Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Figure Skating/Archive 3

A couple of questions (ISU rankings and professional results)
1. What is this project's policy on including ISU world standings [] in skater's biographies (the Jeffrey Buttle and Stéphane Lambiel articles currently cite these)? I was always under the impression that these rankings were not very accurate, as they are heavily scaled towards participation in the ISU Grand Prix of Figure Skating. For example, Lambiel, the current World champion, is ranked fifth, while Buttle, who hasn't competed yet this season, is currently in first place.

2. Would it be a good idea to put professional results in the same table format (but perhaps in a separate table) as amateur results? If so, what are the major professional events that should be included?

Thanks for your time, Lmblackjack21 12:04, 12 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I'd personally prefer that articles didn't include references to the ISU world standings because they change all the time and require continual maintenance to keep current. (OTOH, once you write that a skater won such-and-such competition, that fact doesn't change based on current events.)  As you note, the formula used to combine results from different events is also completely arbitrary, but so are many of the ISU's technical rules....  see, for instance, the ISU Judging System.  ;-)


 * Re the pro competitions, I suppose it depends on which events and which skaters. I don't think they should be listed with major eligible events like the World Championships.  For that matter, I think eligible "cheesefests" generally aren't really notable competitions either, and don't deserve special mention in Wikipedia unless a particular event had special significance in the career of an individual skater.  Dr.frog 14:21, 12 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm in favor of listing world standings, because, while weighted heavily towards the GP, they still do exist. As for pro results, I think they should be listed, but seperately from amateur results. Kolindigo 05:47, 14 January 2007 (UTC)


 * My issue with listing ISU world standings is that while they do exist, hardly anyone knows what the heck they're for, or even how they're obtained--in short, they seem really useless. With the pro results, I was just wondering if there was any reason why most professional results are not tabulated like amateur results are. --Lmblackjack21 21:19, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Nominated for deletion
I have renominated Zsa Zsa Riordan for deletion. I have also nominated Template:Isu for deletion. Kolindigo 06:00, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Notability for figure skaters
A comment on the Zsa Zsa Riordan afd suggested to start a policy page, advertise it on WP:VPP, get a consensus on these proposals (if you can) and then apply them. I don't have the first clue how to do any of that, but in order to start it (so that dealing with deleting skating bios becomes easier), I figured it'd be good to have a clear consensus on what we all think makes a skater notable. Here are criterea based on the above suggestions by Dr.frog and the following discussion.

For skaters, in descending order:
 * 1) Competed at the Winter Olympic Games
 * 2) Competed at an ISU Championship (World Figure Skating Championships, World Junior Figure Skating Championships, European Figure Skating Championships, Four Continents Figure Skating Championships)
 * 3) Medalled on the senior level at the skater's national championships. (Thoughts on medal vs. top three? Medal would include top four in the US)
 * 4) Competed at a Grand Prix of Figure Skating event (Skate America, Skate Canada International, Trophee Eric Bompard, Cup of China, Cup of Russia, NHK Trophy, Bofrost Cup on Ice.
 * 5) Competed on the ISU Junior Grand Prix
 * 6) Competed internationally on the junior or senior levels.

For people assosciated with skating who were not notable as eligible skaters:
 * 1) A coach who has coached notable skaters.
 * 2) A choreographer who has worked with many  notable skaters
 * 3) Judges who have been involved in judging scandals.
 * 4) Professional skaters who have competed professionally, or have made appearances on televised skating shows.
 * 5) Heads of national and international federations.

Thoughts? Kolindigo 05:53, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


 * This is generally OK, but I can think of individuals who are clearly notable in skating who would be excluded by these criteria. Examples include:  Jackson Haines (professional skater in pre-television era), Bruce Mapes (likewise), Mabel Fairbanks (black skater not allowed to compete in the 1950's), Sonia Bianchetti (very influential skating official but was never a federation head and was never involved in a judging scandal), Tom Collins (founder and producer of Champions on Ice tour).  I'd suggest adding:


 * Individuals recognized for their contributions to skating by membership in the World Figure Skating Hall of Fame, or a national figure skating hall of fame.


