Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Olympics/Archive 8

Format for the Category:Nations at the 2008 Summer Olympics articles
Although we've made great progress on the sport and event pages, we've always struggled with an effective formatting style for the per-nation pages. About the only thing that is consistent is infobox usage. Based on some old discussion, we're using the pictogram icons on the 2008 pages, and I've started to use a sortable table format for list of medalists, such as China at the 2004 Summer Olympics. (It's a big table, but still better than a simple wikilist, I think.) As for the results sections, we started to use tables in the 2006 and other pages, but for some reason, any of the previous styles never looked good to my eyes. Now, Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Olympics is starting to look really good, in my opinion, with effective sport-specific tables. Perhaps we can agree to use that format for all 2008 pages? — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 17:47, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Hands up in approval for tables, and I personally like the detailed format in Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Olympics. My only concern is that where full details are not available (yet), we may end up with lots of empty boxes for an extended period?--Huaiwei (talk) 18:35, 30 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, I think the tables look pretty good. Can you link me to any other page where tables have been used like this? I can't seem to find the any of the 2006 ones you mentioned, at least for Nations at the 2006 XXX Games. I've been running through the Category:Nations at the 2004 Summer Olympics pages, and I've managed to update about half of them, but I'm not all that happy with the style, as I'm just using bulleted lists, and more focused on correcting, completing and standardizing than a good format. If I can see a 'working' table with a good format, I'd be willing to go back through these 2004 pages to try to standardize them with whatever's used for 2008, and I think the GBR page looks pretty good.
 * As for sortable tables, they make sense for China and the United States, and look a little silly for say, Trinidad, but I'll try and run through the 2004 pages to add them, I think they look better than the current tables and the sorting can be useful. I also like the pictograms, so I'll use them too. - Edged (talk) 18:52, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
 * As for sortable tables, they make sense for China and the United States, and look a little silly for say, Trinidad, but I'll try and run through the 2004 pages to add them, I think they look better than the current tables and the sorting can be useful. I also like the pictograms, so I'll use them too. - Edged (talk) 18:52, 30 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Look at Norway at the 2006 Winter Olympics. Those event results tables are okay, but not great, in my opinion. For the medalist tables, they certainly don't have to be sortable for smaller numbers, but it helps to have a consistent format.  For example, Indonesia at the 2004 Summer Olympics has four medalists, and even that small table is neater than the typical bulleted list (like the top section of the Norway 2006 article.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:27, 30 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks, I can't believe I forgot about the Winter Olympics, I was only looking at Asian games and Commonwealth Games and wondering "What tables?". Too much Summer Games overload for me. Definitely agree about the medal tables, I've just been using a different format, see Morocco at the 2004 Summer Olympics, but I like your format better, so I might go back and change the ones I've done. Edged (talk) 19:37, 30 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Another idea that we talked about long ago (see /Archive 3) was using collapsible sections, such as what was started for User:Andrwsc/Test. This could be much, much, better, of course, but the idea might warrant further discussion.  I'm thinking that (for "large" teams), each sport would have a short introductory prose section with some highlights, then a collapsed box of full results that you would see by clicking on the " [Show] " button. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:43, 30 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Thumbs up, Andrwsc, for finding those sport-specific tables (also thanks to User:Yboy83 for the original idea!). They do seem to be a great compromise between data organization and aesthetics. You have my approval to start compiling per-nation results in that way. Parutakupiu (talk) 20:01, 30 July 2008 (UTC)


 * One detail about the tables. Do we want to continue to have them listed by athletes in alphabetical order, or maybe instead by event order? (Perhaps sortable?) They look good, but I'm just worried that big tables, especially for big delegations (such as Great Britain) in big sports (like Athletics) get too confusing listed alphabetically, and they might be a little more visually appealing and easy to read if they are listed by event, and then alphabetically by athlete. Do other people agree, or is it just me? Edged (talk) 03:12, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * A problem I just realized with my own suggestion is what to do with multi-event athletes, which work fine in the current format, but would be awkward in by event sorting. So perhaps it should just be left as it is, but I'm still not sure about how cluttered it looks. Edged (talk) 03:29, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, it would look weird to have an athlete duplicated just for the sake of sorting by event. A bigger problem is how to sort groups of people (rowing or sailing crews, for instance) rather than individuals in the same table... Parutakupiu (talk) 18:52, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Just fouund this talk, have been doing some editing to the France at the 2008 Summer Olympics and been struggling to find something that looks nice and works, these seen very good to me.Dwperrin (talk) 09:43, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I've applied the table layout to Portugal at the 2008 Summer Olympics, and it looks good. It was a bit tiresome to write all the table codes, even with plenty of copy-pasting), so I can imagine how "cruel" it will be to apply the same layout for larger national Olympic teams. Anyway, in such cases, I believe the collapsible sections idea of Andrwsc would be most welcome. Parutakupiu (talk) 18:52, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Hi all. Thanks for your positive comments on the edits made to the GBR page. It started with wanting to display the British swim team with all their events and results expected to appear in the next few weeks, then it sort of just carried on from there...! After seeing similar tables appearing on other nation's pages, I wondered if people had been following my lead, or if I had just been lucky with making the edits the same as is standard for this WikiProject..., but then I found these comments...! Cheers! You'll see I haven't done the tables for all the GBR sports as I wasn't sure how best to do them (for team sports for example); or haven't yet read about how the competition will work (e.g. boxing, gymnastics, rowing etc. - are they 'round-robin', 'knock-out', or some other competition format). Are there any particularly good examples for these sports on other nation's pages that we can use for the standard layout?
 * A couple of other thoughts/questions/comments:
 * I've been using the colour: 'wheat' for the stages of knock-out competitions that won't take part - wanted to stay away from anything gold, silver or bronze for obvious reasons. Is my colour choice appropriate enough?
 * With Badminton and Tennis (for example) I'm concerned that with there being up to 6 rounds of competition, the tables may be getting too wide for many screen displays. What is the wikipedia standard for this, and should we worry about it. You'll see on the GBR page that for Badminton I've got the 'Opposition' and 'Score' ready to be recorded in the same column, whilst for Tennis I've put them in separate columns.
 * When it comes to entering results in just less than a week's time (wooooo, can't wait!!), should we decide on a standard for displaying the results of medal winners in the 'Rank' columns of the tables? I've seen various methods around WP - I kindof like something like: [[Image:Med_1.png|Gold]] ...
 * I'm sure I'll think of somthing else to comment on, but for now, that's all.
 * Yboy83 (talk) 22:37, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * The GBR page looks terrific! I have one problem with it, though. I'm on a lower resolution right now and the page as is is making the browser horizontal scroll like mad. Tables usually "bunch up" to avoid scrolling. Right now, it seems like the archery section is forcing the scroll, but I can't figure out why. It's a minor usability problem, sure, but I'm concerned about a forced scroll with a page with a lot of text, and with, as you say, events with a lot of rounds of competition. Anyone know how to fix this? Kolindigo (talk) 22:52, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Yboy83, once again, kudos for your idea! I noticed you didn't apply tables to all GBR sport sections yet, but I went further and did it myself for Portugal. I adapted the competition system used in 2004, since I don't believe it'll change much (if it does, it's just an "edit" button away to fix it).
 * Answering to some of your comments/questions:
 * I also used the "wheat" color, since I had no compatibility problem with it, but if agreed it could be replaced by any other. The thing that has to be done is maintain color consistency throughout all articles that apply this layout system.
 * I realized that potential table width problem for single-elimination system sports that can go around for many rounds. I don't know how to act for now, I'll need to see how it develops when results come in and the tables get filled.
 * The "rank" columns could display [[Image:Gold medal icon.svg]] [[Image:Silver medal icon.svg]] [[Image:Bronze medal icon.svg]] for medal winners (with champion's name in boldface), and the rest with their placing's number.
 * — Parutakupiu (talk) 22:56, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, these tables are very nice, great work. The wheat colour looks good, it's what I've used for all the pages I've done. I definitely agree with you concerns about width, and another sport that's caused me trouble (I've used the tables for nations from Zimbabwe to Switzerland (excepting the US, I suspect that would take a long time)} is judo, since it has three repechage rounds, and with five normal rounds and a preliminary round, is as wide as tennis, if not wider. If anyone has a good idea for how to better present repechages for fighting events than just as another column, I'm all ears, because I haven't come up with anything. Also, what shall we do about team events? Should we use a standardized roster for all team sports, or just use whatever roster appears on the squad list pages? - Edged (talk) 23:44, 3 August 2008 (UTC)


 * A judoka can go through a maximum of seven rounds (if fighting in a preliminary round). If judging by tables for tennis or archery, it's not that much bigger. Parutakupiu (talk) 00:34, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh wait. I got your problem—with judokas all listed in the same table, we have to have all possible rounds they can go through (unless none of them would enter the exact same round), else we'd have to have separate tables for each one. Yes, now that really poses a problem. Parutakupiu (talk) 00:42, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Just throwing out a possible solution to see what others think, but maybe have for the events we're worried about (tennis, archery, badminton, judo, maybe wrestling, beach volleyball), have 'medal round' tables. A first table, as currently, with all the rounds before quarterfinals, and then a second table above (or below) with only from quarterfinals on, if needed. It wouldn't be great, but it would at least get rid of the horizontal clutter. I'm not sure replacing it with vertical clutter is much better, but some of the tables for those events look pretty bad in a windowed browser to me right now, even before they get widened by adding opponents. Edged (talk) 03:12, 4 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I've made an attempt at the track cycling section on the GBR page: GBR - Track Cycling. I think GBR has the biggest cycling team, so other nations shouldn't be so complicated to arrange. Any thoughts on the proposed layout? Yboy83 (talk) 21:18, 6 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I have been wondering what is the best, clearest way to indicate wins and losses in individual knock-out sports, and was wondering what others thought. Here is my idea:
 * {| class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%;"

!rowspan="2"|Athlete !rowspan="2"|Event !Round of 64 !Round of 32 !Opposition Score !Opposition Score
 * Li Guojie
 * Individual épée
 * bgcolor = "LightGreen"| 20-1
 * bgcolor = "Salmon"| 5 - 20
 * }
 * I think the colours are light enough to avoid obscuring the results, but still make wins and losses very clear, and, as with 'wheat', can't be confused with medals. Thoughts? Did anyone else have something in mind? Edged (talk) 23:36, 7 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I think the colours are light enough to avoid obscuring the results, but still make wins and losses very clear, and, as with 'wheat', can't be confused with medals. Thoughts? Did anyone else have something in mind? Edged (talk) 23:36, 7 August 2008 (UTC)


 * We can't rely only on colors to convey info (see WP:COLOR), especially red and green which are undistinguishable to daltonic users. Perhaps we could replace background colors by readily recognizable symbols:
 * {| class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%;"

!rowspan="2"|Athlete !rowspan="2"|Event !Round of 64 !Round of 32 !Opposition Score !Opposition Score
 * Li Guojie
 * Individual épée
 * align="center"| ✅ 20–1
 * align="center"| 5–20
 * }
 * ... or perhaps even this:
 * {| class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%;"
 * {| class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%;"

!rowspan="2"|Athlete !rowspan="2"|Event !Round of 64 !Round of 32 !Opposition Score !Opposition Score
 * Li Guojie
 * Individual épée
 * align="center"| 👍
 * align="center"| 👎
 * }
 * What do you say? Parutakupiu (talk) 02:40, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * What do you say? Parutakupiu (talk) 02:40, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Ah, yes I hadn't thought of that, quite right, colours are out. the tick and cross look good, and I think even a simple 'W' or 'L' would work.
 * {| class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%;"

