouble me in how they are "written". For example, Marathon year rankings is copied from the Association of Road Racing Statisticians without adding anything new to their list. Another is the recently created 1980 Marathon Year Ranking, which is essentially a mirror of the data listed at this website:. I prefer the Wiki format of these articles if I want to see the data, but they also appears to violate WP:NOTREPOSITORY. What's next? Top 25 marathon times in Poland for 1980? Are there any opinions on this? Location (talk) 01:06, 6 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I believe this type of information falls under the almanac style of wikipedia list/article (as mentioned at in the first part of the Five pillars). As for copying them directly, the ability to copyright such information is not merited by law – only the presentation of the statistics is. Obviously the numbers themselves are mere facts repeated from elsewhere anyway. Whether the articles you mention fall foul of this second point, I'm unsure... I believe there is legitimate worth in such lists, for example: Track and Field News regularly prints end of year stuff like this – it is a key aspect of athletics. Still, I would argue against any lists pertaining to something more specific than a yearly senior rankings list. What do other people think? Generally I'm for keeping things which have both an obvious use and prior precedent in athletics media. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits) Join WikiProject Athletics!  21:13, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * My primary issue is not about copyright infringement but rather copying lists of information that seemingly violate WP:NOTMIRROR. I am also concerned that some of these lists do not explicitly note the primary relevant authority. Wikipedia does not - or it least it should not - compile records piecemeal in violation of WP:OR; some athletic authority actually compiles records and we simply report on them. For example, List of North American records in athletics currently lists 20 references. Should there not be only one?! ("This is a list of world records in X according to the International Association of Athletics Federations." or "This is a list of American records in Y according to USATF.") Another concern I have is that we are failing to use the primary relevant authority in some of these lists. The data in Marathon year rankings is from the Association of Road Racing Statisticians, but the data in 1980 Marathon Year Ranking is from some Italian website. We know that the ARRS gathers race data, but where did the Italian website get their information? Why are they an authority on road racing statistics? Did they copy it from the IAAF? Did the IAAF even compile a top list in 1980? Why did we use the Italian website and not the ARRS ranking for 1980? And do we change a record in a table before it has been ratified by the IAAF? Perhaps we need a Manual of Style for our articles. (On that point, is anyone else bothered by these "Achievements" tables that keep popping up?) Sorry for the rant. Location (talk) 23:04, 14 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Each of these lists do (or should--there are a lot of lists) have a supervising authority. We editors (I'll include myself), in our enthusiasm to post the newest update to a record, quote a source to the record, not to the authority which one would think will take some time to investigate and ultimately will (or will not) ratify the record.  The proper procedure in track statistician circles, that we should adopt, would be to post any updates in a separate additional column and mark it as "Pending."  When the final ratification procedures are completed (in the case of USATF where I have been involved) usually at one single time a year as a group or package, then we should do the mass update.Trackinfo (talk) 03:57, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree that we should signify pending records. We could use a "key colour" system similar to what I've been doing on road racing articles:

Key:


 * I think it would be unwise not to list records before they have been ratified – I imagine such as situation would simply devolve into a pointless revert war.
 * In terms of the year ranking articles such as 1980 Marathon Year Ranking, perhaps an altogether more satisfying article type would simply be 1980 in marathon running. We could include the winners of notable marathons that year, the top-5 in the World Marathon Majors rankings, the top-25 in the marathon rankings, new marathon records, new courses or defunct ones, number of runners when noted, medal winners from major championships, rule changes etc. In terms of the way things are, lists like 1980 Marathon Year Ranking will never be anything different from the source material – one of Wikipedia's great strengths is drawing together dispersed information on less well covered topics and making in-depth articles.
 * I've no idea why Darius Dhlomo has used some weird Italian personal website rather than an actual decent source... A great example of incorporating different statistical perspectives is the Marathon world record progression. I think a truly interesting account of the marathon record progression has been achieved which incorporates and explains "unratified" times, rather than simply dismissing them entirely. Good work on creating the Association of Road Racing Statisticians article by the way Location.
 * As I've said before about achievement tables – they are perfectly useful things (e.g. Teddy Tamgho) but we should try to avoid having articles which are just tables of championship finishes. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits) Join WikiProject Athletics!  09:20, 15 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Regarding the above, I have placed a tag on various ranking articles that list data not provided by or consistent with the IAAF. See discussion at Talk:Marathon year rankings. I'll contact Darius to see if I can get him on board with us. Location (talk) 22:38, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

"Regional finals" parameter in Infobox athlete
I'd like to know the opinion of other project members on this issue I raised at this template's talk page. Thank you for your input! Parutakupiu (talk) 16:46, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Infobox runner
I see that some articles have been given infobox runner by an editor. ex-, ,.