 * Other individuals who have made significant contributions to the development of figure skating as sport or entertainment, other than as competitors, whose accomplishments are verifiable by multiple reliable sources.


 * How does that sound? Dr.frog 14:05, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Sounds good to me, though I'd like the last one to be more specific. How would "signifcant contributions" be quantified? Kolindigo 21:28, 27 February 2007 (UTC)


 * Actually, I was kind of thinking that leaving that vague would be a good thing, since I can't pretend to anticipate all the ways in which a person could make notable contributions to the sport. The key point is that multiple reliable sources describe the person as having made some notable contribution to the sport.  Dr.frog 03:09, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Possible source of Photos
Hi

I received permission to use Image:Siobhan McColl.jpg under the GDFL from the author of http://homepage.mac.com/fsphotobox/. This may be a good source of photos in the future for this project.

Gary van der Merwe (Talk) 11:19, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Standardizing Skating Programs and Competitions
I would like to help standardize skating program information. For the variety of skating program sections that are on Wikipedia, see:


 * Sasha Cohen - This is a table I made and have applied to Sasha Cohen and Kimmie Meissner so far
 * Johnny Weir - This is how most skating program sections look. I think it's difficult to read and could use some formatting help, which is why I created the first table.
 * Evgeny Plushenko - Plushenko is the only skater for which I've seen this design for programs.

Any suggestions on how to standardize these?

On another note, I haven't seen any articles using these competition tables: Template:Infobox Figure Skating Competition CoP and Template:Infobox Figure Skating Competition 6.0. Sasha Cohen has some competitive tables, but these do not seem to be standardly used. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Kolindigo 06:09, 1 April 2007 (UTC) Skeetidot (talk • contribs) 03:00, 1 April 2007 (UTC).


 * regarding programs: I really like the one you put onto Cohen's article. My main problem is that it doesn't have a lot of space for notes on when the programs were performed or who choreoed it. It just bunches all together. And I don't like using small text when it's not absolutely necessary. I'm not a fan of squinting. ;) Is there a way to redesign that table structure so that there's room for it to have more than just the name of the song and the name of the artist? Kolindigo 06:09, 1 April 2007 (UTC)


 * I took the table you made for Evan Lysacek and tweaked this season's programs. My basic idea for a programs table. Kolindigo 06:26, 1 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Kolindigo, I like the template you made, but it would take up a lot of room for skaters who've competed over many seasons. Also, I found another format for programs on Michelle Kwan's article.  I like not having to expand and collapse years too, since that shows no information unless you expand a year.  Maybe something where summary info is displayed and then users can expand to see details.  I was hoping more ideas would have surfaced by now.

AfD notice

 * I have nominated Owen figure-skating family and Category:Jewish figure skaters for deletion. Kolindigo 20:17, 15 April 2007 (UTC)


 * More CfDs: Category:Sabena Flight 548 and Category:LGBT figure skaters have been nominated for deletion. This is the second deletion nom for LGBT skaters. Kolindigo 20:54, 22 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Another AFD: Taryn Position. Kolindigo 21:05, 14 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Zsa Zsa Riordan has been nominated for deletion, again again. Kolindigo 20:15, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Why do we need these categories?
"Christian figure skaters"? "Roman Catholic figure skaters"? "Asian American figure skaters"? IMO, these are non-notable category intersections and not encyclopedic. Please hold off on creating any more of these and/or trying to categorize skaters in this way unless/until you can define what "Roman Catholic figure skating" (for example) is, and how it differs from any other flavor of figure skating, and why skaters' religion or racial background is in any way relevant to their accomplishments and notability in the sport. Dr.frog 14:40, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