!rowspan="2"|Athlete !rowspan="2"|Event !Round of 64 !Round of 32 !Opposition Score !Opposition Score
 * Li Guojie
 * Individual épée
 * align="center"| W 20-1
 * align="center"| L 5-20
 * }
 * Hmm, the tick-cross may be more clear than the letters, so perhaps we should go with that.Edged (talk) 02:50, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * My initial thought was simpler - just make the score of the athlete whose nation's page is being edited in bold. e.g.
 * {| class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%;"
 * {| class="wikitable" style="font-size:90%;"

!rowspan="2"|Athlete !rowspan="2"|Event !Round of 64 !Round of 32 !Opposition Score !Opposition Score
 * Li Guojie
 * Individual épée
 * align="center"| 20-1
 * align="center"| 5-20
 * }
 * With Athletics/Swimming heats and semi-finals - we should use a Q next to the rank to indicate they have proceeded to the next stage.
 * In all competitions, we should choose a colour for the boxes for "Did not advance" e.g. Great Britain at the 1908 Summer Olympics.
 * {|class=wikitable style="font-size:90%"
 * {|class=wikitable style="font-size:90%"

!rowspan="2"|Athlete !rowspan="2"|Events !colspan="2"|Heat !colspan="2"|Semi-Final !colspan="2"|Final !Time !Rank !Time !Rank !Time !Rank
 * rowspan="3"|Rebecca Adlington
 * 200 m Freestyle
 * 2:00.00
 * 14 Q
 * 1:59.00
 * 9
 * colspan="2" bgcolor="lightblue"|Did not advance
 * 400 m Freestyle
 * 4:00.00
 * 5 Q
 * colspan="2" bgcolor="wheat"|
 * 3:45.00
 * [[Image:Bronze_medal_icon.svg]]
 * 800 m Freestyle
 * 8:00.00
 * 9
 * colspan="2" bgcolor="wheat"|
 * colspan="2" bgcolor="lightblue"|Did not advance
 * }
 * One more thing for now - look at GBR#Boxing - one of our athletes has been sent home for failing to make the weight. I suggest something similar to what i've done for situations such as this and for athletes sent home for failing drugs tests or injured etc. Perhaps the background colour choice could be better?
 * That's all for now. Yboy83 (talk) 08:27, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * }
 * One more thing for now - look at GBR#Boxing - one of our athletes has been sent home for failing to make the weight. I suggest something similar to what i've done for situations such as this and for athletes sent home for failing drugs tests or injured etc. Perhaps the background colour choice could be better?
 * That's all for now. Yboy83 (talk) 08:27, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I like both the light blue and the disqualified/withdrew colour, they seem good. I'm fine with the bolding, it's just that I'm at a zoomed-out resolution that doesn't show bolded numbers in the tables. I think that basically what you have there, except with either a W or L added before the score, would be best. Still, I think it's pretty clear, I'm not really worried about it. Edged (talk) 07:44, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


 * On second thought, after applying light blue to a fencing table with a first round loss, I think it is better to use a lighter colour, perhaps 'HoneyDew'? I think over a large area the darker colour is too distracting.
 * {|class=wikitable style="font-size:90%"

!rowspan="2"|Athlete !rowspan="2"|Events !colspan="2"|Heat !colspan="2"|Semi-Final !colspan="2"|Final !Time !Rank !Time !Rank !Time !Rank
 * rowspan="3"|Rebecca Adlington
 * 200 m Freestyle
 * 2:00.00
 * 14 Q
 * 1:59.00
 * 9
 * colspan="2" bgcolor="HoneyDew"|Did not advance
 * 400 m Freestyle
 * 4:00.00
 * 5 Q
 * colspan="2" bgcolor="wheat"|
 * 3:45.00
 * [[Image:Bronze_medal_icon.svg]]
 * 800 m Freestyle
 * 8:00.00
 * 9
 * colspan="2" bgcolor="wheat"|
 * colspan="2" bgcolor="HoneyDew"|Did not advance
 * }
 * Edged (talk) 08:29, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * colspan="2" bgcolor="HoneyDew"|Did not advance
 * }
 * Edged (talk) 08:29, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


 * For me, HoneyDew looks a little too light. I'd choose 'AliceBlue' or 'LightCyan' for 'Did not advance'. For the same reason, perhaps 'PaleGreen' is too bright/dark for the DQ's/withdrawals? Can't see a suitable alternative - and I'm not an expert with the usability of web colours...
 * Having looked at the bolding of the result on a couple of different screens, I now agree that a W or L would be appropriate - the 95% font on high-res screens isn't particularly easy to distinguish between normal text and bold.
 * Yboy83 (talk) 09:21, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Another note I just thought of: what should 'rank' stand for? While it makes sense in swimming, what about in track events, where you can advance both by where you finish in the heat and your overall rank. I'm thinking it should be overall rank, but I wonder what others think? Edged (talk) 08:04, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Capital Q for progression through ranking in heat, small q for progression by 'fastest losers' ranking. Yboy83 (talk) 09:21, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I've seen your suggestions regarding the use of colors to shade cells where info like "disqualified/withdrawn/did not advance" are used, and I'm really not sure if we should use colors at all. I mean, the textual info is enough by itself, no? If I'm not mistaken, we've been using color shades in tables, only for the medalists tables (not on results tables, where we use medal icons) and, recently, to denote competition rounds which do not exist for some events of the same sport (I'm referring to the  shade). Do you think we really need colors for other situations?
 * As for the other suggestions, I also don't think boldfacing an athlete's score in those single elimination tournaments is good choice, especially when fonts are smaller. Yet, I'm also not fond of a single "W" or "L" because then we have to add a key somewhere to explain the abbreviations meaning (unless we use tooltip). I kinda liked the tick-cross... but that's just me. Parutakupiu (talk) 16:11, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


 * On United States at the 2008 Summer Olympics, people keep highlighting the disqualified or did not starts with a bright green color: see 200m and Decathlon. I don't really think this is necessary and it's too bright; it looks like the color for advancing to the next round in team group competition. Plus, the reasons for disqualification seem trivial in comparison to long term Olympic history. In this case, people failed to even rank because they stepped over a line, were injured, their horse's protective gear weighed too much, or they fell off a horse. It doesn't seem like something worth highlighting brighter than a medal. Can I get some input about removing or changing the color? Thanks, --Jh12 (talk) 03:36, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Those "people" have at least a couple of times been me. Looking through the various nation articles disqualifications/withdrawals had been represented in many different ways but this one I decided looked neatest to standardise to as a stopgap solution. I agree it is a bit bright and didn't realise it was the same colour used in the team sport table. I do think a different colour needs be used to distinguish from "Did not advance" but i'm unsure which. Basement12 (T.C) 03:56, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Like Parutakupiu, I actually don't think it needs a color at all. The text "Disqualified" is self-explanatory. --Jh12 (talk) 04:50, 22 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Greetings, please if you still don't have any consensus don't come to the Spain article and uncolor all the "Did not... " boxes, cause all boxes with white colors don't give a fast info and I want easy information on the table. There MUST be a different color since is a different situation. Wikitestor (talk) 19:58, 28 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Consensus reached further down the article and now laid out in the guidelines. I have also replied to Wikitestor with a personal message on their talk page. — Basement12 (T.C) 21:21, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Watchlist for all 2008 related articles?
Should there be a watchlist created for all the 2008 Olympic related articles? The only one I know of is from the Tropical Cyclone project. Are there any more? I'm sure it would be quite usefull for many reasons including vandal fighting. - CWY2190    ( talk  •  contributions )  04:45, 31 July 2008 (UTC)
 * Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:Nations at the 2008 Summer Olympics and Special:RecentChangesLinked/Category:2008 Summer Olympics events would be helpful starts. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 04:59, 31 July 2008 (UTC)


 * We have a 2008 Olympic watchlist. It's very bare-bones right now. Please add 2008 Olympics-related articles to it. The more articles it lists; the more useful it will be. Kolindigo (talk) 03:08, 1 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I added all of the events. What else does it need? -  CWY2190    ( talk  •  contributions )  18:21, 1 August 2008 (UTC)


 * The competitors, maybe? Might be difficult to populate, but it would be useful. Kolindigo (talk) 19:43, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Just discovered this project
I've only just noticed this project, although I should have guessed it existed. I've started a number of articles on Olympic and Paralympic athletes, as well as quite a few "Nation at the 2008 Summer Olympics" articles. I've also started all the "Nation at the 2008 Summer Paralympics" currently existing; you can see the list here. If anyone would like to help out in that field, that would be great, as I'm the only one who's been working on it so far, and coverage of the Paralympics in the media (and in Wikipedia) is comparatively sparse. Anyway, great work, everyone! There's a heck of a lot to be done on the Olympics, but I see you've all done a heck of a lot already. Aridd (talk) 10:19, 31 July 2008 (UTC)

2008 Summer Olympics - Day −2
This article has just been nominated for deletion at AfD. Please add your comments. Thanks. – PeeJay 19:29, 31 July 2008 (UTC)


 * Article name changed to the above.

Champions footer templates
Most of the footer templates (see Category:Olympic champions templates) use a show/hide navbox. A while ago, before show/hide boxes were quite so ubiquitous, I worked on a couple of other ways to reduce the visual template bloat. One idea was a horizontal scroll bar, per this version of Template:Footer Olympic Champions 4x400 m Men. Although I'm still kind of fond of this approach it seems to be distinctly disfavored. Another approach is what I did with Template:Footer Olympic Champions 4x100 m Men, which displays all years (linked to a winner in that year) and then winners for years passed in as parameters. I think it's quite useful, particularly for relay events. Anyone have any thoughts for or against using this approach for other events? It's not an overly big deal, but having this one template unlike any of the others seems a bit odd. -- Rick Block (talk) 16:36, 2 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Honestly, but at quick glance, I think I favor the format that the majority of templates already have, that being the show/hide setup with "YEAR: Athlete" as the content. I think it makes the most sense, and doesn't really seem to be causing problems as of now. Jared   (t)  &ensp; 17:09, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Infoboxes
If there a list of preferred infoboxes for sportspeople by sport? I've seen WikiProject Biography/Infoboxes, but it doesn't list every sport, and going through Category:Sports infobox templates and subcats often isn't clear on which, if any, is preferred. Is there a default Olympian infobox that can be stuck on articles? Kolindigo (talk) 00:16, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't believe we've ever as a project had an infobox for just the Olympics. I think it's too broad of a scope to have one infobox, given all the sports there are (28 in the Summer... well, 26 after Beijing). I found Infobox Olympic Cyclist, but this is just for cycling and I don't believe that's what you're thinking of. Basically, if you're looking to put an infobox on an athlete's page, go with one that suits him or his sport the best. Jared   (t)  &ensp; 02:12, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Re: Infobox Olympic Cyclist; it's not used much because Infobox Cyclist is preferred. It could be an idea to fashion a generic Olympian infobox from it though (we'd only have to add a "sport" field). SeveroTC 16:58, 5 August 2008 (UTC)


 * For a generic, just something like name, country, place of birth, date of birth, sport, and maybe which Olympics. I've been trying to fill in infoboxes as I come across 2008 Olympic sportspeople in my curiosity!browsing, and I'm always confused about which infoboxes to use for track and field athletes. There is infobox athlete and infobox athlete biography, but I'm never exactly sure if it's for all track and field events, or which is the preferred one, because they're a little bare bones with no documentation.:( Kolindigo (talk) 02:43, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

2004 Olympics Start Class
I note that the 2004 Olympics is still a start class even though this is a high priority. I've been working through some of a prose edits and it appears to me to be farther along than a "Start" rating would indicate. Any thoughts? H1nkles (talk) 22:48, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

Olympic themed articles for WP:DYK
Howdy! Over at Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know, I've proposed making a concentrated effort to try and feature at least one Olympic or Chinese themed DYK with each update during the Beijing Olympics. I'd like to invite members of the Wikiproject Olympics to submit any new or recently expanded (5x) Olympic theme article to Template talk:Did you know for potential featuring on the main page. If you have questions, please don't hesitate to ask on WT:DYK or feel free to contact me personally. Thanks! AgneCheese/Wine 20:30, 6 August 2008 (UTC)

Fencing
The fencing event articles need updated. Right now they are just a sentence. They need the brackets added. I'm working on men's epee and someone else started women's sabre. Those are the first two events. Others need made though. - CWY2190    ( talk  •  contributions )  08:42, 7 August 2008 (UTC)

Tennis opponents - 1st round
All of the tennis opponents were moved from Women's Singles, Women's Doubles, Men's Singles and Men's Doubles to all tennis participating nations.