Aren't we using infobox athlete? We need to be consistent here. Thanks. --Omarcheeseboro (talk) 03:11, 12 July 2010 (UTC)


 * I think so, too. After the previous discussion here, I deprecated infobox runner so I'm not sure why it is still being used. Earlier in the year, another editor took issue with that on my talk page. I'm not sure if we need to have an informal poll or what? Location (talk) 05:00, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I believe WP:RUN has been using infobox runner for some time, and any discussion of it should probably be on its talk page. Racepacket (talk) 22:31, 16 August 2010 (UTC)
 * You are pretty much the only one posting to WP:RUN and the aforementioned discussion took place well before you were active there. Given that this project has more active participants, I think it's fine to hold the discussion here. Location (talk) 00:16, 17 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I previously didn't have much of an opinion on this, the two were relatively the same. However on the Usain Bolt article, the recent addition of infobox Athlete has somehow force collapsed his medal template.  If anybody deserved to show off their massive medal accomplishments it would be Bolt.  To hide that important data is a serious flaw in what is already called a "good article."  This must be fixed here and in the deeper formatting of the infobox, or we will have to revert to the Infobox runner just to preserve the posting of vital information.  As I look further and see other instances of Infobox Athlete being used, I see the collapsed medal table being a regular part of its formatting, rather than an effect of the volume of medals posted (which I had hoped might be the case for Bolt.  No, its a horrible design flaw.  In a sport where notability is defined by the medals won, to hide that important component of a career is unacceptable. Trackinfo (talk) 07:03, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Medals are only hidden by default. To show them, one just needs to add "show-medals   = yes". I agree, I see no reason to hide them, except perhaps for aesthetics (not the case here, but might be a problem in articles with a small body and a disproportionally large infobox). GregorB (talk) 08:45, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I know how to open a hidden/collapsed medal table. Not every individual in the world might know that, nor should they have to.  In a sport where medals are everything, or certainly a huge part or a person's notoriety, that element of their career should be prominent on the immediate appearance of their page.  This collapsing table is a new phenomenon that some individual or group of individuals took upon theirselves to add to the infobox.  In the process, these few individuals, with a few lines of code, are destroying the look of thousands of articles.  That needs to be reverted.  Even the look of Carl Lewis, perhaps our largest medal table (with 23 entries) was not dominated by the size of the table.  With a large medal table is quite likely a large article for a significant performer.  If its too large, the Pan Am Games medals are secondary and could be clipped.  19 Olympic and World Championship medals is the core of his story.  We should never have a huge medal table and a couple of lines of text (though I'm sure somebody can find an example).  The Carl Lewis article was defaced by a BOT edit turning it into an infobox athlete just two days ago.  How many other articles are now screwed up by that BOT rampage? Trackinfo (talk) 18:33, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Of course, I agree that there is no reason not to display the medals, but this is solved easily by changing the default setting of "show-medals" to "yes" in Infobox athlete. While this should be discussed in the template's talk page first, I'm not aware of any serious cons for this change. GregorB (talk) 19:01, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure exactly where to place the yes to get that to work properly. Watching articles, I've seen other people editing a yes improperly and then others removing the attempts.  But even that being said, that would essentially mean having to revisit a thousand or more pages just to check, much less fix, problems that were added by a BOT based on a default value edited by a lone editor (poorly) designing the infobox.  Or maybe we can get our own BOT writer to chase after the other BOT to fix the problems it caused.  This is insane. Trackinfo (talk) 20:40, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * No, I meant we could change the actual template, not all of its transclusions. This is a simple matter, and it would change the default display on all pages that use it, including Carl Lewis, without the need to actually edit any of those pages. GregorB (talk) 21:22, 22 August 2010 (UTC)
 * No time like the present, see Template_talk:Infobox_athlete. GregorB (talk) 21:30, 22 August 2010 (UTC)

