Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Athletics/Archive 7

2013 World Championships in Athletics
has apparently begun a wholesale effort to remove prose from the articles in this section.         Yeah, I'm a little more offended by this content removal because I wrote most of that prose, but removing content is always a sore issue with me. Adding prose to our results pages, to put the straight information into context, is a desirable feature. I've been doing these kinds of analysis for years, including going back into historical articles and intend to do it again when the World Championships and Olympics roll by in the next few months and years. I probably could have done a better job of articulating sources for each point, but sourcing was not questioned, the content was simply removed. Since it is so wholesale, I open the conversation here.

In the process of reverting, particularly at 2013 World Championships in Athletics – Women's 100 metres I notice something has changed with the layout of the article. Since I spent so much time on the article, I know what it looked like before, but the problem is not on the page code. Apparently in the process or reworking an inbox, it now causes the AthleticsAt2013WorldChampionships template to layout in a middle column, destroying the layout of the article. I'm a bit of a complainer when "they" keep trying to revise templates and infoboxes. But I don't always find these TfD conversations before negative action is taken. I call them hidden because I don't think anybody can keep up with all this crap. Mose to these discussions do not leave notice on articles affected by these sometimes drastic changes. This is why I complain. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Now its broke. Help is needed finding what I assume is that one keystroke hidden in the template that is screwing up the layout. Trackinfo (talk) 21:43, 5 July 2015 (UTC)


 * Regarding the prose, I only looked at the first link which starts off: "In the final Kerron Clement was out like a rocket, first over the first barrier, but long strides in lane one don't usually work out." I don't know if the use of metaphors or similies, such as "out like a rocket", are explicitly prohibited but it doesn't sound encyclopedic, in my opinion. The other bit about "long strides in lane one don't usually work out" is editorializing. Regarding the format issues, I would post an inquiry at Village pump (technical). - Location (talk) 22:56, 5 July 2015 (UTC)
 * Wholesale removal without discussion is not a good approach in any instance. I agree that the tone of some of the analysis could be improved, but that is essentially a separate issue. I revert all page blanking (which is what this is). The templates are showing wrong as they previously used the infobox class, which destroyed centre aligning after a recent change. I'm still not entirely sure what the benefit of that change was supposed to be but ho hum. The non-infobox-based templates go to the left of any other infobox, rather than below down the right side as usual. I'll have a look, because this will affect all articles where these templates are used alongside any infoboxes (actually the standard now for results pages). SFB 00:44, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * OK. I've reformatted Template:2013 World Championships in Athletics to fix both the text and infobox alignment issues. I'll roll that out across the template set when I'm next free. SFB 00:56, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree with Location and SFB that much of the prose in those articles reads like personal commentary rather than an encyclopedic description, and it should be sourced better. That said, I don't approve of Dushman91's wholesale deletion of it; it would be more constructive to reword things, add reliable sources and only remove the bits that can't be supported by an RS. As for similes, if we had a reliable source that used a particular metaphor or simile we could quote it, though in most cases it would be better to use our own words. Sideways713 (talk) 12:50, 6 July 2015 (UTC)
 * There probably are more similes in this content than is necessary. The choice of words goes beyond what other sources report.  While writing thirty (some odd) of these in one bunch, dry, encyclopedic descriptions gets old and boring.  I view that from the readers side too, so I did try to put some life into the strategy and developments of what was happening here lest it fall into a Bud Greenspan results narrative ("*name first, *name second") which is already covered in the results below.  Sometimes these words, many of them my words (though on popular events they are not), get quoted by the (otherwise clueless) general media that does not understand our sport.  Certainly anything we post here is subject to rewrite by any other editor.  This particular package has been here for two years  I've been known to get irate here, but only when it affects the reporting of the facts, not the words I (or anybody else) chose to convey them. Trackinfo (talk) 17:14, 6 July 2015 (UTC)

Athletics at Southeast Asian Games article deletion
Just to make all aware of the following nomination for deletion: Articles for deletion/Athletics at the 2015 Southeast Asian Games – Men's 100 metres. This covers all event-level result articles for this year's Southeast Asian Games. SFB 21:59, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
 * FYI - Following the above failed nomination due its broadness, the athletics articles are being nominated for deletion directly at Articles for deletion/Athletics at the 2015 Southeast Asian Games – Men's 100 metres (2nd nomination). SFB 11:15, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

RfC in Amy Hughes
I have opened an RfC in Talk:Amy Hughes. - Location (talk) 15:24, 17 July 2015 (UTC)