They are now seen in every nation's olympic Wikipedia site, at the Tennis section. Tabels are free to fill with results when these come. They are made in a best-looking style I can think of. Easy to use and pretty surveyable.

Example:

versus

Both Federer and Tursunov are now listed at the Tennis section in Switzerland's and Russia's olympic Wikipedia pages.

Feel free to edit the tables and fill in the results whenever you wish. Znamkar (talk) 21:57, 7 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm wondering why you widened the tables by seperating opponent and score into two seperate columns. I think it was fine as it was, and now the tennis tables are as wide as the judo tables! Also, maybe remove one of the two flags from the doubles opponents, as it's overly redundant to have it appear twice in national entries. Otherwise, great work! :)   Edged (talk) 23:05, 7 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Um, I would be happy if someone could change the doubles flags or at least give me some advice how to it properly. Should I just delete the second flag? I tried that but I get a problem with the second name appearing at the start of the line.


 * Like here (aquamarine area):


 * {|class=wikitable style="font-size:90%"

!rowspan="2"|Athlete !rowspan="2"|Event !colspan="2"|Round of 64 !colspan="2"|Round of 32 !Opposition !Score !Opposition !Score A Seppi
 * Roger Federer
 * Singles
 * Stanislas Wawrinka
 * Singles
 * Roger Federer Stanislas Wawrinka
 * Doubles
 * colspan="2" bgcolor="wheat"|
 * colspan="1" bgcolor="aquamarine"|
 * Stanislas Wawrinka
 * Singles
 * Roger Federer Stanislas Wawrinka
 * Doubles
 * colspan="2" bgcolor="wheat"|
 * colspan="1" bgcolor="aquamarine"|
 * Roger Federer Stanislas Wawrinka
 * Doubles
 * colspan="2" bgcolor="wheat"|
 * colspan="1" bgcolor="aquamarine"|
 * }
 * }


 * I am currently a bit out of time. Is it really too wide? Cause it still seems pretty okay for me, I mean, however you say. It just looks better this way (in my opinion). I might add some judo information later, can someone give me some kind of a Template for a judo table? Znamkar (talk) 05:52, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * We can take advantage of the flagIOCathlete template's  parameter, that allows us to write whatever we want. So you can place both tennis players' names in it and still get only one flag image and the country's Olympic link at the end —   gives.
 * — Parutakupiu (talk) 18:53, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * We've been setting up all the other sports with single elimination brackets with the Opponent's name above the match result/score in the same cell to reduce the effect of width problems. Yes, it would be nice to put them in separate columns, but for those athletes making it through to the final, the tables could get very wide - fine with many with widescreens, but not all... Tennis isn't the worst though - Judo is a real problem!
 * The preceding comment was by me User:Yboy83 sometime on Friday AM (UK Time). Yboy83 (talk) 11:35, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Beijing Opening Ceremony
Did anyone just watch this, the best opening ceremony EVER, outstanding fireworks and inspirational flame lighting, looking like it's going to be the best games EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Highfields (talk) (contribs) 18:32, 8 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I think the whole world watched it, lol. The artistic ceremony was probably the best ever (surely the best I've seen) and, overall, it was a high-level organization and presentation that will be extremely hard to mimic in the future. Parutakupiu (talk) 18:48, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I feel sorry for the London 2012 organisers having to follow it! Highfields (talk) (contribs) 15:38, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Did not finish
I have another question. What do we use to put in tables for athletes who did not finish the event (e.g. cycling road race).

I am using this solution:

Please tell me your opinion about it. Znamkar (talk) 09:49, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I think in the past we're used "DNF" with a key on the bottom of the table listing the various acronyms. Jared   (t)  &ensp; 17:11, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Spelling it out is nice, if there's space. I think this one looks good. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 19:12, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Cycling results (Men's Road Race)
I've added all of the cycling results from today's Men's road race into each participating country's cycling section on their Olympic pages.

Example: Italy's Olympic page has this results table.

Men

I hope I've done everything properly and typed all of the names correctly. If you find anything to edit, feel free to do so.

Greetings, Znamkar (talk) 13:56, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


 * First, I don't think you should color at all the table cells or row; the fact that you put a silver medal in the rank column (you might replace that old raster-type image with [[Image:Silver medal icon.svg]]) is enough to show that athlete's placing. If you want, you can boldface his/her name, to stand out a bit from the other non-medalist partners. Like this:


 * {|class=wikitable style="font-size:90%"

!Athlete !Event !Time !Rank
 * Paolo Bettini
 * Road race
 * 6h 24' 24'' (+0:35)
 * 18th
 * Marzio Bruseghin
 * Road race
 * 6h 34' 26'' (+10:37)
 * 63rd
 * Vincenzo Nibali
 * Road race
 * colspan="2" bgcolor="wheat"|did not finish
 * Franco Pellizotti
 * Road race
 * 6h 31' 06'' (+7:17)
 * 50th
 * Davide Rebellin
 * Road race
 * 6h 23' 49'' (+0:00)
 * align=center|[[Image:Silver medal icon.svg]]
 * }
 * — Parutakupiu (talk) 16:00, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Road race
 * 6h 23' 49'' (+0:00)
 * align=center|[[Image:Silver medal icon.svg]]
 * }
 * — Parutakupiu (talk) 16:00, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I don't like the use of bgcolor="wheat" for DNF. There's no need to highlight that an athlete didn't finish the race. bgcolor=wheat was initially only intended for rounds of a competition that don't exist. Yboy83 (talk) 16:27, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree. I thought about that just after last posting here, and mentioned it in another discussion section above. Parutakupiu (talk) 16:39, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Thanks a lot for your opinions! I will replace all of the medals with newer ones ([[Image:Gold medal icon.svg]], [[Image:Silver medal icon.svg]] and [[Image:Bronze medal icon.svg]]) and delete the gold, silver or bronze backgrounds. I will also delete all of the wheat backgrounds in "did not finish" mode. I hope I still did good job, I am still getting used to it. I am here for 1 week now. Znamkar (talk) 18:44, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, I changed all of the medal and did not finish rows so they look like you two advised. I hope it's as it should be now:
 * Men
 * {|class=wikitable style="font-size:90%"

!Athlete !Event !Time !Rank
 * rowspan="2"|Alberto Contador
 * Road race
 * colspan="2" align="center"|did not finish
 * Time trial
 * Óscar Freire
 * Road race
 * colspan="2" align="center"|did not finish
 * rowspan="2"|Samuel Sánchez
 * Road race
 * 6h 23' 49''
 * align="center"|[[Image:Gold medal icon.svg]]
 * Time trial
 * Carlos Sastre
 * Road race
 * 6h 31' 06'' (+7:17)
 * 49th
 * Alejandro Valverde
 * Road race
 * 6h 24' 19'' (+0:30)
 * 13th
 * }
 * Greetings,Znamkar (talk) 19:17, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Carlos Sastre
 * Road race
 * 6h 31' 06'' (+7:17)
 * 49th
 * Alejandro Valverde
 * Road race
 * 6h 24' 19'' (+0:30)
 * 13th
 * }
 * Greetings,Znamkar (talk) 19:17, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Greetings,Znamkar (talk) 19:17, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Well, first of all: Dobrodošel, Znamkar! (Hope I wrote it right) I see you like the Olympics and sport in general, so I hope you enjoy cooperating with our WikiProject. Any doubts, don't be afraid to ask here or on other members' talk pages.
 * As for the table, it looks great now. The only thing that should be changed is the time separator symbols, which, as per WP:MOSDATE, should be in the form 0:00:00.00 (all unspaced), not 0h 00' 00 '' . Parutakupiu (talk) 20:29, 9 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks, you, you spelled it totally right! You should add an Advanced Slovenian speaker userbox to your User Page haha. Well, speaking of time, I will try to change the format in all of the tables tomorrow. Luckily only about 30 countries participated in cycling so it won't take me a lot. I enjoy the project very much, by the way :) I hope Slovenia soon gets a medal or something. This year we have the strongest team so far so I might soon need to add [[Image:Gold medal icon.svg]] to our site :-). Greetings, Znamkar (talk) 21:54, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Should we create a List of 2008 Summer Olympics medalists?
Some users at 2008 Summer Olympics medal count have been insisting on adding a list of every medalist to the page, but I keep telling them that it is not the right place. The list would be somewhat useful to have, so should we just create a page for it? I'm not sure if it would really be that useful, and there is another discussion here. -- Scorpion0422 16:19, 9 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I can't say much about that, because I don't have a strong opinion. At first, I don't see any problem in creating such table, as long as it's not part of the medal count pages. But then again, if it was that useful, then why wasn't it created before for previous Olympics? That's why I don't say "Go ahead" to those users. But if they want to create such page, I'm not stopping them. When more established and experienced users (like User:Andrwsc) come back they can give their two cents. Parutakupiu (talk) 16:46, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

The article is at List of 2008 Summer Olympics medal winners. I find this to be very convenient and there should be a very simple list like this for every Olympics. It was split up into every sport article (Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics) and individual event article (Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's 100 metres), but it is very convenient to have a single list. Reywas92 Talk 23:47, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Medal Standings
Apparently this project goes by the IOC's official standings which rate by the gold medal. I think every news agency rated by the overall total. Every source on the '08 page ranks by the overall total standard. Does anyone think that we should change to the more common one as it deals with a less confusing system, not to mention it is the standard that everyone seems to go by? Kevin Rutherford (talk) 00:04, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Almost all Olympics medals tables that I've ever seen (in the UK) go by the number of gold medals. Bluap (talk) 04:03, 10 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm from the UK and have only ever seen the overall total standard, it wasn't until reading on wikipedia I found out about the other, I think it gived a wider view of each teams success to use the overall totals Highfields (talk) (contribs) 15:25, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The BBC, Guardian, Times, Sun, Telegraph and Sky Sports all order by gold medals. I think that it is fair to say that ordering by gold melds is the standard in the UK. Bluap (talk) 19:23, 10 August 2008 (UTC)