Age limit for junior records?
Please see Talk:List of junior world records in athletics, thanks. —bender235 (talk) 15:17, 2 August 2010 (UTC)
 * AnsweredTrackinfo (talk) 17:39, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

 in  categories
I have a question which came up after added Netherlands at the 2010 European Championships in Athletics on my watchlist to Category:2010 in the Netherlands. The 2010 European Athletics Championships were staged, however, in Spain, not in the Netherlands, which is why the parent article is in Category:2010 in Spain. Darius pointed me out to Argentina at the 1991 Pan American Games being categorised in Category:1991 in Argentina, but this makes just as much sense as my Netherlands in Spain example. The 1991 Pan American Games took place in Cuba, so why is this categorised as "in Argentina"? We wouldn't categorise Battle of the Somme in Category:1916 in the United Kingdom because the event happened in France – so why is this done with athletics teams? Any insight and explanation would be appreciated. Jared Preston (talk) 12:01, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Sorry, I wanted to ask this question here in the first place but it seems to have been added to the bottom of Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Olympics. An answer anywhere would be fine! Jared Preston (talk) 12:04, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Logically, you're quite correct. But look at it this way: is Netherlands at the 2010 European Championships in Athletics in scope of WikiProject Netherlands or WikiProject Spain? Oddly enough, the article content has very little to do with Spain (unlike, nota bene, 2010 European Championships in Athletics), but much to do with the Netherlands. Note also that ideally such articles should describe the athletes' qualification and selection process, and their status upon entering the competition (good form, bad form, injured, etc.) which, again, has little to do with Spain. That's why, while logically these categories would certainly not apply, I'd say Darius Dhlomo was correct in applying them. GregorB (talk) 21:16, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I understand what you're saying Gregor, but how can that be right? You say my theory is logical, so how can the current illogical practise be kept? 2010 European Athletics Championships is 2010 in Spain because Spain won the right to host the event – it was on Spanish soil. Yes, OK, we wouldn't add all the 2010 in X categories for every participating country, that's the job of the WikiProjects. The Dutch athletics team has little to do with the Spanish WikiProject, but the event itself does. The event comes under the scope of the Athletics WikiProject as well as the Spanish, because it took place in Spain, hence the category. The Dutch team is within the scope of the WP Netherlands, but the event wasn't "in the Netherlands". We would surely have to create new article subcategories for sports teams per year, for which I don't think there's a need to be honest. If these articles should be in any year in X categories, then it should be the country where Y was in, with Y pertaining to the event. But we don't need to do that either, because the event itself is categorised. So, by my thinking, these sub-articles, such as Netherlands at the 2010 European Championships in Athletics or Argentina at the 1991 Pan American Games, are being overcategorised with categories that aren't by any means or thinking logical, or for that matter correct. Sorry, it makes no sense to me. Jared Preston (talk) 23:21, 14 August 2010 (UTC)