National championship results
I've been a part of results like 2015 USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships. But I really hate to be jingoistic. There are certainly other significant National Championships which deserve equitable coverage, particularly as it relates to qualification to the 2015 World Championships in Athletics. I created 2015 Athletics Kenya World Championship Trials because I found the source and it was a reasonable effort to convert to wiki. I hope I have started a tradition. Not all countries make the results as easy to translate, but still deserve the coverage. I found the Spanish National Championships] for example. Its well beyond my technical ability, but we need to develop a set of tools to make it easier to translate this kind of data into wiki. Something that provides the formatting functions but also solves for (as Spain does) Last name first, and also ALL CAPS. Every national championship, or more particularly their web posting service, will have different forms of column breaks, additional columns of information, even different formats of posting marks. To me, it seems like a bunch of repetitive keystrokes, which could be something a tool could be devised to solve for. We already have tools that help disambiguate or help find possible names for red linked athletes which could be incorporated. Trackinfo (talk) 01:55, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I think "jingoistic" is a little harsh: quite a few of the events at the US Championships reach or exceed the standard of performances seen at even the European Athletics Championships (it's certainly what piques my interest there). Russia/Soviet Union really stands out here as needing full coverage. A handful of others probably justify listing podium placings as well (Spain, France, Germany, Italy, UK, Japan, China). Other nations certainly warrant more coverage, but for virtually all national championships I think a list of champions is sufficient (and perhaps even excessive in some cases). It's a mammoth task when you start to think about it, which is why I've largely shied away so far.


 * Strange data is a problem encountered by any person collating athletics results, although I believe professionals get actual data tables from the officials rather than having to struggle through the web presentations you mention above. It's a money-making enterprise for some, like All-Athletics and Tilastopaja.


 * I've previously developed code to wikify text but it's often haphazard as there are rarely firm rules i.e. what bits of data you put where (notes and multiple medallists tend to be the worst culprits). I've only made the effort where there are large data sources that justify the code development time (e.g. WJAH, GBRAthletics). More simplistic results that are consistent with listing order of the four name data pieces (position, name, country, result) may be easy to do, but the more unusual the data presentation gets, the more time you have to put into coding tweaks.


 * Given your prolific efforts on cross country results, I've always assumed you too have developed some code. Are my assumptions correct? If so, is this something you're interested in? SFB 22:22, 6 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Re: jingoistic. I am trying to be sensitive to the conditions of the coverage I receive here.  Most of it is very slanted, US or . . . no coverage.   My own organization calls (probably our best attended annual meet) USA vs the World. I try not to reflect that.  I can google beyond our borders. Trackinfo (talk) 08:33, 9 August 2015 (UTC)


 * For me, the coverage of USA Outdoor Track and Field Championships is an important contribution. As far as I know, only the USA and Kenya hold trials coupling a top three position of their National Championships to qualification to the World Championships. Elsewhere, the selection procedures are diverse and not necessarily transparent.  Selected teams are covered in Wikipedia by, e.g., France at the 2015 World Championships in Athletics. A couple of National Championships are already covered, see here, although often poorly maintained.  In my opinion, maintenance, e.g. incorporation of future championships and results, will be the major problem. There are further pitfalls with Spanish National Championships, e.g. inconsistent use of diacritics.  You might try to cover the Russian championships.  As far as I know, long distance running and race walking are held separately.   Your assumptions are correct, of course.  We discussed it already here.  perl (with use of regular expressions) is a powerful tool for data analysis.  However, regexps are quite cryptic. Relay teams and wind info need special attention.  But for me, the most time consuming task is identification and handling of "false positive" blue links, as well as disambiguation, e.g. Lázaro Martínez (sprinter), Lázaro Martínez (triple jumper) ...  Another problem are data where first and last names are unsystematically mixed (without separators) as |here, requiring some preprocessing. A step towards automatization to overcome these problems would be the setup of an own athlete database and development of a proper matching algorithm.  It is not very difficult to extract the data from the IAAF athletes database.  However, I have no experience in database design, and had to postpone (and now to drop) my corresponding activities. As you know, I am not afraid of tackling "mammoth tasks."   However, I have to announce my retirement.  The coverage of detailed full results of the 1986-2010 World Junior Championships was my last major project.  CroesJ (talk) 11:42, 14 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Well that's sad to hear. I hope it's more of a break than a permanent thing. I agree that article link checking can be very time-consuming. I tend to combine that activity with adding of categories so I'm not just opening pages for little reason. In terms of the database idea: AutoWikiBrowser allows you to easily output a list of all articles in a category tree, so you could very quickly build a list of athlete articles and check if each link goes to one of those articles (i.e. any blue links to articles not in the list will be going to a non-athlete biography). I could dump that information onto a wiki page if people would find it helpful. SFB 10:33, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Question About Medal Redistribution
Hi, I was looking at Emmanuel Callender's article, and it says that the Trinidad and Tobago team he was part of won the bronze medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics. After Tyson Gay's ban, apparently that's been upgraded to silver. How is that supposed to be indicated on a wiki page? Red Fiona (talk) 22:19, 8 August 2015 (UTC)