 * If one checks major American sources—CNN, Yahoo!, NY Times, Washington Post, etc.—you'll see exactly the opposite, that is, sorting by total medals, so it's no surprise American users would be confused with this sorting. I'm a European and I've always been used to per-gold medal sorting classifications. But I think it's logic that one should apply the sort system used by the most authoritative organization, which, in this case, is the IOC. Parutakupiu (talk) 19:52, 10 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Oh I see, I thought you were talking about only considering the gold medals not just the golds first then silver and bronze, I agree rate by gold! Highfields (talk) (contribs) 08:48, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I find it strange that the IOC doesn't even keep count and I was told that we sorted by their way. Kevin Rutherford (talk) 20:44, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh has the Olympics started then?
According to Portal:Current events/Sports nothing has happened in Beijing since 7 August. Anyone want to rectify that? 86.21.74.40 (talk) 01:04, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi there
Hi there. I am just wondering if there is an icon or a little graphic that represents "Olympic Record"? I do not like seeing ORs all the time. If there's no icon, do we need to create one? thanks -- Jack l  02:17, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't believe there such a thing and, honestly, don't see any reason for it to be created. "OR" works fine. Nonetheless, what did you have in mind? Parutakupiu (talk) 02:22, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The traditional usage on TV is "NR", "OR" and "WR" for National Record, Olympic Record and World Record respectively. Some broadcasters also display "PB" for Personal Best. Bluap (talk) 04:05, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * On Commons, there are [[Image:World record icon.svg|24px]] and [[Image:Olympic record icon.svg|24px]] images. I had previously thought about using them for some clever templates, so what do you think of this:
 * Obviously, there is still a bug in that it doesn't place the icon inline, and I will work on that before we can roll this out (assuming people like it). It would have been nice to use, but that template name is used to tag WP:Original research violations.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 21:01, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I like it. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 00:42, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Obviously, there is still a bug in that it doesn't place the icon inline, and I will work on that before we can roll this out (assuming people like it). It would have been nice to use, but that template name is used to tag WP:Original research violations.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 21:01, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I like it. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 00:42, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Obviously, there is still a bug in that it doesn't place the icon inline, and I will work on that before we can roll this out (assuming people like it). It would have been nice to use, but that template name is used to tag WP:Original research violations.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 21:01, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I like it. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 00:42, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Medaling teams
What's the guideline for teams winning medals, and listing them on pages such as United States at the 2008 Summer Olympics? Obviously like if the 20+ person baseball team wins a medal, we don't need to list every member, but how about swimming relay teams, of 4 people, or even the basketball team which is around 10 or 12? I assume beach volleyball duos are to be listed together as individual medalists, just with a line break. Nosleep (talk) 03:35, 10 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I think that for swimming relay teams, one can write the whole roster. For much larger teams, as you say, I'm not sure because I don't recall any example already applied in our existing articles (most of them are still to be "updated" content- and layout-wise). But you can write "Sport team" and link it to the team roster page under the respective sport's article. Parutakupiu (talk) 19:56, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Australians and future Olympics
Recently there appears to be a group that has been randomly adding "Australia" entries to future Olympics pages that are either non-sourced or completely bogus. I've been cleaning up the 2028 Olympics page, but they keep coming back. I know there's not much that can be done, but those of you watching the other future bids pages might want to take a look at the pages you're monitoring. It's truly annoying. --TruckOttr (talk) 06:19, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I've done some cleaning up, I've removed any entry where the source goes to a dead link. The pages used to be worse, at one point every Summer games page had a half a dozen Australian cities. While we're on the topic, I think we need to determine some kind of inclusion criteria. What constitutes a possible bid? Is it some city official who muses about a potential bid, or is it a NOC that seriously says it is considering bidding? I'm leaning more towards the latter. -- Scorpion0422 16:27, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I think it needs to depend on the source and "quality" of information provided. Thanks for helping to clean up the pages. --TruckOttr (talk) 04:01, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Minor semantics question
A user has recently approached me regarding several edits made to various top-level Olympics pages in the past few weeks, changing the wording "the games were held from" to "the games were celebrated from" and feels as though to any average English speaker the former is the best choice, and the edits should be reverted. I told the editor that we've sort of come accustomed to using celebrated, but I figured I'd bring it here to garner some opinion before an edit war ensues. Basically, "held" or "celebrated"? Jared  (t)  &ensp; 18:32, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * IMHO, sporting events are "held", parties are "celebrated". Kolindigo (talk) 18:57, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree, we should use "held" Bluap (talk) 19:16, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Funny, never thought about that until reading this post. I think that "held" is perhaps more appropriate, despite the Olympic Games are indeed a "celebration", but that's just a subjective view. Parutakupiu (talk) 20:00, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I was the one to report this to Jared, after one of my edits was reverted by Hektor. I did some digging and found:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2008_Summer_Olympics&diff=229927648&oldid=229878841

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=2004_Summer_Olympics&diff=142456145&oldid=142234060

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1996_Summer_Olympics&diff=196588558&oldid=196587313

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=1992_Summer_Olympics&diff=196588459&oldid=191405661

Not sure how many more there are. So basically this word is the opinion of this one guy, Hektor. I go with 'Held' in case you didn't realise! :-) Lewispb (talk) 22:31, 10 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree held sounds much better and more official... Highfields (talk) (contribs) 08:51, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Hektor told me to check the Olympic Charter - (PDF in References). That document uses the words held and celebrated so doesn't really back up wither argument. Is there a way to vote this in? Or should I just go ahead and change all the doucuments back to held? Lewispb (talk) 12:54, 11 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I think this is not fair from your side not to inform me when asking a question that a discussion was ongoing elsewhere. I see anyhow that the main section of the Olympic Charter devoted to the Olympics is entitled CELEBRATION, ORGANISATION AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE OLYMPIC GAMES with subsection Celebration of the Olympic Games. Held is not used "some times" in the Olympic Charter relative to the Olympic Games but three times exactly, vs. more than ten times for "celebrated" or "celebration".


 * Anyway, my point is that the Olympic Games is not just a sporting event, but a cultural and sport festival. I think that using held is precisely not describing what the Games are. They are not a collection of World Championships.


 * The Olympic Charter uses celebrate for the key, official, formal sentences of its text.


 * The sentence of the head of state for the opening of the Games is "“I declare open the Games of ... (name of the host city) celebrating the ... (number of the Olympiad) ... Olympiad of the modern era.”


 * The sentence of the head of IOC for the closing of the Games is "I declare the Games of the [ordinal number] Olympiad/Olympic Winter Games closed and, in accordance with tradition, I call upon the youth of the world to assemble four years from now in [name of host city] to celebrate the Games of the [subsequent ordinal number] Olympiad/Olympic Winter Games." Kind regards. Hektor (talk) 13:27, 11 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I would use held because celebrated has too many connotations. When a game is subject to a terrorist attack, "celebrated" becomes inappropriate.  If "celebrated" is used as a quoted term from the Olympic charter, put it in quotes. Racepacket (talk) 04:06, 26 August 2008 (UTC)


 * 'Celebrated', however, is the term the IOC uses. Prince of Canadat 04:09, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

Portal:Olympics
If managed properly, this portal can act as the first page for all past & future Olympics. However, it's in a pretty bad form at the moment. Let's all improve it when a lot of editors are finding ways to improve Olympics-related contents. OhanaUnitedTalk page 19:28, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

event pages need to provide more explanation of what the event is (not just results)
We have zillions of little articles on each event in the 2008 olympics, which is great. However, I've noticed that many of these articles are focused only on giving the results, and lack even the most basic information or links to explain what the event is &mdash; i.e., what does the event involve, what are the rules, and so on.

To pick a random example, consider:


 * Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's 4 x 100 metre medley relay

A typical reader who is doesn't know much about swimming sports will have no idea what a "medley relay" is, and the article provides no information on this. At the very least, it should link directly to our general article on Medley swimming (which you can only get to now by clicking through two links, or searching, but it is not obvious). Ideally, it should link to a specific article on the Olympic medley relay events, explaining precisely what these events involve. And, ideally, the article itself should have a one- or two- sentence summary of the event.

As I said, this is true for many of the articles, not just for swimming events, and it is easy to find other examples. e.g. Weightlifting at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Women's 58 kg requires you to go through two links and read through half of the weightlifting page to find out that this involves contestants with a body mass of at most 58 kg, who must either snatch or clean and jerk as much weight as possible in three attempts, taken in turns. Would that information be so hard to put into the article directly?

Remember that a lot of people will be looking at these pages, not just to learn about the results of an event, but because they are interested to know what sporting events are going on in the 2008 olympics and what they involve. We should make it as easy as possible for people to learn about each sport and the specific Olympic rules from visiting the 2008 games pages.

Thanks again for all your efforts.

—Steven G. Johnson (talk) 05:28, 11 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree it really bugs me that it doesn't explain rules, the pages are technically about the event eg. Weightlifting at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Women's 58 kg should be about the 2008 Weightlifting 58kg womens event as the title states NOT the results of it which would be only a section of it... Highfields (talk) (contribs) 08:56, 11 August 2008 (UTC)


 * You're absolutely right about you comment, Steven G. Johnson. Those articles should describe more thoroughly the specifics of each event. The thing is, we wish he had enough members to respond to every perfectly justified request made here. We have such a huge queue list and too few members with available time on their hands (I'm only here more often only this week, since I'm on vacations). This project covers an incredibly extensive range of articles and, even though much has evolved in two years, there is still immense work to be done.
 * Your comment is registered and I hope it'll soon be delt with. Thanks. Parutakupiu (talk) 15:54, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

I think I've got all the 2008 events to where there's at least a brief description of the competition's rules and format, typically with a link to more information where necessary. Let me know if there are any problems, or if I've missed any! -- Jonel (Speak to me) 00:44, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Articles for deletion
Greetings, WikiProject Olympics! Current two articles have been nominated by Becky Sayles for deletion: 2008 Summer Olympics highlights / Articles for deletion/2008 Summer Olympics highlights and 2006 Winter Olympics highlights / Articles for deletion/2006 Winter Olympics highlights. I believe the 2008 article will be fine, but the 2006 article could use some cleanup and sourcing. Geologik (talk) 06:44, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * An editor reported on the AFD that the Olympics wikiproject decided against keeping articles for the events chronologically listed. Can someone confirm this? Becky Sayles (talk) 07:27, 11 August 2008 (UTC)


 * The closest, most recent discussion about that is was on this AfD, where we were against per-day articles of Olympic event results. Parutakupiu (talk) 15:48, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Day by day medal tables
A user has added these to all the 'Nation at the 2008 Summer Olympics' pages under 'medallists', see China at the 2008 Summer Olympics. I'm relatively sure that this goes against what the regular convention is for these articles, but I wanted to see if I was correct before doing anything. It seems to me to be overkill to have these tables, do others agree? Edged (talk) 08:41, 11 August 2008 (UTC)


 * It doesn't look bad, but the problem is that such table will not be consistent throughout the whole "Nation at the 2008 Summer Olympics" article series (as well as for previous games), because it's only useful for large, traditional medal-sweeping teams (China, Russia, USA) that win many medals per day. Other nations would have a table filled with mostly "0", so what would be the use? Anyway, I can't suggest any action to you; it's a matter of discussing further about it. Parutakupiu (talk) 15:35, 11 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I strongly support removing these tables, and have been doing so. My rationale is that per WP:Recentism, those tables do not contribute to the long-term historical perspective of the article.  In a year, will anyone really care that two medals were won on Wednesday but three on Thursday?  Occasionally, when I remove the table from one article, it gets re-added by someone else with the reason that they saw it on another article.  But I don't think there is any consensus to have them for all medal-winning articles, and we really ought to be consistent.  I'd like to see a consensus here to justify their removal from all of the per-nation articles.  Perhaps when the Games are over and most of these new editors move on to the next flavor-of-the-month, the project regulars can perform this cleanup task.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 17:14, 15 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I may not be a project regular, but I definitely agree with you. Imagine such a table for 1904, wasn't that Olympics spread over several months? Being more recent, I don't think anyone particularly cares about day-by-day breakdowns for Atlanta or Barcelona, so there's no need for them for the 2008 Games. I also agree that it might be easier to achieve come September, though. Edged (talk) 09:32, 16 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Sure, drop those tables. The arguments presented above are pretty solid. --Tone 10:40, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
 * If you want to remove those tables, then at least have the consistency to do so on all articles. Thanks. Gzli888 (talk) 11:11, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with the removal, but I also partly believe they could have been removed after the Olympics are over. I'm of the thinking that if people want to spend the time creating and updating such a table, it should be allowed to remain in the short term. I highly doubt anyone will care if they are removed a week or two after the games. WP:RECENTISM is not a guideline, but an essay, and since the Olympics are ongoing I am not entirely opposed to their current existence. Spending the current effort removing the tables as people continue adding them is somewhat counter-productive. --Jh12 (talk) 11:22, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, you are right. It's better to wait till the end of games before removing the tables. --Tone 11:55, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