 * I suppose the distinction is less clear in athletics than it is in other sports. For example, the "Spain national football team at the World Cup" would almost certainly be classified under "2010 in Spain". Essentially it comes down to the fact that it is a team is representing a country at a competition. The idea of a sporting "national team" is less associated with athletics, but nonetheless the system is precisely the same. A similarity can be seen in something like category:Iraq War which finds itself with Category:History of the United States (1991–present) (which is then in Category:20th century in the United States). Although these are broader time categories and it is a very different event, the general idea of this categorisation (i.e. that a representative personnel of a country is present in another country) remains the same.
 * By the same extent, outside of the Olympics I think these articles are a little too much hassle for what they are worth (I discovered as much over the course of editing 2009 World Championships in Athletics). Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits) Join WikiProject Athletics!  23:27, 14 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Then the articles really should be categorised better. Spain playing at any FIFA World Cup would (and should) be categorised into a world cup category (or Category:Nations at the European Championships in Athletics to use an athletics example), not a  in Spain one just because it was about a Spanish team. Or completely the other way around, but as it is, there is no "Spain at the 2010 FIFA World Cup" article, and even if there was, it wouldn't be categorised as "2010 in Spain" when the parent article about the event itself is "2010 in South Africa". Jared Preston (talk) 00:02, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Erm... but Siege of U.K. bases in Basra is in both category:2006 in Iraq and (through its parentage of Category:Military operations of the Iraq War) in Category:20th century in the United States. There isn't anything wrong with things being that way as everything is where you would logically expect it to be. I would expect "2010 in South Africa" to include things to do with both South Africa and 2010, and "2010 in Spain" to include things to do with both Spain and 2010. Are you suggesting that the performance of the "Spanish football team in 2010" has nothing to do with the topics of Spain and 2010? You suggest these categorisations have a logical fallacy, but the Basra article exhibits that exact same quality (that something categorised as being in one country is categorised as being in another at a different level). Maybe this is due to different interpretations of the word "in" in the category names, suggesting either (a) articles relating to the two topics or (b) articles regarding events exclusively "physically within" a country in that year. I would argue that the former is the de facto usage. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits) Join WikiProject Athletics!  01:07, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
 * That makes a lot more sense. I suppose if the categories were named as " in " then it would be more logical. The Spanish World Cup team has a lot more to do (in my head, at least) with "Spain in 2010" than it does with "2010 in Spain". Funnily enough, I think of "2009 in Spain" as my holiday there last year. Thanks for your help, Sillyfolkboy. Jared Preston (talk) 09:51, 15 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I've always thought the wording was highly peculiar to be honest. "2009 in Spain" contains strong connotations of "within Spain in 2009", something which is not necessarily desired. "Spain in 2009" on the other hand has connotations of "what happened with Spain in 2009?", a subtle shift of meaning which is highly desired in terms of international events/diplomacy etc (e.g. 2008 Andean diplomatic crisis). Even from a speech-related view, something like "Category:Spain in the 1990s" (on wikicommons) is far more natural than the other way around. Perhaps this unusual style has grown as a copy of the rightly named parent "Category:2009 by country"? At the risk of causing a ridiculous amount of work project-wise – is it worth proposing a rename for all these chronological categories? (!) I believe things like Athletics in 2009 are also better phrasings. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits) Join WikiProject Athletics! 
 * I've been thinking about this problem and I've reached the same conclusion: literal meaning of category names such as "xxxx in Foo" differs from how people de facto construe them. Here is one more example: parent category of Category:2010 Polish Air Force Tu-154 crash is, perhaps not surprisingly, Category:2010 in Poland, although, as we know, the crash took place in Russia.
 * Wikipedia categories, unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), are not ontologies, since they are not strict. The consequence is that one cannot extract fully reliable and consistent data from them if their meanings are taken literally: in the above example, an aircraft crash presumably cannot happen in two places at once, i.e. in both Poland and Russia, which is what categorization seems to suggest. No way around it except to be more precise in category naming, but this comes at a cost (exactness vs. intuitive ease). GregorB (talk) 07:38, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

Naming race distances
Hi, input is needed into the following discussion:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Athletics_race_distances

Confusing link
The link "To start a new discussion section, please click here" at the top of this page links to the "Project Olympics" discussion page, which is highly confusing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.183.171.61 (talk) 00:25, 21 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Fixed, thanks. GregorB (talk) 10:16, 21 August 2010 (UTC)

List of world youth records in athletics
Shouldn't List of world youth records in athletics be moved to List of world youth best performances in athletics? World youth bests are not recognized or ratified as records by IAAF or any other body, and IAAF refers to them exclusively as "world youth bests" or "world youth best performances".

''260.8. The following categories of World Records are accepted by the IAAF: ''(a) World Records; ''(b) World Junior Records; ''(c) World Indoor Records.

And it's certainly not as if the term "record" is a WP:COMMONNAME. Sideways713 (talk) 12:22, 30 August 2010 (UTC)


 * Yes, there's a difference between "record", generally construed as "an unsurpassed measurement", and "record" as a technical term defined by the IAAF. So in the latter sense, these are indeed not records. (Still: .)
 * "World youth record holder" is going to be rather difficult to translate... :-) Maybe that's the reason why this term persists. GregorB (talk) 12:49, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Of course there are many reasons why the term persists (and quite possibly always will), but it's clearly not the title suggested by the article naming guidelines. Incidentally, seems to me that IAAF is stamping on the "world youth record" phrasing; none of your results are from this year. Sideways713 (talk) 14:27, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Of course, I agree with the renaming, because the article should use the official terminology... The fact that these are not world records, although are often called that, should be mentioned too. GregorB (talk) 15:00, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I'll wait for Sillyfolkboy to say something before going ahead with the move. He previously moved the list from World Youth Athletics Records, and I'd like to know if he had some particular reason for keeping the magic word "records". Sideways713 (talk) 16:56, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I'd agree with a move to List of world youth bests in athletics. The "record" redirects will persist regardless. I really never saw the point in what the IAAF is trying to achieve with the "best" vs. "record" terminology – I always thought that if they didn't consider them "real records" then why did they bother compiling a record of them at all? A similar thing happened with road records some years ago. It's a point that is not really for us to argue about I suppose, so bests is probably the right wording to go with. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits) <sup style="color:#0B7C08;">Join WikiProject Athletics!  19:27, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm on board with List of world youth bests in athletics, too. By the way, I've seen different sections in that 2009 IAAF Statistics Handbook that note "Unratified World Youth (under-18) Best". Location (talk) 20:00, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
 * World youth bests never are ratified, which is exactly why they don't get to be called records. I've made the move. Sideways713 (talk) 20:45, 30 August 2010 (UTC)
 * Right. I was pointing out how I've seen it noted within IAAF documents in case it would affect the naming of the article. Besides being redundant, List of unratified world youth bests in athletics would sound awkward. Location (talk) 21:35, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Copyright problems in athletics articles
I notified User:Darius Dhlomo about copyright violations in athlete articles last month and, due to the volume of cases I discovered, I have requested an investigation. Progress in cleaning up the violations is being made at Contributor copyright investigations/Darius Dhlomo. From an athletics perspective, we are looking at potentially dozens of copied athlete biographies and also event result summary articles (such as this).