 * I would favour saying something like "Trinidad and Tobago were awarded the bronze medal, subsequently upgraded to silver following the disqualification of the US team." Although I think some would say you should just put that they won silver and leave it at that. --Walnuts go kapow (talk) 22:32, 8 August 2015 (UTC)
 * In the prose, I'd add an explanation like the one above. In the infobox, I'd use footnotes - sadly, it appears that this is not the norm. I'd say footnotes are always a solution if a full in-text explanation is unwieldy or inconvenient for any reason. GregorB (talk) 09:54, 9 August 2015 (UTC)
 * I second that opinion. Explanatory text is always helpful as when medals have been reassigned there will always be historical sources that contradict the present standing. Notes make this much less confusing. I find the ref label and note label templates nice and easy to use for this. SFB 22:32, 9 August 2015 (UTC)

What is the Russian pole vaulter called?
What is the correct romanization of Иван Гертлейн?

--178.232.10.237 (talk) 11:12, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
 * 2015 World Championships in Athletics – Men's pole vault: Ivan Hertlein
 * Russia at the 2015 World Championships in Athletics & 2009 European Athletics U23 Championships – Men's pole vault: Ivan Gertleyn
 * IAAF: Ivan Gertlein (which might be the French romanization?)
 * If I understand WP:RUS correctly, it's Gertleyn. GregorB (talk) 14:01, 26 August 2015 (UTC)
 * Gertleyn seems to be correct, but there is a complication: in fact it is a Russian transliiteration of the German name Hertlein! WeiaR (talk) 18:33, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Copyright issues on college runners
Just an FYI, User:Longdistance06 has introduced quite a few copyright issues by copy-pasting text from college runner bios. I've reverted ones thus far and informed then of the problem, but worth keeping an eye out to ensure the same mistakes aren't made in future. Cheers. SFB 22:06, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

Athletics category discussions
I have reviewed the category structure and made a group of nominations to delete/merge around 15 categories. Please contribute to the discussion here. Thanks! SFB 13:19, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

IAAF name template and WikiData
I've updated the IAAF name template so that it automatically looks for the IAAF ID on the athlete's WikiData page (e.g. Bryan Clay). If the athlete has an IAAF ID under statements then the link will be automatically created. This now means the template needs no parameters at all! The Polish and Italian Wikipedias have already started doing this so it means we can start working on this together.

WikiData is slowly improving and I hope that in the not too distant future it will allow us to automatically populate many things, such as infobox info, personal bests, and international competition records. This should represent a big step forward for those of us working on athletics, as it means we can leverage the effort across languages (e.g. if a French or Russian editor has already added the data, then we can draw it automatically in English too). Updating medallists and records should prove a much easier task! SFB 16:36, 18 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Also, FYI: I'm also working on an athletics-specific version of Magnus Manske's "useful" tool, which can automatically add common statements to a WikiData page. You can try it out by placing the following code at your WikiData common.js:
 * Feel free to make additions or improvements if you're comfortable with the code. SFB 16:43, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Note, that only you can edit this page (OK, you can edit it also if you're admin @WD). Infobox filling actually is possible already now, but infobox, of course, should be upgraded. After IAAF name exporting to Wikidata, there will be some merging job at Wikidata (merging biographies, that are not connected to each other). Don't know about other sports, but athletics has some problem in this duplication - have already merged some 20 duplicates. And there are more, that I hope to merge. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 17:13, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Oh, you can probably contact that IAAF person, these IAAF profiles most probably could be merged (checked the first two, it looks like it's the same athlete). -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 10:16, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for running the reports. I've informed the IAAF of the duplicates and just waiting for a response. I've been adding multiple IDs where they are present and I'm glad the queries work well to highlight the issue. My intention is to remove the inactive ID once they have merged on their database. Good work on highlighting potential merge candidates.
 * What are your suggestions/advice around infoboxes? I've not seen any tools that work with those yet. It looks like the Personal best Wikidata property will be added shortly so I'd appreciate input on how best to manage that too. I hope in the near future we can leverage all the languages to keep these more up-to-date. SFB 11:31, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Such reports are generetad for all properties, I don't run them :) Yes, enwiki isn't using Wikidata so much, better work is done in other Wikipedias, like French, Russian or Czech. You can add Wikidata information to infobox using Wikidata module. When personal best property will be live and I will see, how that information will be structured, then we can have a talk. If it'll be simple, then I could add the code to infobox, if it'll be something complex - then we have Lua guys :) But at first you most probably should get consensus at infobox talk page (or with other Wikiprojects, who use it) for Wikidata data inclusion. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 11:52, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the info. I imagine the personal best extract for an infobox would need to extract the event name, performance, and year of performance. The personal best field at the moment is free-form (i.e. all detail manually entered and formatted in one field). I would actually like to design a Lua module that creates a table of personal best data and provides a link to Wikidata to edit. This will help the case for wider Wikidata usage. After all, athletics, as a highly statistical sport, is a really straight forward case for that and the various language projects stand to benefit a lot from that. SFB 23:37, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
 * You have big plans, which of course is good :) I don't have strong opinion, but I think, that in infobox, it would be enough of PB data, discipline and year, with additional note, that it's national/world/etc. record. Like we have at Latvian Wikipedia (section "Personiskie rekordi" in infobox). All other things are for text part in article. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 15:57, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Looks good to me too! SFB 19:40, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Looks good to me too! SFB 19:40, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Just wanted to let you know, that I imported to Wikidata all IAAF IDs from Wikipedias (at least from these templates), at least for those articles, which have Wikidata entry. I still have to merge some articles, but have already done the biggest part of the job. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 06:36, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Properties for personal best and sports disciplines competed in is live, BTW. -- Edgars2007  (talk/contribs) 14:19, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