Sources/references?
I'm starting to find more and more articles with requests for references: Figure skating spins, Axel jump, etc. I know that a lot of the facts like first skater to land X jump, skater credited with inventing X spin position, are common knowledge among fans. But how do we source such facts? News article databases worry me because they are so often wrong about things like that. Suggestions? Vesperholly 08:46, 9 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I'm not aware of any good published sources of this information available online. OTOH, there are plenty of references in hardcopy source.  The USFSA media guide (at least the old one I have, from 1998-99) has tables of jump firsts, youngest/oldest champions, and similar trivia.  John Misha Petkevich's book includes historical notes about most of the jumps, and Nancy Kerrigan's book also has surprisingly lucid descriptions of technique.  I also have an older reference book from the 1970's published by the ISU, Single Figure Skating for Beginners and Champions, which has been quite useful.  It includes a long introductory section about the evolution of skating technique as well as discussion of individual elements.  For information about skaters, historical results, and rules changes over the years, Ben Wright's book Skating in America has been quite helpful.  I've also used the various skater biographies as references -- they often have information about other people and events, too.  And various popular books, like Christine Brennan's or the Beverley Smith books, are reliable sources as well.


 * On top of that, I have a collection of Skating magazines that goes back to the late 1980s, and Blades On Ice almost as far back. In addition to providing coverage of contemporary skaters and events, those old magazines also have occasional articles about skating history; e.g., I  used a long article published in Skating about the history of compulsory figures as the primary reference for the Wikipedia article on that topic.  Dr.frog 12:58, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Permission for photos from scratchspin.com
I have been seeing alot of photos from scratchspin.com incensed under GDFL. Did we receive permission to use all photos from that site, or must we request permission for each photo individually? Gary van der Merwe (Talk) 12:50, 18 May 2007 (UTC)
 * This was the email I received when I inquired: "Actually that particular one isn't a correct usage. I do allow Wikipedia to use my photos but they must include "(c) Andrea "Hoo" Chempinski" in the caption of the photo with a link to www.scratchspin.com.  So long as this is done you can put photos on whichever skater pages you'd like."


 * When I asked her to pick a tag, here was the response: "I looked over all the tags and it seems the best one is one that is no longer in use: # copyrighted—permission is given for use on Wikipedia only, and does not include third parties. If there's another tag that meets this criteria go with that.  The issue is that any photos of mine are for Wikipedia use only and cannot be reproduced in other formats/locations without specific permission from myself."


 * GFDL was the one that most resembled what she wanted, so I used that. Did I misunderstand the meaning of the GFDL license? Vesperholly 08:26, 20 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I believe we must delete all these images. Image use policy says:  "Licenses which restrict the use of the media to non-profit or educational purposes only (i.e. noncommercial use only), or are given permission to only appear on Wikipedia, are not free enough for Wikipedia's usages or goals and will be deleted."  The GNU Free Documentation License, OTOH, requires the ability to "copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or noncommercially" and therefore is incompatible with material that excludes commercial re-use.  Dr.frog 13:41, 20 May 2007 (UTC)

I think it is important the the author is specifically aware of that. Gary van der Merwe (Talk) 07:36, 21 May 2007 (UTC)
 * Section 2. VERBATIM COPYING of the GDFL states: "You may copy and distribute the Document in any medium, either commercially or noncommercially, provided that this License, the copyright notices, and the license notice saying this License applies to the Document are reproduced in all copies, and that you add no other conditions whatsoever to those of this License. You may not use technical measures to obstruct or control the reading or further copying of the copies you make or distribute. However, you may accept compensation in exchange for copies. If you distribute a large enough number of copies you must also follow the conditions in section 3."