While his editing does cover non-athletics topics, he has contributed extensively in our area of interest. Although the scale of his contributions makes things more difficult, violations should be relatively easy to spot as Darius has rarely (if ever) made edits with significant amounts of original prose. Any help is much appreciated. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits) <sup style="color:#0B7C08;">Join WikiProject Athletics!  09:49, 5 September 2010 (UTC)


 * If you are going to be deleting massive amounts of content related to athletics topics, please keep and post a log of the articles you are deleting content from. Personally I have toured many articles and contribute additional information when I have it and when I see it missing.  Odds are, I would have no reason to tour back to those articles to discover content is missing.  The example you gave was an analysis of a public event.  More than one person has seen the competition and could write such an analysis, if they were to know it were missing or needed.  The same kind of perspective could be added to articles about competitors at such public events. Trackinfo (talk) 18:08, 5 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I suspect not many articles will be deleted as a result, rather only the ones that consist solely of copied work and nothing else. Original work by others will be retained. I agree that there's plenty that people could add to the (largely bare) results pages. Ultimately, I hoped to cover the major events in the way done at 2009 World Championships in Athletics – Men's 100 metres, for instance. However, I'm coming to the conclusion that certain things like this will be left lacking very often, purely due to the amount of time and editors available to do the necessary work. Still, I'm relatively pleased with the amount of work done in the last 18 months by editors such as yourself and the dozen or so regulars. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits) <sup style="color:#0B7C08;">Join WikiProject Athletics!  18:43, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
 * If I understand correctly, only prose is potentially suspect, since result lists are not subject to copyright anyway?
 * As for the results pages, they require an amount of work that simply isn't available. My impression is that, taken as a whole, Wikipedia seems to be underpowered at the moment, and the future doesn't look too bright. Still, given the effort that is required merely to stay on top of current events, I'd say we're putting in good work. GregorB (talk) 19:07, 6 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Ugh. What an awful mess. I saw the articles listed at Contributor copyright investigations/Darius Dhlomo, then noticed a day or two later that there are 23 more pages. He's mixed in a lot of good work with a lot of bad work, so I hope those who have much more technical knowledge of Wikipedia than I do are able to fish out which are suspect and which are OK to stay. He could have saved himself and us a lot of trouble had he not chose to work within a void. Location (talk) 20:24, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Whatever the resolution to copyrighted content, that should not penalize the articles. No article should be deleted because the content of the article was a violation if the subject of the article legitimately qualifies to be on wikipedia. What we need to know is, what article has such copyrighted content and we can replace it with legitimate content. Other people are qualified to write on most of our athletics subjects, we don't necessarily add to existing articles because we think that job has already been done adequately. Trackinfo (talk) 20:37, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure that I completely agree with that. If extensive copyrighted material does exist, deleting articles without prejudice towards re-creation may be the price that Wikipedia has to pay for "allowing" it to happen. I really have no idea how extensive this problem is or how readily it can be fixed, but my understanding is that is what is being examined right now by Sillyfolkboy, GregorB, and others. I certainly don't trust Darius to clean-up his own mess. Location (talk) 20:48, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Judging by the investigation results thus far, "hit rate" seems to be low, so hopefully drastic measures won't be necessary. GregorB (talk) 21:35, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I've been going through the list. There is an immense volume of material.  I'm wondering how a single human being, stealing every word, could have even formatted that much material, much less written it.  Maybe he figured out a way to automatically wikiformat from existing articles.  He is all over a variety of sports, not just Athletics.  That being said, the articles I looked at were largely results, annual summations and he created a lot of stub mentions of a character in the results.  How much of that public record material is really subject to copyright?  I'm glad that stuff exists.  I don't want to tediously copy that stuff off a pdf so it is available on wikipedia.  Yes, the analysis was somebody else's work and should be replaced.  I edited a few articles of subjects I knew about, but that was addition.  I didn't see any non-public information to subtract.  Perhaps the articles I looked at had already been sanitized.  As such, those dry pieces should have no excuse to be deleted.  They are low volume characters that should sufficiently sit there until a real person gets motivated enough to research and write a full article. Trackinfo (talk) 22:50, 6 September 2010 (UTC)
 * By the way, a few of the articles have check marks and notations. I'm guessing that means somebody has checked the article for violations.  Maybe its just an administrator thing.  Perhaps you could use my help, or if anybody else is checking these things.  If you want the help, please post how we mere mortal editors can make such marks.  Also then, please confirm our expectation that public record information:  results, name, birthdate, specific accomplishments, are not subject to copyright. Trackinfo (talk) 23:11, 6 September 2010 (UTC)