IP edits to athletic articles
An IP editor,, has been making numerous edits to articles about athletics, mostly just deleting lists of awards from articles, without any attempt at justifying their edits. Since I know almost nothing about this topic, I'm not really in a position to fix this. I'd greatly appreciate it if someone here could please take a look at their edits to see whether their edits are improvements or vandalism, and if the latter, to undo any damage they may have done? -- The Anome (talk) 11:33, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * The IP is editing articles about gymnastics; we here are track and field editors, and not necessarily particularly informed about gymnastics. In any case, I had a quick look and the IP seems to be a good faith editor; he's removing what appear to be "less important" medals one could easily argue should indeed be axed from the infobox. (I would remove anything similar from a track and field infobox, but I have no idea if there's any consensus on what belongs and doesn't belong in gymnastics infoboxes.) In any case, the IP doesn't look like a vandal, though the failure to communicate is a problem. Sideways713 (talk) 11:48, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Abbreviations in AchievementTable
Do we have a guideline on how/whether abbreviations should be used in AchievementTable? It seems a lot of different styles are being used... Sammy Wanjiru's 58:53 WR is used as an example here.

Style 1 is the actual style used in Wanjiru's achievement table, and to my eyes it reads way too much like Wanjiru equalled the WR. Style 2 is suggested by WikiProject Athletics/Manual of Style/Biographies. Style 3 is used in James Kwalia's achievement table, which is given as an example table by Template:AchievementTable/doc (style 4 is style 3 with AthAbbr). Style 5 is used in Konstantinos Kenteris's achievement table; style 6 is used in Süreyya Ayhan's achievement table. Styles 7 (for WLs) and 8 are used in Usain Bolt's achievement table; styles 7 to 9 are all used in competition articles. Style 10 (no abbreviations) is widely used (if not always by design) and the keep-it-simple option.

Any thoughts? Sideways713 (talk) 21:46, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I would definitely avoid version 1, as I copy the IPC code and they use =WR as 'equaled World Record', so I agree with your sentiment there. FruitMonkey (talk) 22:09, 2 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Changed the abbreviations in Wanjiru's article to style 9. Sideways713 (talk) 14:44, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
 * The AthAbbr template is a relatively recent innovation. I've been adding it when I've made edits, but haven't looked to do a standardised clean up or anything. That template was designed to provide a link to the relevant article (or glossary description) and also to provide tooltip-text when you hover over that says what the abbreviation means (e.g. OR displays Olympic record, but still links to the more specific Olympic athletics records list). That tooltip-text is what screen-reading software will read, so this template is high quality in terms of accessibility (all the other styles will just be read "wrr" or "double-u arr" to users on screen readers).
 * On a related note, I don't think non-championship performances warrant table usage. The venue is almost always the same and most races contain the name of the venue and given event, leading to redundancy (e.g. London Marathon – venue: London, event: Marathon). Further to that we have the problem that Wanjiru's table suggests he represented Kenya at those races, when in fact the Olympics was the only one of the seven listed races that was an international. I prefer a simple grouped usage like that int he circuit wins section of the Süreyya Ayhan article. It also helps us avoid listing medals for all sorts of competitions where medals were not awarded. SFB 02:37, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree about non-championship performances not warranting tables in the case of non-road-runners like Ayhan. I can see an argument for road runners like Wanjiru being treated differently; those non-championship races were integral to his career (and make for a much fuller table), and the same can probably be said of many other road runners. Martin Lel and Geoffrey Mutai (and probably many others) have two achievement tables, one for international championships where they represented their country and another for regular road races; to me that seems like a good plan, though in Wanjiru's case the championship table would look quite silly with just one entry. (I suppose someone could add his 51st place at the 2007 IAAF World Road Running Championships.)
 * Of course, some of the problems you mention (in particular, duplication of venue and event names) still occur if separate tables are used. But as you noted, not all races have names like that (the Lel table has the Peachtree Road Race, a 10-km race in Atlanta, Georgia). Also, historically many "marathons" were (intentionally) shorter than the full 42,195 metres, so it couldn't be assumed that any race with "marathon" in its name was really a marathon; while achievement tables are seldom used for road runners (or any athletes) from that far back, that could change yet.
 * That said, when I first looked at the Wanjiru bio and saw those non-championship races in his achievement table, it did surprise me a bit. Sideways713 (talk) 13:54, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