 * Do you forward the permission email to the OTRS system as per Requesting copyright permission. If so, please will you post the ticket number here. Gary van der Merwe (Talk) 13:08, 21 May 2007 (UTC)


 * From what User:Vesperholly posted above, the photographer has been contacted and has explicitly refused to license her photos under the terms of the GDFL or any other free license acceptible to Wikipedia. Therefore, I don't see any point in trying to log the e-mail as if it were permission to use the images, because it's not.  The images must be removed.  Dr.frog 14:09, 21 May 2007 (UTC)


 * I've tagged all images on commons for deletion and removed them from articles. I'm starting to do the ones on en.wikipedia now. I'm not enjoying this, and I hope that Vesperholly and other editors that have uploaded scratchspin.com photos don't hate me for doing this. I know that it was a lot of work to upload them, and add them to articles. I thought about just ignoring the issue (as has happened before.) But I thought about the issue last night and there are a number bad things that are very likely to happen if this was not done:
 * The author finds her work on downstream projects and gets pissed off with us because we have misrepresented her by using the wrong license tag.
 * People continue to add photos from scratchspin.com and later some else deletes all the images, thereby creating even more undone work.
 * So it is just something that has to be done. I'm really sorry. Gary van der Merwe (Talk) 13:16, 23 May 2007 (UTC)


 * No need to apologize. In fact, thanks for noticing that this was a problem, and bringing it to our attention.  Important lesson:  do not take photos from a third-party web site unless you are sure the photographer has explicitly released them under an acceptable free license.  Dr.frog 14:23, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Some free photos here
http://www.flickr.com/photos/shutterbc/sets/72157594318902057/

These are photos from an Evening with Champions show. These are CC-BY 2.0 licensed. I've uploaded the one of Belbin & Agosto, but I don't know who any of the other skaters are.

Gary van der Merwe (Talk) 13:32, 25 May 2007 (UTC)


 * There are some nice shots of the Protopopovs in there. Other skaters include Vlassov & Meekins, Scott Smith, Matt Savoie, and Emily Hughes.  Dr.frog 17:08, 25 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Has anyone uploaded these? I do not know those skaters well enough to identify them. --Fang Aili talk 01:50, 19 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I just uploaded two: Image:Emily Hughes-Evening with Champions1.jpg and Image:Emily Hughes-Evening with Champions2.jpg but someone else will have to identify the other skaters. --Fang Aili talk 02:05, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

Proposed renaming of Category:WikiProject Figure Skating templates to Category:Figure Skating templates
... please see the discussion at Categories for discussion/Log/2007 June 27. Thanks. Mike Peel 18:44, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

By-Season Navigation
I don't really like the way we have navigation between competitions set up right now. If you look at pages like 2006 Skate America, there's no way to directly check out what happened at the other GP events that year, and no context of where it stood in the season as a whole. I see this as a bigger annoyance going into the 2007-2008 season with no way to get between events for that season. I was looking around at other sports and I like the way tennis has it set up for their yearly competitions. I'd like to keep the "other competitions of this type" templates on each main competition page (such as Template:ISU Championships Figure skating on the Worlds page), but remove it from all the by-year competition pages and replace it with something like this (taken shameless from tennis):

A big problem would be that this is fine for 2007/2008 and 2006/2007, but would break down quickly if we want to go back further. And I think that's okay. I think redlinks are fine, or simply not do those templates until there are pages to link to. But I'd rather have something that works only for a couple seasons rather than a navigation hole. I'd like to have on all main competition pages: 1) the template of "other competitions of this type" (ISU Championships, Grand Prix), and 2) the "this competition by year" template. And on the competition by year pages: 1) the "this competition by year" template, and 2) the "this season in skating" template. I think that would cover the hole well enough for recent past and future events. Kolindigo 06:06, 13 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I like your template, Kolindigo. Also, do we have an article on the figure skating "season"? It would be nice to explain why it starts in one year and ends in the next, and when various events occur in relation to one another (like the Worlds always being after the Olympics, for example). --Fang Aili talk 01:46, 19 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Not AFAIK, but that can be remedied. Do you mean on the skating season as a whole or a page for each season? Kolindigo 04:06, 19 July 2007 (UTC)
 * The skating season as a whole. --Fang Aili talk 13:55, 19 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Started. Kolindigo 01:18, 20 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Very nice. :) --Fang Aili talk 03:07, 20 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Okay. So what changes should be made so we can start doing this? Kolindigo 17:34, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