Athletics articles have been selected for the Wikipedia 0.8 release
Version 0.8 is a collection of Wikipedia articles selected by the Wikipedia 1.0 team for offline release on USB key, DVD and mobile phone. Articles were selected based on their assessed importance and quality, then article versions (revisionIDs) were chosen for trustworthiness (freedom from vandalism) using an adaptation of the WikiTrust algorithm.

We would like to ask you to review the Athletics articles and revisionIDs we have chosen. Selected articles are marked with a diamond symbol (&diams;) to the right of each article, and this symbol links to the selected version of each article. If you believe we have included or excluded articles inappropriately, please contact us at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8 with the details. You may wish to look at your WikiProject's articles with cleanup tags and try to improve any that need work; if you do, please give us the new revisionID at Wikipedia talk:Version 0.8. We would like to complete this consultation period by midnight UTC on Monday, October 11th.

We have greatly streamlined the process since the Version 0.7 release, so we aim to have the collection ready for distribution by the end of October, 2010. As a result, we are planning to distribute the collection much more widely, while continuing to work with groups such as One Laptop per Child and Wikipedia for Schools to extend the reach of Wikipedia worldwide. Please help us, with your WikiProject's feedback!

For the Wikipedia 1.0 editorial team, SelectionBot 21:54, 19 September 2010 (UTC)

Rankings articles
Discussion is taking place about event rankings articles/lists here. This could potentially affect everything I've already categorised under Category:Year rankings in athletics. Opinions are most welcome! SFB 11:34, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Request for photographs and images
To help address the many requests for photographs People-photo-bot has moved article talk pages from Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of people and Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of sportspeople to Category:Wikipedia requested photographs of athletes if it contains the templates WikiProject Athletics WP Athletics WPAthletics. Members of this project are invited to address the requests for images listed. Please note that some articles may now have an appropriate photograph and that the need-image flag has simply not been removed, this can also be checked using the Image Existence Checker link on the category page. If a page has been incorrectly moved please inform me on my talk page.--Traveler100 (talk) 18:24, 2 October 2010 (UTC)

Sprint (race)
I've thought for a while that the choice of title for the article sprint (race) is a particularly poor one. As a standalone title, it entirely fails as a disambiguator between this topic and all other types of sporting sprints (which are all also types of race). I think a good choice would be something like sprint (running) or the bracketless sprint running.

For clarity, I think we should rule out two other possible choices: sprint (athletics) (because it may not be readily understood by an American audience) and sprint (track) (because it could be very easily confused with Sprint (cycling)). Which of the "running" names do people prefer? Anyone got any other ideas? SFB 16:34, 17 October 2010 (UTC)