Country names of athletes showing twice in some WC event pages
Event pages in 2009 World Championships in Athletics and 2011 World Championships in Athletics are affected. E.g. 2011 World Championships in Athletics – Women's 100 metres. First there is the flag, then there is the name of country twice. I believe the idea is there to be the abbreviation in the parentheses, not the full name. The template is Template:FlagATHCH. Maybe someone knows how to fix this. Make91 (talk) 00:33, 21 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for reporting. The problem is that people use this template in two different ways; some users enter the full country name (e.g. Italy) into the template, while others enter an abbreviation (ITA). Until a couple months ago, both of these worked; but after a recent change to the template you got very ugly results if you used the full country name. I edited the template so both approaches should give reasonable results again; if you use an abbreviation you'll get the abbreviation in parentheses, and if you use the full name you'll get nothing in parentheses. Sideways713 (talk) 11:41, 21 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Apologies for introducing this error and thanks for the fix Sideways. My changes were intended to make this an easy and robust template to use that displayed both the country name and the country code that is commonly indicated in results (something desired from past conversations). It would make sense to update the historic uses of Template:FlagATHCH to take advantage of the full functionality, the auto link being the biggest improvement. For example the code can now be replaced with the much more simple , which will actually output the link, country name, and code with just three letters. I will look to review this in the near future. SFB 02:23, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

IP results vandal
Our IP results vandal is back. This is the jerk that likes to meticulously modify results so everybody in a major race is .05 faster (making the results that much more significant). They declare new world leaders, SBs and records affected by the altered marks. Of course the source shows differently. This person, always with a new IP, wastes a lot of labor doing these alterations, but we need to catch them each time. Trackinfo (talk) 21:25, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Rfc regarding BAA template
Requesting feedback in Template talk:Boston Athletic Association regarding the links noted. Thanks! - Location (talk) 12:29, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Names in national record lists
When listing athletes in national record lists do you list them under the name they took when the record was set or their current name. I'm thinking specifically of women who have got married since the record has been set? Cls14 (talk) 15:29, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
 * In Mile run world record progression we have three evolutions of Mary Decker's last name. I think the appropriate name is the name they were using at the time of the record, including for Bruce Jenner. Trackinfo (talk) 21:37, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Nice one Cls14 (talk) 21:54, 9 December 2015 (UTC)
 * The name used at the time is probably best according to general name guidelines. However, it does not always make the information more clear in articles covering a longer time span, such as lists of records and medalists. Sometimes the last name is completely changed, and readers unfamiliar with those names may not realize it's the same person. In those cases a hyphenated name or an extra name in parentheses can help out. Gap9551 (talk) 23:03, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

Marathon-Worldrecord in the M55
Hello,

My name is Ingo, I am a Marathonrunner and some people named me "Mr.Computer", as I can very easily remember names and times from Running-Events. What I would like to discus about, is the Worldrecordlist for Masters, exspecially the list for Men, Marathon-Worldrecord in the M55.

In 2007 I saw the Worldchampionships in Osaka, Japan, the Marathon of Men and with a time of 2:22hrs came a Runner to the finishing line, who was 52 years old: Ayale Seteng from Israel. 2011 I looked for the results of the Rotterdam Marathon. This results are listed by agegroups, and I found "normal" results, except of one: Ayale Seteng ran this Marathon in 2:19:32hrs in an official age of 56 years. This never was acknowledged or even mentioned by the Media, but you still can klick it on Google and find this result there in the list.

So, I guess, the result in the Worldrecord-List here at Wikipedia should be corrected in this special case.

What do you think, and do you have eventually more data, whitch may disqualify him for that?