(back to left) Let's put the by-season template into those by-year articles. We could replace the general Grand Prix Figure skating template with the particular season template. So, for example, 2006 Cup of China would get the template-spaced version of User:Kolindigo/2006-2007 in figure skating, and Grand Prix Figure skating would be removed. But at Cup of China, Grand Prix Figure skating would stay. Make sense? --Fang Aili talk 17:47, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Yes. Okay, I've moved that one to templatespace. What changes should be made to the template before it is implemented? Kolindigo 18:21, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * It could be organized chronologically, but then you lose the sorting that's there now (ISU championships and Grand Prix events). Both organizations make sense, but I'm not sure which one would be more helpful to the reader. Would you want to look at the events chronologically and see how everyone placed, in order? Or would you want to look by event type? --Fang Aili talk 23:53, 24 July 2007 (UTC)


 * How about chronological order by event type? That would just affect the ISU championships right now. Euros first, then 4CC, then Junior Worlds, then Worlds. Or maybe put the date in parenthesis and maybe lighter-font after the competition just to show where it stood in the calender? Like: World Championships (March 07) . Kolindigo 04:01, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * Want to try both? Then let's see how it looks and decide if we like it. --Fang Aili talk 16:31, 25 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I don't think chronological order is of a great deal of importance to the Grand Prix series. Schedule changes have happened in the past without much effect. Performances at Skate America rarely affect later events, other than skaters who perform particularly well perhaps being assigned a second GP. But what GP they performed at well first doesn't affect which later one they are assigned to - ie winning Skate America would get you assigned to any following GP where a slot is available. But for many countries, Europeans and 4CC determines who goes to Worlds and/or the Olympics, so that they preceed Worlds and the Olympics is more important.
 * Also, I think the "Discontinued competitions" is misleading. Bofrost Cup is no longer a GP, but is still a competition. "Removed from GP series" would probably be clearer. Vesperholly 03:52, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and made one for 2007-2008, and I've stuck both of them on by-season competition pages. I agree changes should be made, but I figured might as well go ahead with imperfections that can always be changed later. :) Kolindigo 20:58, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

User:Jaranda/Notabilty (sports)
Hi, I strongly recommed this project to give your notabilty guidelines for a new notabilty proposal that I'm creating on my userpage, once it is completed, I will move to wikipedia namespace for the community to decide. Thanks Jaranda wat's sup 22:53, 29 August 2007 (UTC)

Cat-and-template renaming discussion notice
There's a stub template and cat rename discussion on renaming all bio stub categories from figure skater to figure skating biography and the bio stub templates to reflect that. Kolindigo 04:53, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Ice show
In the category of "can't believe Wikipedia doesn't have an article on it", I discovered that the encyclopedia lacked an article on ice shows. Many such productions, such as Disney on Ice have articles, and there's a category (Category:Ice shows), but no article... until now. Given that this subject is way out of my area of expertise (and given that the red link in an article I was working on is now rectified), I leave this to you all. :) --EngineerScotty 22:02, 24 October 2007 (UTC)
 * Thanks, Scotty! --Fang Aili talk 17:01, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

AfD notice
Alexis J. Williamson has been nominated for deletion. Kolindigo 18:43, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

I have nominated Stephanie Rosenthal for deletion. Kolindigo (talk) 21:43, 22 November 2007 (UTC)

Rename proposal
There is currently a renaming proposal for NHK Trophy going on on Talk:NHK Trophy. Kolindigo (talk) 18:08, 25 December 2007 (UTC)