If the consensus is definitely to remove them I shall take them out at the same time as removing the "current event" templates. Basement12 (T.C) 10:34, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Yup, that looks like the consensus. How about you take A-M and I'll do N-Z? Prince of Canadat 10:49, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Sounds like a plan to me. Basement12 (T.C) 11:26, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you, Baldrick ;) Prince of Canadat 11:38, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm going to go watch the closing ceremonies; will continue when they're over. Prince of Canadat 11:47, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, and done :
 * Prince of Canadat 11:51, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Prince of Canadat 11:51, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Prince of Canadat 11:51, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Prince of Canadat 11:51, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Prince of Canadat 11:51, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Prince of Canadat 11:51, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Prince of Canadat 11:51, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Prince of Canadat 11:51, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Prince of Canadat 11:51, 24 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I've done this for all nations A-M. If you'd like me to do anymore Prince drop me a line. Basement12 (T.C) 14:04, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Apologises for the undoing of your work on the Great Britain page, Basement12. Nice work keeping it tidy recently. Dave (talk) 14:27, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Background colours for medalists
Following some back-and-forth editing on the GBR page, i'd like to get a concensus on the bgcolor used for medallists in the results tables. Following previous discussion on this talk page (Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Olympics), I was under the impression that we decided that a bgcolor was unnecessary, instead opting for the medal image and making the athlete name in bold. For example, currently we have:

Personnaly I prefer the following because:
 * At the top of the page there is a summary of all medallists for the nation
 * The medal image should be sufficient to show the athlete won the medal
 * Over-use of bgcolors looks garish

As a compromise, perhaps putting the bgcolor on only the final round of competition?: Are there any good examples on other nations' pages and can we come to some kind of common ground for all nations. Yboy83 (talk) 10:41, 11 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Not really, because this results table layout we're applying is very recent, as you know. Once again, I think bgcolor is unneeded, just look at how the medal image get blended and disappears in a gold-shaded cell (in that case, a simple "1" would work the same way). The second display is the best compromise, in my view. Parutakupiu (talk) 15:29, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I prefer it without the background colour - it makes the gold of the "1" stand out more Bluap (talk) 02:13, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't like the background color either. First, it makes the article harder to edit. Second, it's actually not intuitive what the gold, silver and bronze background color means, while on the other hand, a gold circle with a "1" in it is instantly recognizable as a gold medal. Third, from the different pages I've seen, it's wildly inconsistent how it's applied. Sometimes the athlete competes in one event and his/her name also gets gold color, while sometimes he/she competes in multiple events, wins only one gold medal, and his/her name does not get the gold color. Sometimes the event gets the color and sometimes it doesn't. So I say be consistent and gets rid of the background color for medalists. Chanheigeorge (talk) 08:20, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd support removal of the background colour. A related problem is excessive colour on results pages, where an entire row is coloured instead of just the first table cell (or not at all, since the icon has colour).  Take a look at Gymnastics at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's artistic team all-around. It makes my eyes bleed.  Slightly less obnoxious is something like the table at the very end of Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's 100 metre backstroke.  I find it very difficult to read the text when the entire rows are gold/silver/bronze, and the flags are especially washed out. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 08:36, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh yes, those should go too. How about at the end of Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Women's 100 metre freestyle where there are three indicators (the number, the medal icon, and the background color) to indicate who wins what medal (not to mention that information is already given in the beginning). Do we really need so many? Chanheigeorge (talk) 09:14, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Yup. Instead of:


 * I'd rather see:


 * — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 09:28, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The second form is better, the flags are the bigger issue here. Btw, anyone still interested in the olympic event infobox that I ahve proposed some days ago? --Tone 10:32, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Are you thinking of something generic for all sports, or...? Could you elaborate a bit (maybe with a sample on this talk page) so we can see what you're thinking?  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 17:16, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Any new opinions on the last proposal? Regarding the two forms above, the first one is widely used at the moment in the older articles but the recent are starting to pick the second one that is better since the flag colours don't get mixed with the background. If we decide to change it, it is not hard to perform such a task with a bot. --Tone 16:05, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * As far as event pages go I prefer the second option, it looks much better, particularly around the flags as you say. Basement12 (talk) 16:19, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

For consistency amongst the articles, and because it appeases users who like the background colour i'm using the above compromise proposed by Yboy83 when standardising the Category: Nations at the 2008 Summer Olympics articles. It seems to have been the most sensible option to prevent conflict hence it has been adopted at quite a number of pages already. Basement12 (T.C) 02:25, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi All, Just my 2c worth, but having seen the results of the compromise solution on the Australia page I have to say that frankly it still looks far better without ANY background colour on the medalists. Sure we can still see the flag but the whole medal 1-2-3 image basically disappears. I know we compromised to keep the "backgrounders" happy, but realistically it's not as clear as no background colour at all. I would still recommend a revert to option #1 at some point. But if we MUST have background, how about the below instead ?

WiKinny (talk) 23:41, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Without Background Colours

 * I stick with my view: no background colors at all. Neither for medalist results, nor for any other notes (did not advance, did not finish, etc.). Parutakupiu (talk) 23:48, 24 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I fully agree. I would also add that I don't think the "wheat" background is needed for the non-existant semi-finals in this example.  I would prefer a simple "n/a" centered in that box.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 17:03, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


 * My main concern is consistency between all the articles so as far as the stylings go i'm not too fussed. The only reason i'd support background colors are that in the larger tables something might be needed to break up what could otherwise be a massive blur of statistics, for example the potential table below;

Now cosider that table with 30 similar ones in a row on the same page. I don't think this looks as good or as clear as the current form. Basement12 (T.C) 17:27, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


 * To be honest, I don't really see a problem with your example! But if we insist on using bgcolor for table cells, I would insist on adding   only for the last table cell ("Rank"), and we should probably get rid of the icon in that case.  That reduces the amount of text obscured by the vibrant colour to just a single character, instead of the results values as well. To go all the way back to your original examples, that would look like:


 * — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 18:39, 25 August 2008 (UTC)


 * As far as medallists go personally i prefer the medal icon in the rank column with no background colour, the only reason i used options other than this was for appeasing the those in favour of bg colours. However i suspect most of those were merely editors who only had an interest in these articles during the games. I'd also suggest keeping medal winners names bolded, so that they stand out for people scanning down the athlete column in wide tables.

I'm not particularly attched to the honeydew or wheat colorings and there is nothing wrong as such with the above example, just think they may make things easier to follow. Take for example a sport like judo

Actually that doesn't look as bad as i'd imagined so the colours ca probably go, but i'll leave it there as an example for others to view.

So my final (i think) opinion would be;

I'm sure all the background colours can be easily removed with WP:AWB as well so its not as big a job as t may seem. - Basement12 (T.C) 19:02, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Categories
Hello. Several Olympics-related categories are now nominated for renaming. Please, voice your opinions here. Thanks. - Darwinek (talk) 11:03, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Event article titles: dashes, not hyphens
I know this is a very busy moment for our project but I just wanted to alert that User:Oliphaunt has rightfully noticed something which was not right, according to WP guidelines, about the Olympic event article titles: the use of an hyphen (-) to separate the event name from the parent sport page title (e.g. Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's 100 metre freestyle), goes against WP:DASH that promotes use of either unspaced em-dash (Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics—Men's 100 metre freestyle or spaced en-dash (Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics – Men's 100 metre freestyle).

He began moving 2008 Olympic judo pages, replacing hyphens with em-dashes, and states a bot (or maybe AWB) can make this herculean task very straightforward. I don't know if Oliphaunt wishes to commit himself to move hundreds of articles or if we should take that task in our hands. Are there any opinions or comments about such measures? Parutakupiu (talk) 17:16, 11 August 2008 (UTC)


 * To be quite honest, a dash is a dash. I couldn't care less about what separated the two halves. If the user feels it completely necessary to move the thousands of pages to where WP:DASH says they should be then I suppose that's fine by me, but let him do it. Jared   (t)  &ensp; 18:15, 11 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I can write a bot to make the moves and update all the links. But I would not attempt to run it until after the 2008 olympics are over. --Selket Talk 18:28, 11 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I realize that, Jared. There are indeed bigger priorities on this project's to-do list, but I just wanted to alert for possible mass moves.
 * Selket, I won't refuse your offer :D. Thank you so much. Parutakupiu (talk) 18:35, 11 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I think that would be reasonable to do. I just know there's other stuff to worry about. Jared   (t)  &ensp; 18:42, 11 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Just so everyone is aware I have submitted the request of Bot approval here if you want to take a look. --Selket Talk 18:19, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Cool. Once again, thank you, Selket for the trouble of writing that bot for a one-time task. Parutakupiu (talk) 21:41, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I raised the "hyphen versus en-dash" question on Naming conventions, and their recommendation fits our idea, that is, moving the current articles to substitute hyphens for spaced en-dashes and leaving the old pages as redirects (since it's easier to type an hyphen, while searching the pages). Parutakupiu (talk) 23:49, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm surprised at that, since Naming conventions (long lists) doesn't mention any dashes (em or en) at all. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 23:59, 15 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I think you mean to say "spaced" and not "unspaced". Jared   (t)  &ensp; 00:01, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I disagree with this because it is significantly easier to type a hyphen. There is a nonshifted key on the keyboard for the hyphen, yet there is no key at all for a dash. Even if there are redirects, this is not convenient. I realize that this is at WP:MOS, but I don't think it should ban regular hyphens in the first place. If you do inconveniently change the hyphens to a dash, there should be spaces on both sides of it. i.e. Olympics – Men's, not Olympics–Men's. I hope I uderstood this right. Reywas92 Talk 23:12, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

So, the games are over and we agreed to move the articles to have a spaced en dash instead of a hyphen. (Sorry Reywas92, MOS is the rule here, address complaints to them). Is anyone in possesion of a bot who would perform the massive renaming? --Tone 00:33, 31 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Why not hold off a little while longer. I think there is still a lot of other cleanup work going on with the Bejing pages.  Perhaps the process could be started  for the historic pages (2006 and earlier).  Once complete, I'd suggest making the cleanup of indirect links in all the navigation boxes a priority.  They have a nice feature of showing black text instead of blue for the link to the current page, but this only works for direct links.  -- Tcncv (talk) 01:05, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks
I've just started using the Wikipedia Olympics 08 articles as I watch the games - and the work you folks have been doing is fantastic. I had no idea so much thought and effort had been put in. The organization makes everything really easy to drill down to the information I'm looking for. Thank you all so much! -- SiobhanHansa 01:32, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * It's great to know that the work of the members of this project is valued. But let's not forget those many more Wikipedians that aren't members and yet spend their time updating and improving such articles ;). Still, there's so much work left to do, so our job is far from the finish line. Thanks. Parutakupiu (talk) 02:17, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Really cool, someone likes it! :) I just came here and it soon seemed nice to update all the info, so I started working and now I'm trying my best to update as much as I can :) Today, we will have to add my country to the medal list, guys ;). Greetings and enjoy looking at things. Znamkar (talk) 07:18, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Well that was such a pleasant thing to read, and I ditto Parutakupiu, without a doubt. Granted, I haven't been doing my share lately, so I'll side with SiobhanHansa by saying what an awesome job everyone's been doing! There's still a lot left though, both work AND events! Jared   (t)  &ensp; 23:08, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
 * You know, I'm impressed at the attention given to visual style, and conforming to our undocumented style conventions for these articles. Everybody is using the standard templates, etc., so any post-Games cleanup work will be much less than after 2004!  I'm happy to see that the per-nation articles for 2008 look better than any past Games, with really good looking visual style.  Thanks to all the newcomers to this WikiProject!  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 17:18, 15 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Speaking about "undocumented style conventions", perhaps that's one thing in dire need of being taken care of, once these Olympics are finished. I have the feeling we have so many things that would need a style/formatting guideline to be written, that we (me, at least) can't remember them all. Plus, we reach these "rush-hour" Olympic cycles and are bombarded with questions about the way results should be displayed and other layout-related issues. I just don't know where to begin! Probably drfating a list where people could go an add points they thing should be documented, and afterwards, when there is a solid base, begin writing the guideline pages. Parutakupiu (talk) 18:49, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