Ingo — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.113.98.174 (talk) 17:42, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
 * Ayele Seteng is a known commodity. There are numerous excuses why records are not recognized by World Masters Athletics.  It could be as simple as nobody noticed and submitted the paperwork on his behalf.  I was able to find the result and will post it as another (permanently) pending mark to the List of world records in masters athletics.  This is one of the things we can do better here on wikipedia.  With proper sourcing, as this has, we can denote superior performances that have slipped through the official cracks. Trackinfo (talk) 20:04, 14 December 2015 (UTC)
 * I believe Seteng (Setegne/Satayin) was born in 1962, and the 1955 date is an error caused by the Ethiopian calendar being seven years behind. As this IAAF file says:
 * Previously we had as the oldest competitor as 50y 173y [sic] Ayele Setegne ISR 1 Oct 05, but it has been clarified that this man was actually born in 1962 and not 1955 as given on entry forms. Therefore he was 43 years old in 2005 and not 50. It is correct that April 11, 1955 is his official birth date according to his Ethiopian passport and Israeli identity card. The 1955 date is from the Ethiopian calendar which runs seven years later than that in common use. An actual birthdate of April 11, 1962 has been confirmed by the athlete, and to the IAAF by the Israeli AA, who explain that for official purposes he must use the earlier date as this is what appears on his Israeli papers, which apparently cannot be changed
 * I agree that noting superior performances that have not been ratified for whatever reason is a good idea, but this is not one of them. Sideways713 (talk) 11:03, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
 * This probably merits a footnote on the article to explain the situation, as this question will likely crop up again. SFB 22:40, 15 December 2015 (UTC)
 * We had a similar situation with Fauja Singh, interestingly with another accused 7 year gap. Gabre Gabric is another case, and there was Francisco do Carmo Oliveira, who was banned for life for competing and claiming a record in the wrong age division.  We still mention Singh and Gabric's claimed records.  Maybe we need a better way of noting all the complications on a lot of records starting with the Open Women's 100m. Trackinfo (talk) 23:19, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

update to a "pending" status
Hello, I wanted to provide a link to the report of my Indoor Masters Shotput record so that it might be changed on your site from "pending" status to "verified." http://www.world-masters-athletics.org/files/records/indoormen.pdf

Thank You, Gerald Vaughn — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.28.88.91 (talk) 19:14, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
 * We have no masters indoor records here, I think. What are you referring too? WeiaR (talk) 18:24, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Happy New Year!
I'd like to give a big thanks to everyone for their contributions this year!

Some great stuff achieved, from the expanding history of results articles to the growth of athletics info on Wikidata. Outstanding work on the 2015 World Championships in Athletics has meant all athletes that finished in the top 25 of an event have a biography. All individual European champions, from 1934 to present, now have an article.

Countless more athlete biographies have been created. There are now a total of 20,456 articles in the Category:Athletes by nationality category. There haven't been is livany new good or featured articles this year within the project., but I think that's a reflection of the project's focus on improving basic coverage across the board instead of single articles.

As always, there are still plenty of new articles that can be created, and many older ones on important athletes that would benefit from expansion. I look forward to seeing what everyone comes up with next in 2016. There are some very interesting opportunities in adding info on personal best and events competed in to Wikidata, which we can hopefully use in the near future to generate personal best tables and competition record tables. Have a great year everyone! SFB 18:19, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Naming convention
Hi guys, is the preferred naming convention, when disambiguation is required, no longer "(athlete)" and now the more specific term "(sprinter)", "(high jumper)", etc. Referencing Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Athletics above from August 2014, it seems to reluctantly accept that this is now the case. If it is, we should probably right a small paragraph stating so at Naming conventions (sportspeople).

Additionally,, lists over 1700 articles. What to do about them? Thoughts? -- Ianblair23 (talk) 08:11, 1 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I've taken the position where I'll use "(athlete)" as the default handle for any athletics competitor, but if there is another sportsperson of the same name (e.g. Michael Johnson) then I'll use the discipline they specialise in. It still makes sense to use the traditional "(athlete)" disambiguator when it is correct for anyone reading "athlete" in either the broad or strictest sense of the word (e.g. John Voight (athlete)). SFB 19:25, 1 January 2016 (UTC)

Decathlon WLs and scoring tables
Two quick questions: in the WL table at Decathlon, should the points be given according to the modern (1985) scoring tables, or according to whichever scoring table was used at the time? And when the two scoring tables give a completely different world leader (as happened on some occasions), which leader should we note, or should we note them both? Currently, the table is an inconsistent mix which is based completely on old tables up to 1971, and completely on new tables from 1972 on.

I think we should use old tables, for the following reasons: 1) prior to 1972 it will be easier to source the list if we use old tables (, based on 1985 tables, only goes back to '72; using other sources might give us a few more years but not fully solve the problem) and 2) using old tables gives us a better idea of who was actually considered the world leader at the time. The problem with using old tables is that it doesn't give as good an idea of how decathletes have developed over time, and may confuse readers; of course, that problem is averted if we give the scores on both old tables and new tables, but that would be an ugly solution. Sideways713 (talk) 15:00, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
 * In cases where all ten event results are known, points according today's table can be added between brackets. As an aside: Yang Chuan-kwang's pole vault points were seen as overrated by the old tables at the time, so old tables not always give the 'right' impression. WeiaR (talk) 18:15, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I think we will find the stat easier in old form. That is how things were calculated at the time.  If you have the individual marks, we can run them through a calculator to come up with a translated 1985 score which can separately be ranked.  The issue is in finding all the stats.  In Masters World and American records I have quite a few records where the individual stats have note been found yet.  Old timey marks suffer the same fate once they fall off the IAAF list.