 * When I think of "sprint" in the context of running, I think of running fast or all-out, not necessarily a short track event. Given that one may sprint without being in a race or one may sprint at the end of a long-distance event, I like Sprint (running). Short track events could be discussed further there. Location (talk) 17:03, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah yes, I imagine the change of title means the content should head towards more the biological/physical aspect, rather than the current event-focused article. I think this could be a good thing. Definitely, the use of sprinting in longer races would be a good inclusion – numerous times I've actually held off from linking things like "sprint finish" in terms of biographies referring to 10,000 metres or marathon races. At the loftier end of thinking, it means we can improve the focus on the human biology aspect and perhaps even include a brief historical section relating to the evolution of sprinting in humans (if we can get appropriate source material!). Still, the sprinting events side of things could continue form a major part of the article. SFB 17:21, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
 * I've moved the article to sprint (running) now. This seems like another case where much tiresome disambiguation work will need to be done as theoretically "sprint (race)" should lead to a disambiguation and not the athletics sprinting article. SFB 13:36, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Running and Running (sport)
I seem to recall at one point there was mention of creating Running (sport) and I'm wondering if that needs to be considered again. Running is applicable to many animals, however, running as a sport is uniquely human. The impetus for this point stems from a brief discussion in Talk:Marathon regarding the removal and reinsertion of information related to goal setting, training, race strategy, and recovery of marathon running. Those factors are not unique to the marathon, so I believe they would be better suited an article that addresses the sport of running. Please comment here, in Talk:Marathon, or both. Thanks! Location (talk) 17:09, 20 October 2010 (UTC)

WikiProject cleanup listing
I have created together with Smallman12q a toolserver tool that shows a weekly-updated list of cleanup categories for WikiProjects, that can be used as a replacement for WolterBot and this WikiProject is among those that are already included (because it is a member of Category:WolterBot cleanup listing subscriptions). See the tool's wiki page, this project's listing in one big table or by categories and the index of WikiProjects. Svick (talk) 20:53, 7 November 2010 (UTC)

Curtis James
The article on Curtis James claims that the guy is "a four-time USATF AT&T Professional (now Visa Championship) Series champion,[1] three-time All-Star winner, and the only rookie to lead the point standings." Supposedly, he has sponsorship deals with "Adidas, Coca-Cola, Timex, Dunlop, and Intel."

The references don't match up, and preliminary Googling indicates that much of the information in the article is not true. A mail to OTRS (#2010111110004613) claims that the entire article is a fabrication. I've tagged the article hoax.

Can someone more knowledgeable about American athletics please have a look at it, and tag it for deletion if it's a hoax (or add some reliable sources as references, if it's not)? utcursch | talk 09:55, 11 November 2010 (UTC)


 * I'm about the last person to delete an article, but even the article's own "Personal bests" list don't show anything notable at all. And he's still in high school which precludes anything on a professional level.  This article is a complete waste. Trackinfo (talk) 12:03, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

IAAF versus ARRS records
An editor has expressed an interest in hearing how other editors feel about the ARRS and IAAF lists of records at Talk:Half marathon, specifically Talk:Half marathon. Location (talk) 04:44, 17 November 2010 (UTC)

Commonwealth Champions templates
Hi WikiProject Athletics. I notice that many (most? all?) of the Athletics Commonwealth champions templates have not been updated with the 2010 champions. Is there any reason for this? Or is it just the case that nobody has got around to doing it yet? Thanks. DH85868993 (talk) 03:38, 15 January 2011 (UTC)