List of most olympic medals by an individual
Given the fact that Phelps looks like he may set some records, anyone interested in creating a list page that would list the most olympic medals won by an individual. We could create various lists for both men and women, summer and winter olympics, and most medals won historically. We could work on it on this sandbox (User:Remember/SandboxList) until it is ready to be its own page. What do people think? Remember (talk) 02:50, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
 * You mean, like this? -- Scorpion0422 02:55, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Nevermind. I guess we should just work on making List of multiple Olympic gold medalists better and adding links to it from the olympians wikipages. Remember (talk) 03:00, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Simplified or traditional Chinese for venues?
I asked a question revealing my ignorance of Chinese at Talk:Beijing_National_Stadium. Please answer there if you have knowledge of the preferred way to designate the venues in Chinese. TIA, PhilipR (talk) 05:04, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
 * In official writing (such as the president writing a verse of the poem as a gift to a president of another country), it IS in traditional Chinese. No ifs, ands, or buts. But in this case, choose both, with traditional going first, and make both sides happy. OhanaUnitedTalk page 05:17, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

Length
I wonder if it's a good idea to further split the Basketball at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men into Basketball at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's preliminary round group A, Basketball at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's preliminary round group B and Basketball at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's knockout stage (same for the women's tourney)? Considering the Olympics is the basketball equivalent of the World Cup and the world cup articles are split ad infinitum. The thing is not all Olympic events are split this way. – Howard  the   Duck  09:16, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * IMO the World Cup splits have gotten a little out of hand, but that's just one person's thoughts.  - PhilipR (talk) 16:31, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I think it should get split as each section is getting a little long. D.M.N. (talk) 19:26, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. The article isn't that long, and there's already way too many articles for this Olympics. As with PhilipR, I think the World Cup does not need so many articles either. Reywas92 Talk 23:19, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Naming of ISSF shooting events
I've been pondering this for a while, not really knowing if I should take it to WP:RM, WP:NC, or some sport WikiProject. My choice ultimately fell on this one, and I hope you'll bear with me as this, while not technically an Olympic issue, is something that will probably get little interest from those Wikipedians who are not Olympic-geeks (or actual shooting-geeks, but we're a tiny bunch).

The thing is, we presently have articles named 300 m Rifle, 300 m Standard Rifle, 50 m Rifle, 10 m Air Rifle, 50 m Pistol, 25 m Pistol, 25 m Rapid Fire Pistol, 25 m Center-Fire Pistol, 25 m Standard Pistol, 10 m Air Pistol, Olympic Trap, Double Trap, Olympic Skeet, 50 m Running Target, and 10 m Running Target. This choice of abbreviated and capitalized titles was my own at one point in the past. This is how the ISSF generally writes them in the official rules and reports. It also reflects the fact that the event names are really proper nouns with arbitrary names chosen by the ISSF (as opposed to, say, "high jump" that simply is a high jump); especially the terms "Olympic trap" and "double trap" might cause some confusion if not capitalized.

On the other hand, I have noticed that others contributing in the field, such as on Olympic subpages, have often opted to write "25 metre rapid fire pistol" etc. Despite the drawbacks listed above, there are several obvious advantages, such as being more conforming to Wikipedia naming conventions, not standing out unnecessarily in prose, and not risking that Americans would wonder what the m stands for. Most recently this issue came up at Talk:10 m Air Pistol/GA1. I'm finding myself more and more in agreement with the view that we should actually move these articles to 300 metre rifle etc. (Perhaps we should also split up 300 m rifle, 50 m rifle and the RT events into their sub-events.) Thoughts? -- Jao (talk) 18:54, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I agree with this, and I remember discussing this with you several months ago on another talk page. In my opinion, event names are not proper nouns, and should not be capitalized.  Exceptions are event names that have a proper noun as part of the name, such as "Greco-Roman 56 kg" or "Olympic trap" or "Tornado class".  But certainly tennis events are "singles" and "doubles", not "Singles" and "Doubles", despite some page moves by someone a couple of weeks ago.  Along the same lines, we ought to replace instances of "Water Polo" and "Table Tennis" in section headers to "Water polo" and "Table tennis".  The article names are correct for those sports, but I often see section headers with improper caps.  My last pet peeve is that "Gold Medal" etc. are not proper nouns either!  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 21:28, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Indeed, you should follow Wikipedia's naming guidelines for article titles: lowercase nouns and avoid abbreviations. I don't consider all those nouns as proper, so it's really weird to see those capitalized titles. Parutakupiu (talk) 21:39, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * All right, I don't think we have to take it to WP:RM or anything then. Do you think it would still be useful to mention the form used by the ISSF in the lead of each article? ("10 metre air pistol (written in official documents as 10 m Air Pistol) is an...") Also, any thoughts on the splitting, e.g. 50 m Rifle into 50 metre rifle three positions and 50 metre rifle prone? -- Jao (talk) 21:58, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * That seems unnecessary to me—it's just a style convention, not a tangible difference in names (such as "Field hockey, known simply as hockey...."). — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 22:17, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * If the ISSF treats them as proper nouns, I think that's worth showing what the ISSF's style convention is for them. Ideally, there'd be redirects from the ISSF version as well, in case people tried them. More explanation is usually good. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 07:02, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

On a related note, I had asked this before, but shall repeat again: why do we capitalize "Men's" and "Women's" in article names after the hyphen? If we are going to change article names for the hyphen to a spaced en-dash, for example, that might be a good time to fix this too. We'd end up with Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics – men's 100 metres, for example. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 22:17, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Lately, some situations I've taken for granted are raising hard-to-answer questions, lol. Andrwsc: I don't know. Perhaps the presence of a dash separating those two portions of the title feels like it's a period, hence the capitalized "Men's" and "Women's". I never considered why the lowercase wasn't used and if it's indeed the most appropriate. Anyways, the bot that will replace hyphens for dashes is already created and waiting for approval so I don't know if this new change—if we agree to it—can be simply added to that bot. Parutakupiu (talk) 22:43, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I've taken it for granted, but I think my reasoning is, well, reasonable. I think the same way as Parutakupiu in that they are in essence like 2 different titles. For instance, in badminton, it should still be Badminton at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Mixed doubles, and not with a lowercase M. I think it just looks better, but I'm not strongly opinionated on the matter. Is there an MoS topic on subsectioned pages like this? Jared   (t)  &ensp; 23:15, 12 August 2008 (UTC)


 * The closest MOS page I found is Naming conventions (long lists), which prefers a colon instead of a hyphen or dash, and puts the letter (in an alphabetic breakdown) in upper case. Maybe that answers our question about the "Men's" vs. "Women's", so I retract my suggestion above, but perhaps we should reconsider the spaced en-dash idea and go with a colon per the MOS.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 00:25, 13 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Hmmm... I'm having a hard time considering these articles as lists, so I'm not sure if a colon should applied. But probably that's also me not fond of seeing see colons in titles (Badminton at the 2008 Summer Olympics: Mixed doubles—it seems like it's clumped together). Could this be a case of a void in the naming guidelines? Perhaps one could ask how to act in this case. Parutakupiu (talk) 04:23, 13 August 2008 (UTC)


 * The separation between the parts before and after the hyphen are indeed why the men's and women's are capitalized. As to whether they should be capitalized, I'm not sure. With the spaced hyphen (or shiny new en-dash that we're getting), I do agree that the capitalization looks better. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 07:02, 13 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I would probably shy away from the colon because it makes the other pages look too, I'm not sure, connected? to the main sports page. I really would prefer the dash, aesthetically, too. Jared   (t)  &ensp; 16:23, 13 August 2008 (UTC)


 * So what's our consensus here? The Naming conventions (long lists) page seems to endorse a hyphen as an acceptable alternative to a colon, and makes no mention of em or en dashes whatsoever.  Shall we just leave these as they have always been, with hyphens?  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 17:21, 15 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm perfectly fine with the way it is, really. No need to go edit-crazy about something truly minor. Jared   (t)  &ensp; 04:55, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree. Even with a bot, there isn't a pressing need to change anything.  Reywas92 Talk  20:33, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

NationsinOlympics
You may remember me as having begun the confusion over "_____ at the Olympics" articles that was eventually resolved. A question on the templates that are used on those articles (for example, Infobox Olympics Brazil) — when Beijing is concluded, could these templates be modified so that they display the nation's total medal count through all Olympics since 1896? I'm not asking for a separate list of medals for each year: I'm asking about having a single line saying that Brazil has earned 17 golds, 21 silvers, and 38 bronzes, with a total of 76 medals. Nyttend (talk) 02:23, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd rather not add extra emphasis to all-time medal totals. There is a perpetual battle on articles like All-time Olympic Games medal table about just how many medals we should say that "Germany" has won, for example, and I'd rather that we didn't open that can of worms on another thousand articles. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 04:03, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm personally in favor of nuking-from-space the article that Andrwsc linked to, so... yeah... I'd prefer not to use all-time counts anywhere that would show up on an article such as Brazil at the 2008 Summer Olympics. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 06:57, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah that page has always been iffy. Granted, it looks nice now, but it's like walking on eggshells when you have to explain it, or use its information somewhere else, because you have to be extra careful to explain which nations are clumped together, which aren't, etc. I think it's a cool page to keep, but I would probably try not to play it up at all, especially during the Olympics. Jared   (t)  &ensp; 16:26, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * What do y'all think of my recent edit to de-emphasize the ranking and simply sort alphabetically? I also included the number of appearances per NOC, as the most neutral way I could think of addressing the issue of URS vs. RUS, GER/FRG/GDR/EUA, etc. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:57, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I think you easily solved any polemics regarding nations ranking for whatever parameter. Parutakupiu (talk) 18:11, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Pardon my confusion, but I don't see how there could be confusion: why couldn't the medal total in the box simply be for all the years that are linked to by the box? Surely there has to be some reason that it was determined that the box would link to certain years (for the German example, 1896-1912, 1928-1936, 1952-1976, 1984-2008 Summer and 1928-1936, 1952-2006 Winter), so to me it would make sense to have a medal total in the box representing all years linked in the section called "Olympic history". Nyttend (talk) 20:15, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, for, the editing of a pro-German editor resulted in the current consensus that includes the sequence of EUA and FRG teams as well as the GER ones. This is different from the total counts where GER, FRG, and EUA are distinct.  I guess my main concern is the over-emphasis of the all-time medal totals, and the inevitable edit-warring we'll see from nationalistic editors who may not necessarily abide by any "conventions" we try to establish.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 20:30, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Highlights Articles
I recently nominated the 2008 highlights article for deletion and have seen some interesting discussion as a result. The AFD was closed as a result of being linked to the main page.