Ranking in prose
Sorry folks, I keep coming up with problems in need of wiki solutions.

In many articles we have statements that appropriately give an athlete's current ranking. "(Athlete)'s performance is the (rank) on the all time list." With each new performance, that ranking can change, wholesale, across every athlete on that list. It is rare that someone, including myself, posting an update to the ranking list will then go through all the articles lower on the list and update each. Frankly, in our statistical based sport, there are a lot of lists and a lot of these relative comparisons to make. Catching and updating notations is hit or miss and a lot of labor. So for each athlete article, your quality may vary. Can we come up with a wholesale way to preprogram these relative calculations to get updated relative to a specific list? Trackinfo (talk) 19:14, 3 January 2016 (UTC)
 * As far as I can see, only manual methods are used to update rankings (I viewed Andy Murray in the largest Wikipedias and where a current ranking was given, all were in plain text). This kind of idea gets into the realm of structured data, which is what Wikidata is for. Incorporating tables for Wikipedia is a future project for the moment, so we can't yet upload a list of the top 100 and automatically give the ranking in Wikipedia (yet).
 * For the moment, there is a ranking property. This can be used on a person's Wikidata page that you could then output a person's ranking in an infobox field (with a bit of work on the infobox code side). Likely, this should be linked in with the new personal best property. I've had a go at adding this kind of data to Usain Bolt's wikidata page. This largely reflects the fields you'd commonly find in a personal best table, but with the added ranking, where relevant. The obvious drawback is that this is still a manual task, but ultimately it's a better solution than we currently have, as we'll have a centralised point where you can update it. (On your original question: note that converting Wikidata to some kind of automatic prose is something there has not been consensus to implement on English Wikipedia.)
 * Obvious things currently missing from this dataset are (a) a way to denote climatic conditions such as windspeed, altitude, and (b) data items to link a performance to a certain record (e.g. men's 100 metres world record). I'd appreciate some input from other people, because this will likely become quite a major part of how we handle track stats in the near future. SFB 15:41, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Draft:Jim M. Baker
New user has written this draft about a college athlete from the 1950s, which has been declined for lack of notability. He made the common mistake of choosing his subject's name as a username, but has made clear that this is not autobiography, and has changed username. See his talk page and User talk:JohnCD for his explanations and the advice he has been given.

I don't know enough about athletics in the US to assess whether the claims made indicate notability: I would be grateful if someone could advise Dondwiki440 on that point and, if there is some hope for an article, where he might look for better sources. Regards, JohnCD (talk) 21:22, 2 February 2016 (UTC)
 * Baker does not meet NTRACK, but he was good enough (NCAA 440y runner-up) that he could conceivably meet GNG. I could not find him in any Hall of Fame, which apart from being a bad sign means the sources, if any, would most likely be contemporary newspapers, magazines etc. My guess, from a quick look, would be that finding significant non-routine coverage in independent sources will be very very difficult here; in short, he's pretty borderline, and my instinct is that he is (unfortunately) on the wrong side of the border, but Dondwiki440 is highly welcome to prove me wrong. Sideways713 (talk) 22:23, 2 February 2016 (UTC)

Valeriy Borchin
Would someone mind taking a look at the lede for Valeriy Borchin. His world titles are somewhat disputed and I have no idea how to best phrase it. Red Fiona (talk) 19:17, 21 April 2016 (UTC)
 * Unfortunately for our sport, there is a mountain of potential drug disqualifications and medal advancements. Most of these cases are pending; no decisions have been made.  This makes for us editors to have to write lengthy explanations about the ambiguous situation until IAAF or IOC make up their minds what they will do about these situations.  I don't know if any of these have a "letter of the law" to follow, so decisions are seemingly random.  Some old decisions mention a statute of limitations, but current tests and actions seem to be doing research into results older than the supposed statute.  In short, we don't have any idea what will really happen.  BLP and CRYSTAL rules make us phrase speculation only as a hypothetical if logic were part of the equation, which is something the governing bodies and their corrupt administrators (of the past?) confound us on. Trackinfo (talk) 19:36, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Old World Records
I see new insertions of. I like it. However, many WR designations we deal with, theoretically all records we deal with, are records we know will at some point in time become historical. Records are meant to be broken. Many of us have faced this battle when outsiders remove the record information from tables and prose. . . because it is no longer the record. We know it always was the record at that point in time and will always have that status. We use wikilinks to show what we are talking about--for more information. I have manually wikilinked many WR designations to the world record progression, which then shows where that record fit into history. Record progressions don't really exist beyond the world level, though I think that is appropriate wikipedia content. But certainly for the World Record, I think we should direct users to the progression rather than the current records in at least most cases. Trackinfo (talk) 20:20, 2 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I've been guilty of linking to the current records many times in the past; somehow, I didn't even realize (or remember) that AthAbbr supports linking to the WR progression. Sideways713 (talk) 09:34, 3 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Does it support linking to the progression already? How? Trackinfo (talk) 19:26, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
 * gives, for example. I was going to make the template work like that, only to realize it already did. Sideways713 (talk) 21:20, 5 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a good idea SFB 00:29, 5 May 2016 (UTC)