 * It appears as though those templates were one of Darius' projects. Hopefully he will be permitted to come back with a fresh start at some point. Location (talk) 20:54, 15 January 2011 (UTC)
 * Agreed. All the problems they found with the few items he did a copyvio, the majority of his contributions were valuable to our project.  Frankly this is a harsh judgement call against his work.  We are all faced with these problems with the limited number of sources available in this sport.  When you have but one source, how much do you have to jazz it up to make it your own original prose, yet still keep to the confines of what is a true statement.  Well over 90% of Darius' work was the laborious wikifying of factual results like what DH85868993 is looking for.  The articles he created about individuals were mostly stark stubs to fill in red links stating where they came from and that they won a medal.  How original CAN something like that be?  But all of his work has been made suspect for the few occasions when he went beyond that and copied someone else's paragraph or two about an otherwise unknown athlete.  I would welcome him back.  And if need be, I'll offer my services to review his offerings or to post them under my account.  Oh, but then I'm already accused of copyvio for trying to clean up one of those articles.   Geeez.   Will the oligarchy never stop? Trackinfo (talk) 01:23, 16 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think there was a bit of a misunderstanding of the copyright situation, particularly among those who were not overly familiar with either athletics or copyright issues in general. He created hundreds of perfectly reasonable biography stubs and event results pages, both of which were merely bare lists (not subject to copyright) and served as a launching point for future edits. Some people thought that it was these edits which violated copyright, even though the collation of publicly available results in a bare format is exempt from such issues.
 * The primary issue I think was that he didn't seem particularly concerned that he had essentially tried to release others' work in the public domain without their permission. Take this one for example. This is not just a straight forward, basic account of events. I believe we should support the athletics journalism community by putting their knowledge to use—in our own words—and rightly crediting them as well.
 * I would welcome a return of Darius, but we still need to address outstanding issues: around 2000 articles (mainly biographies) still need to be reviewed for issues (any significant amount of prose from Darius is suspect). I also think we should try to review every single event result article at Olympic and World level for issues such as the one I mentioned above. SFB 10:26, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * I completely agree with SFB. The Darius that made very useful contributions to Wikipedia in line with our policies and guidelines is the one I would like to see come back. There were more than just a few copyright violations and I did not mean to suggest that I condone those edits. Location (talk) 15:55, 5 February 2011 (UTC)
 * It appears that all the biographies have now been reviewed! However, I'm still coming across violations in articles that he added to, but didn't create.
 * For this project, a key area is the event results articles like this one. All such articles, at world/Olympic/world indoor/European-level need reviewing. Any piece of original prose is suspect. As far as I know, there are only two editors (including myself) who have added significant prose to these types of articles. Therefore, any event article with a summary should have its history checked to verify the author. Darius copied material from the official IAAF summaries – the archive is here for those wishing to pinpoint the source. SFB 10:51, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Dead links to IAAF results
While updating 2003 World Championships in Athletics – Women's 4 x 100 metres relay, I noticed that the reference to the IAAF results page was a dead link. I have updated that and provided a completed citation with accessdate. At the same time I tidied up whitespace and a few html entities reported by Advisor.js.

It is entirely possible that lots of other pages need the corresponding updates, for which we should use a bot of course.

I suggest that a member of WikiProject Athletics review these changes and drive the necessary systematic change, although I could also take this further myself given a clear request from the project to do so. --Mirokado (talk) 18:41, 26 February 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for dropping a note... It doesn't look that bad - 20 bad links at the moment. GregorB (talk) 19:48, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

Category structure - Athletes (track and field) etc
I have opened a discussion on the naming of the category structure of athletics and track and field at the WP:Categories for discussion board. I also have made some suggestions about how we categorise our athletes by sport. All opinions welcome! SFB 22:31, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

Michael Johnson (track and field)
An editor has made significant changes to this article (including moving). I don't have strong feelings about the edits, but it's probably good that someone else take a look. Thanks --CutOffTies (talk) 14:25, 2 March 2011 (UTC)
 * The edits seem at least semi-OK; the "records" section looks a bit nonstandard but there's a whole heap of athletics pages around with much worse than that. I'm against the move, though. A quick look through Category:Sprinters says the previously used (athlete) is easily the most common form of disambiguation. Admittedly, given the way that word is used in the US I can see Hoops gza's argument against it: WP has plenty of sportsmen who share his name. An alternative might be Michael Johnson (sprinter), which at least has a long history as a redirect. Sideways713 (talk) 16:55, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Steve Smith (British high jumper)
I clicked through from the high jump page where Steve Smith was listed as having cleared 2.38m indoors in 1994, but there was no mention of this in the article. This is higher than his outdoor best of 2.37m and I assume is also a British record. 92.17.3.79 (talk) 15:12, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * -Location (talk) 16:14, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * That might not be appropriate to "fix" as the IAAF rule allowing Indoor records to count as (outdoor) records went into effect in 2000. That is the same reason Bubka's 1993 2.15 indoors is not the World Record.  Unless BAF had an exception to the rule in place in 1994, Smith's indoor mark is not the record. Trackinfo (talk) 18:42, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure what your quibble is. The article did not contain mention Smith's 2.38m mark; now it does. The article did not mention that his indoor and outdoor marks are recognized at British records; now it does. If there is something else that you feel needs to be added, go for it. Location (talk) 18:55, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * My concern was that the IP request was to declare the 2.38 as the British record, which, as explained, it cannot be in that era. I could have been so, had it happened more recently. Trackinfo (talk) 20:38, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Sorry to burst your bubble, but sometimes national records do not jive with IAAF standards. UK Athletics, the governing body for the sport of athletics in the United Kingdom, recognizes his 2.38m mark as the British indoor record. Location (talk) 21:34, 5 March 2011 (UTC)
 * All is proper. I was concerned the IP request was overriding new rules for old results. Trackinfo (talk) 21:47, 5 March 2011 (UTC)