I think that perhaps this project/its members should discuss the "highlights" format. I am aware of 2 such pages, there may be more, which would be affected. I am currently opposed to the use of "highlights" articles. Additionally I believe it may be appropriate to develop guidelines or policy for the development of articles related to current events. While such articles may be sorted out later on, their impact would seem to be to greatest during the course of a current event. People will read those articles as something is happening, making our preparation for such situation rather important. I'm sure that the articles related to the 2008 Olympic games are being read, and like other formats a rapidly updated encyclopedia like WP holds some responsibility in its immediate effects on the sharing of information. The "highlights" page as an example has the problems that any article may have, but they would seem to be magnified by the timeliness of being read. If there is a problem in the "highlights" article with lets say NPOV, then that problem can be fixed over time, but all the people reading it in the mean time will be affected. If for some reason we overemphasize the performance of table tennis players from Latvia (hypothetical), and then thousands of readers are seeing an over-representation of table tennis in the article, and then leave Wikipedia thinking that Latvian table tennis is the something it's not, then we've created an undue influence on the WP audience. The table tennis presence may be toned down later, but the effect generated will have already been put in place. I believe that this discussion may help in deciding whether or not to write highlights articles in the future, and may have implications for future current events. Please consider that editors may run into similar issues with highlights of other Olympic style events, other sporting events like the World Cup, and perhaps even other non-athletic events.Becky Sayles (talk) 07:09, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Highlights are inherently subjective, identifying some events as more important than others. This may result from a bias built into the system of reporting.  There are likely to be many more articles about American athletes because of the number of American media present at the games. Consequently in the immediate, wikipedia editors may have the same sort of bias in a highlights article.
 * Highlights unnecessarily reproduce information that is present, or belongs on the main article for the games and on subpages for the individual sports. If some event, like the 1996 bombing, stand out then a separate article may be created.
 * Wikipedia readers should be able to decide independently what information they see as important about the games. If they want to learn about swimming, gymnastics, or boxing then they can use the articles for each sport to see the results which wikipedia editors would update.  To have a highlights article implies that our opinions about the importance of events in the games are more important than the wp audience.  It is a bias that should not be allowed.
 * Wikipedia is not wikinews. Wikipedia should remain first and foremost an encyclopedia.  Anyone can go to wikinews for news, or any other source for highlights.  Encyclopedias do not/should not be responsible for the up-to-the-moment coverage of the games, or other events.
 * Many editors of the current games highlight article admit to using wikipedia for keeping track of news about the games. This personal use, while convenient, is not appropriate and unencyclopedic, and initiates another bias towards keeping a highlights article which may disappear once its usefulness has passed (when the games end).


 * I fully understand your concern, especially because it seems like this information is being repeated a lot, so perhaps as a solution the contents of the page could be moved to the Portal namespace, be it at Portal:Olympics or Portal:Current events/Sports. I think this would alleviate some of your concern, although it wouldn't stop the repeating of information. Honestly, we need a place where everything is concentrated for easy viewing, and that page is good for it. Jared   (t)  &ensp; 16:29, 13 August 2008 (UTC)


 * You know, I saw your AfD for the highlights article and would have supported it if not for the snowball of ILIKEIT responses. In any case, here is my opinion:  per WP:Recentism, we ought to include only events that have "long-term historical perspective", and I don't think a day-by-day recap is necessary for the encyclopedia in the long run.  The 2008 Summer Olympics highlights article is too expansive—it includes every single medal winner.  Also, organized by day instead of by sport (perhaps) makes it look more like Wikinews.  I still think our best example of what to do is on the 1896 Summer Olympics article, where each sport gets a paragraph of prose text with a top-level summary of what was notable, and a link via  to the per-sport details articles.  That is clearly superior to our approach on the 2008 Games (and most other, regretfully) articles, where we just have a bullet list of links to the per-sport articles, and an often haphazard "Highlights" section.  Perhaps that should be a main task of this WikiProject in a couple of weeks, going back to clean those up.  I seem to recall a previous discussion about this idea (in the archives somewhere).  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:42, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree that after the games are over, we should spend some time cleaning up the highlights article. It might be possible to split it into several stand-alone articles.  Possibilities include  List of 2008 Summer Olympics gold medal winners, List of world records set during the 2008 Summer Olympics, Chronological Summary of 2008 Summer Olympics (e.g. as a sub-page of 2008 in sports or August 2008 in sports, and/or your proposed summary page, with a paragraph per sport.  Perhaps we should also have a one-sentence-per sport summary on the main 2008 Summer Olympics page.  Whatever we decide, I feel that the current page serves a purpose for now, so we should keep it after the end of the games.  (If nothing else, the current page can act as a centralised location for additions by well-meaning editors: experienced editors can move the information to more relevant pages.)  Wikipedia is a work in progress: we shouldn't be ashamed about having draft pages accessible to the public during current events. Bluap (talk) 17:32, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Russia vs Russian Federation
Is there a preference? Becky Sayles (talk) 07:25, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * We use Russia per Naming conventions (common names) (e.g. the main article for the country is Russia, so we use Russia at the 2008 Summer Olympics). Using the official IOC designation for each NOC is often unweildy (e.g. "Libyan Arab Jamahiriya at the 2008 Summer Olympics" or "Lao People's Democratic Republic at the 2008 Summer Olympics") and probably creates more confusion than reduces it.  We had a discussion about this sometime ago, if you want to browse the archives.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:33, 13 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I was actually very surprised while watching swimming last night that when one of the Russian men (or women) were in first at the split, they nifty blue bar in their lane said "Russian Fed" and not "Russia". At least on Wikipedia's Olympics pages, we've always used and plan on using the simple form of most countries' names, and in this case, we would use Russia as much as possible. The IOC most likely accepted the NOC of Russia as the Russian Federation, but for the purposes of this project, Russia will do (as will China, not the People's Republic of China, and others). Jared   (t)  &ensp; 16:33, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

Article nominated for deletion
See Articles for deletion/Republic of China at the 1952 Summer Olympics. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 20:01, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I'd like an independent ruling on this
Canada at the 2008 Summer Olympics (and for that matter, Canada at the 2004 Summer Olympics) has a section on 'top 8' finishers. This is the only nation's article to have that. I believe it's patently non-notable to make a conspicuous section for any finishers below 3rd. I've taken the section out of the 2008 article twice, only to be reverted twice. If I'm in the wrong, I'll stop, but I really don't think I am. Nosleep (talk) 23:40, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Only articles, eh? Canada at the 2006 Winter Olympics, Canada at the 2002 Winter Olympics, Sweden at the 2006 Winter Olympics, China at the 2006 Winter Olympics, Japan at the 2006 Winter Olympics, Finland at the 2006 Winter Olympics, France at the 2006 Winter Olympics, Slovakia at the 2006 Winter Olympics, Bulgaria at the 2006 Winter Olympics, Croatia at the 2006 Winter Olympics, Belarus at the 2006 Winter Olympics, Austria at the 2006 Winter Olympics, Belgium at the 2006 Winter Olympics, Czech Republic at the 2006 Winter Olympics, Italy at the 2006 Winter Olympics, Latvia at the 2006 Winter Olympics, Norway at the 2006 Winter Olympics, Poland at the 2006 Winter Olympics, Russia at the 2006 Winter Olympics, Ukraine at the 2006 Winter Olympics and more. -- Scorpion0422 23:42, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Nice cut and paste. The articles, for any nations with sizable Olympic contingents, are huge already. No need to make them even more so by way of what's essentially trivia. Nosleep (talk) 23:45, 13 August 2008 (UTC)


 * From what I know, 4th–8th places are considered "finalist" places and give points to the national team whose athletes secured such rank, as medal places also do (8 points to gold, 7 to silver, 6 to bronze (...) and 1 to 8th place). IAAF does that in its World Championships. Probably that was the intention of creating that section in all those articles, but whoever did it completely forgot to explain that. Anyway, as you said, such sections tend to become massive (in listed items and weight) and are not necessarily a plus to the article. Moreover, it's hard to find references that source this per-points Olympic country ranking. Parutakupiu (talk) 00:06, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * So do they then belong on every article? Aside from a little silly, that seems impossible. Nosleep (talk) 00:15, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with Nosleep, this is unnecessary trivia which could be found either on athlete or event pages. If this were done for e.g United States at the 2004 Summer Olympics the list would be ridiculously large. Basement12 (talk) 00:44, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * And it's already listed below in the event subsections on the nation pages anyway (as are the medals, but there's clearly a reason to have those in a conspicuous section of their own). Nosleep (talk) 00:58, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I believe that a "top 8" (or whatever) section is rather "crufty" and not necessary. The worst example I saw of this was this edit of Brazil at the 2004 Summer Olympics, where the section was named "Those Who Almost Made It" (I'm not kidding).  I really think this redundancy has as much long-term historical perspective (to quote from WP:Recentism) as the day-by-day counts that somebody decided was a good thing to slap on these articles.  I realize that folks have a lot of passion for their home countries at Olympic time, and want to add as much "flavour" as they can to their home articles, but really, it isn't very encylopedic.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 03:48, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I strongly support removal of those paragraphs. It is essentially duplicating the already existing info. --Tone 08:05, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

It's getting a little nasty. Can we form a solid consensus on this, one way or the other? Nosleep (talk) 08:51, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * More comments that might help the consensus-building: setting an arbitrary cut-off at eight for all sports is problematic, as not all sports have a "final eight". Rowing and canoeing events have six lanes in the finals, for example.  What will the Canadian editors do with that?  Also, what about team sports like women's water polo, with eight entries—does the last place team really need to "sugar coat" their finish by calling it a top eight result?  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 14:59, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * To reply to User:Parutakupiu's comment about the IAAF doing this. In fact, it is only done in their World Cup competition, which is a team competition, and completely separate from the World Championships, which (like the Olympics) is an individual competition. Bluap (talk) 12:41, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually, IAAF does that for the World Championships. See here for Osaka 2007. But anyway, the discussion seems to head to the conclusion that it's better to remove such sections. Parutakupiu (talk) 18:41, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I think the key point made here was User:Andrwsc's. Some sports, e.g. canoeing or field events, have far more than 8 competitors progressing to the finals so there is no reson for the list to go specifically to 8th. It, and others like it should probably be removed entirely. Basement12 (talk) 12:54, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Have we come to a consensus one way or another? The section is still in the article but the discussion seems to have died without a decision being made. I think it should go for the record Basement12 (T.C) 15:26, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I think we have a consensus to delete that section. Ideally, one day we will have perfect result records for every country like we have in this year's articles and then it will be totally redundant to list the achievements separately. --Tone 16:13, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

I have removed the sections from the articles listed above. I'll try and keep an eye on them but i'm sure some will reappear. Basement12 (T.C) 16:49, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I certainly support that deletion. It may be useful for fans from a particular country to see this while the Games are still fresh (in effect, using Wikipedia as a new source), but this content has no long-term historical perspective.  (I use that phrase a lot, it seems.)  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 17:26, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Aquatics?
The Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Olympics page (and possibly others) has an aquatics section containing results for diving, swimming and sychronyzed swimming. Most team pages e.g. US have it broken down into seperate swimming and diving sections and placed in the corresponding alphabetical positions. They are listed as seperate sports on Template:EventsAt2008SummerOlympics. Should the GB page be altered? Basement12 (talk) 02:42, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I think either way is acceptable/appropriate, but we ought to standardize on one way or the other. My preference would be to pull swimming et. al. out to the same level as athletics and the rest so that articles for nations that only have entries in one of those four disciplines do not have an unneccessary section for "Aquatics" with only a single section beneath it.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 03:51, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The IOC categorizes swimming, synchronised swimming, diving and water polo under the single category of "aquatics"; these disciplines are all governed by the Fédération Internationale de Natation. Rather than individuals trying to come to a decision, shouldn't we be using the decision that is used by the governing body of the Olympics? Hammersfan 14/08/08, 17.17 BST
 * True, but I would also point out that per WP:COMMONNAME that "swimming", "diving", etc. are far more widely used than "aquatics". — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:44, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm split on this. Whilst I agree the IOC officially categorises all four as "aquatics" and all goverened by FINA, the 2008 Beijing results and schedules site lists them separately. Yboy83 (talk) 17:09, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I have resplit the section for now to be in line with other nations pages if the discussion here decides otherwise we can edit all nations pages to be the same. The 2008 Beijing results and schedules site also lists flatwater and slalom canoeing as well as mountain and road cycling seperately so don't think this is the best definition. Basement12 (talk) 17:39, 14 August 2008 (UTC)