Kelly-Ann Baptiste
Hi, I was going through Kelly-Ann Baptiste's page, and the PB table is nothing like her IAAF page (http://www.iaaf.org/athletes/trinidad-and-tobago/kelly-ann-baptiste-190476). Should I change it to match the IAAF page? Red Fiona (talk) 21:50, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, since annulled marks don't count as official PBs; though it could be noted that she had better marks and they were annulled. Sideways713 (talk) 22:04, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The problem is I can't find any evidence that they were annulled. Could they be US collegiate times?  Red Fiona (talk) 22:18, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
 * The 55 m and 60 m PBs are legitimate and perfectly match what IAAF gives. The 100 m and 200 m "PB"s (10.83 and 22.36) were her times at the 2013 Trinidadian national championship, later annulled due to her 2013 doping ban; if necessary, we can cite Tilastopaja, which both gives those marks and notes that they were annulled due to an anti-doping rule violation. Sideways713 (talk) 22:44, 8 May 2016 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I'll get on it tomorrow.Red Fiona (talk) 22:54, 8 May 2016 (UTC)

Auto-assessment of article classes
Following a recent discussion at WP:VPR, there is consensus for an opt-in bot task that automatically assesses the class of articles based on classes listed for other project templates on the same page. In other words, if WikiProject A has evaluated an article to be C-class and WikiProject B hasn't evaluated the article at all, such a bot task would automatically evaluate the article as C-class for WikiProject B.

If you think auto-assessment might benefit this project, consider discussing it with other members here. For more information or to request an auto-assessment run, please visit User:BU RoBOT/autoassess. This is a one-time message to alert projects with over 1,000 unassessed articles to this possibility. ~ RobTalk 22:18, 3 June 2016 (UTC)

Footer Templates
I've recently been working on Footer Templates, and I've noticed that there often is wild variation in the order of them from one page to another. Would it be an idea to include this in the manual of style so that there is a standardised guide to work from? My thoughts go something like this:
 * Olympics
 * World (Senior then Junior then Youth)
 * World Cross Country
 * World Relays
 * World Race Walking
 * World Half Marathon
 * IAAF Diamond League
 * IAAF World Challenges (Hammer/Combined Events etc.)
 * IAAF World Cup
 * World Indoors
 * Pan Am/Commonwealth Games
 * Continental Championships (Senior then Junior then Youth)
 * Continental Indoor Championships
 * National Championships (Own country)
 * National Championships (Not own country - this is for championships which act as a country's national championships but are also open to other entries)
 * National Indoor Championships (Own country)
 * National Indoor Championships (Not own country)
 * World Year Best Performance
 * Any teams the athlete was a member of (E.g. US Olympic Track team 2012)
 * Any non-athletics footers (E.g. American Footballers who double up in long jump or sprinting like Marquise Goodwin.)

Competitions decrease in magnitude as you go down. They are then followed by achievements directly relating to performances, e.g. World Year Bests, then achievements not relating to performances, like Athlete of the Year. This would follow the same order, so a World AotY template would be above European AotY template. Finally, As for order of individual events (for example when an athlete is a champion in various events like Dafne Schippers, 100 through 10,000, then hurdles, steeplechase, high, long, triple, pole vault, shot, discus, javelin, hammer, combined events, then relays. If you have any suggestions for corrections or anything I have missed out, please suggest them. Also it would be nice to establish a consensus on if and if so where/how this might fit into the Biographies MoS. JDWFC (talk) 12:54, 9 June 2016 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I already work to a similar approach to what you've outlined above. SFB 18:19, 24 July 2016 (UTC)

AthAbbr needed
I created the AthAbbr needed template so that any pages that need converting can be tagged and followed up on, as there are thousands which were either created before or without the template. Using AthAbbr allows for better understanding of athletics pages by those not as knowledgeable about the sport. If you could tag any pages that need AthAbbr with the template then I (and hopefully others) will work to make sure that it gets changed. JDWFC (talk) 10:08, 16 June 2016 (UTC)

Professional wrestling RfC
There's an RfC at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Professional wrestling regarding a disclaimer for those that are unaware of its scripted nature. Any input would be appreciated.LM2000 (talk) 14:11, 13 July 2016 (UTC)