 * For the record I don't think it really matters as long as all nations pages are consistent, it isn't difficult to find the sections however they're listed. Basement12 (talk) 17:43, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I am now leaning towards an "Aquatics" section. This then corresponds to the sports lists at 2008 olympics and Olympic sports. It will mean changing most 204 nations at the olympic articles though. Basement12 (talk) 17:52, 14 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I want to keep them separate. As mentioned, the Official Olympic site for 2008, keep them separate. Volleyball and beach volleyball are separate at the Beijing site too, as is flatwater and slalom canoeing and mountain and road cycling. This is the official website of the games, they're probably not frowned upon for keeping them separate. It is also easier to find the information with separate articles, instead of searching through information about other sports.Bib (talk) 18:07, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, but canoeing, and cycling, and volleyball are not split on the team pages. Should we have individual sections for those too? Come to think of it, should we also have seperate sections for artistic and rhythmic gymnastics and trampolining? It doesn't matter what the 2008 Games website lists them as - it is how the IOC lists them that is important. And changing the articles to show "aquatics" is not especially onerous. Hammersfan 15/08/08, 09.51 BST
 * I agree with Hammersfan. Splitting articles based on the websites of individual games runs the risk of having an inconsistent number of articles for the same event across each edition of the games. "gymnastics in 2004" suddenly becoming "artistic gymnastics in 2008", "rhythmic gymnastics in 2008" and trampoline in 2008" breaks the time series of articles by sport.--Huaiwei (talk) 16:45, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

The Beijing website breaks the results down into the 38 Olympic disciplines. Our pages generally use the 28 Olympic sports, separating only the sport of Aquatics into its component disciplines. I don't think there's really any problem with continuing to use our current system since I think that's the way that makes it easiest for the casual reader to find what he's looking for (he's going to look for swimming under Swimming and artistic gymnastics under Gymnastics, and putting either of those sections in the A portion of the page for Aquatics or Artistic Gymnastics makes it tougher). I'm more concerned with internal consistency--that is, on each NOC at the XXXX Olympics page, swimming should be treated the same. This is true regardless of whether we decide to continue with the system we have been using or if we switch to either the 28-sport list or the 38-discipline list. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 00:56, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Standard
Returning to this issue, because I believe it's one that could and should be resolved now so everyone knows what the appropriate action to take on nation pages. So, do you want to go for seperate aquatics sections, or all aquatics sports under one combined section?


 * I vote for seperated sections. IOC precedent in this instance is moot since very few people will know of it. Many other pages such as the USOC, NBC, and BBC separate the sports. The configuration of separate sections seems to offer the most logical alphabetization for the casual user, as "Swimming" and "Diving" are much more separate in the minds of people than the different disciplines in canoeing, volleyball, etc. Peloneous t c 04:55, 31 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I guess seperate sections do make more sense here, even if not stictly what is used by the IOC, its what any casual user is more likely to look for. Basement12 (T.C) 12:41, 31 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I'd go for separate sections, as well. I think the common reader hardly traces a connection that strong between swimming, diving and water polo, despite all being pool sports and supervised by the same organization. Parutakupiu (talk) 15:16, 31 August 2008 (UTC)

All-time Paralympic Games medal table
I just created the All-time Paralympic Games medal table. Its pretty obvious that I got my inspiration from the All-time Olympic Games medal table and seeing that the Paralympics were missing a similar article I took action; and it took forever to do it by myself. In the end all I could finish was a list showing the summer paralympics. Now I am knackered and wouldn't mind some help with the winter paralympics being added and a grand total for both events. If someone would be willing to check my counts that would be great also. I'm going to take a bit of a break from this due to real life, but any assistance would be greatly appreciated :-) -- Phoenix (talk) 09:15, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Name preference
Hello. I would like to ask about a naming issue related to the Olympic Games. IOC uses "Virgin Islands" for the United States Virgin Islands and WP follows this naming, e.g. lists sportsmen from the U.S. Virgin Islands. Should we rename all these categories to the United States Virgin Islands form to differentiate from the British Virgin Islands? - Darwinek (talk) 12:21, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I would not be opposed to renaming the categories this way, but the article names ought to remain as Virgin Islands at the 2008 Summer Olympics et. al. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 18:16, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Nominated for renaming at CFD --> HERE. - Darwinek (talk) 10:51, 15 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Just found United States Virgin Islands at the 2008 Summer Olympics which looks like unfinished duplicate of Virgin Islands at the 2008 Summer Olympics. Plan of action? Yboy83 (talk) 21:18, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I've turned it into a redirect for Virgin Islands at the 2008 Summer Olympics. Basement12 (T.C) 21:25, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Help wanted
A new article has been created List of multiple Olympic medalists that needs a lot of help. Anyone interested in helping out would be greatly appreciated. Hopefully, we can get this up to DYK level in the next several days. Remember (talk) 12:50, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * What kind of help do you need though? I see the list is quite comprehensive. OhanaUnited</b><b style="color:green;">Talk page</b> 19:12, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I think i'm right in saying that the list is nowhere near complete.Basement12 (talk) 20:01, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * In any case, this list is going to be huuuge! I see the point of creating this list but on the other hadsm why is the cutoff 3 and not 2? Multiple is more than one, isn't it? --Tone 20:09, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Most of the list was copied from the List of multiple Olympic gold medalists so we need a lot of help to add all of the links to individuals who did not have at least 3 gold medals. I am for trying to limit the size of this list by having a minimum of 5 total medals.  Otherwise I think it might to too big to be manageable. Remember (talk) 20:38, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
 * You better mention this selective criteria in the article, or else people will be confused. <b style="color:#0000FF;">OhanaUnited</b><b style="color:green;">Talk page</b> 17:06, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Did someone mix up qualifying with final results in the women's artistic gymnastics all-around?
See my comment here: Talk:Gymnastics_at_the_2008_Summer_Olympics_-_Women%27s_artistic_individual_all-around. Appears that the present article is a mismash of qualifying scores and, for the top four spots, final scores. They need to be differentiated, because they are not the same list of scores! - PhilipR (talk) 06:53, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

The really bad thing about doping
No, I don't mean the cheating and the health issues or whatever. I mean once an athlete's results have been annulled after doping, all the athletes below him/her (not just the medalists!) has to be MOVED UP ONE SPOT as a result. Check this and this  (this has not been updated when I write this, but should be soon) out after the DQ of Kim Jong Su. And this even includes this poor little girl who got DQed after originally finishing 59th. Now everybody who finished behind her has been moved up one spot. A real headache for us editors. Chanheigeorge (talk) 08:31, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The girl "finished in last place in the women's floor exercise" so no harm done. But I guess we have to update all the sports that are tainted by doping. <b style="color:#0000FF;">OhanaUnited</b><b style="color:green;">Talk page</b> 17:14, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * In the new version of the official qualification round reports for 50 metre pistol and 10 metre air pistol, Kim is moved to the bottom but the vacant spot is not filled. I assume this is because it would be confusing to have an eighth place finisher in the qualifications not reaching the finals (which they of course cannot do retroactively). I don't really know how to treat this in the articles. Our mission is not simply to duplicate the official reports, and his actual results prior to disqualification will probably be interesting to many. Also noted that in Athletics at the 1988 Summer Olympics - Men's 100 metres, admittedly the only case I checked, Johnson's results are listed normally in the heats and he is marked as disqualified only in the final, although logically he must have been retroactively disqualified from the heats as well. This is exactly what we now have on the Kim situation, but I don't know if it's optimal. -- Jao (talk) 18:55, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Hmm. I would move Kim down to DSQ in the qualification round, with a footnote explaining the circumstances and noting that he originally finished second in that round. I assume the IOC now deems Omelchuk to have finished second, and our list should reflect that. Aridd (talk) 23:14, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Nope, Omelchuk still third, no second place: -- Jao (talk) 07:51, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Ah. Well that settles it, then. Aridd (talk) 10:00, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
 * IOC's report suggests that the qualification ranks are still intact (no point in moving people up there), but the overall rank has been adjusted. So basically, the shooter who finished 9th in the qualification (and did not qualify for the finals) is now officially 8th overall in the competition. Chanheigeorge (talk) 05:05, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Combining men's/women's tables
Hi, I'm not so familiar with this Wikiproject and its conventions, but I would like to combine the men's and women's result tables at Philippines at the 2008 Summer Olympics. Does this go against any convention that I'm not aware of? Seems wasteful to have separate tables with only one athlete each for long jump, diving, and taekwondo. TheCoffee (talk) 16:02, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd say "do it!", and I'd combine the swimming table too. Really, in Category:Nations at the 2008 Summer Olympics we have articles that range from one competitor in one event to hundreds of competitors, with dozens of medals, etc.  A "one size fits all" approach isn't practical, but as long as the visual style is consistent (which it would be), I see no reason why you can't add "Men's" and "Women's" to prefix the event name in a combined table. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:42, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Great. Done. TheCoffee (talk) 17:41, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Yugoslavia
Can someone help me with User:Imbris? He/she keeps making changes to articles and templates such as List of participating nations at the Summer Olympic Games, List of participating nations at the Winter Olympic Games, Template:Infobox Olympics Yugoslavia, etc. His/her objection is that the nation designated "Yugoslavia" (YUG) at the Olympics until the 1992 Winter Games is quite different from the "Yugoslavia" (YUG) from 1996–2002, and that the latter is pretty much the same thing as "Serbia and Montenegro" (SCG) that competed 2004–2006. This POV is actually quite accurate, but the manner in which this POV is expressed on those Olympic articles is incorrect, in my view. Imbris insists on "erasing" the instances of Yugoslavia/YUG for 1996–2002 from the infobox and from the tables on the lists of nations. My solution was to use footnotes, annotations, etc. to clearly make the distinction between the multiple Yugoslavias, and make the connection from the FR Yugoslavia teams to the Serbia and Montenegro teams. Imbris seems totally unwilling to accept this solution, and I don't know why. Any other suggestions from the Olympics editors here would be welcome. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 21:17, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The way I see it the templates list the enthities that appeared on the Olympics under the same code (in that case YUG). I don't know about the IOC but on several cases, the succesion of Yugoslavia was split and in other cases, the FRY was the successor. So, my suggestion: if IOC recognized FRY as the successor to SFRY, then the template stays as it is. Otherwise, the years 1996-2002 should be moved. Footnotes make it clear that it is not exactly the same state, I think. --Tone 21:36, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * What can we do if the IOC country code for both SFR Yugoslavia (1920S–1992W) and FR Yugoslavia (1996S–2002W) is exactly one and the same—YUG—even if geopolitically the countries were not? The infobox show different flags and state names for the different periods, but one cannot change the fact that the entity's name was Yugoslavia (SFR or FR) and the code was YUG since 1920 up to 2002? I think the footnotes you added to the country's infobox are perfectly clear and provide means for readers to distinguish the differences between both political entities. Parutakupiu (talk) 23:29, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Ok, good. I haven't gone back to fix up the summer list yet (and I need to fix an error I made with respect to China in 1952), but the winter list currently represents my best effort at accomodating the "Yugoslavia problem".  Hopefully Imbris is ok with that also. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 23:36, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I saw Imbris doing a lot of reverts to your edits, Andrwsc, and honestly you are really one patient administrator. I think he'll only be satisfied when we have individual infoboxes for Serbia (1912, Kingdom; 2008, Republic), Kingdom of Yugoslavia (1920–1936), Yugoslavia (1948–1960, FPR; 1964–1992W, SFR), FR Yugoslavia (1996–2002), and Serbia and Montenegro (2004–2006)! He may be right, but why does he persist on putting SCG infoboxes for periods when the NOC had the YUG code? Parutakupiu (talk) 16:28, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
 * In hope of helping with this situation, I was checking and wondered if you couldn't do here the same you did on, but in this case, code for a name change acording to the   parameter value. This way, the same YUG code would appear in the infobox during 1920–2002, but the name at the top would display "Yugoslavia" (1920–1992W) and "FR Yugoslavia" or "Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" (1996–2002). What's your input? Would this solve anything? Parutakupiu (talk) 16:41, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Come to think better, we're giving a special status to this country, by showing its full name just for distinction purposes that are only that important to more nationalist users. I mean, the country's common name remained "Yugoslavia" after the fall of the socialist federation; that's a fact, he can't change it. If readers confuse the better known old six-state socialist federation with its less known two-state successor, is that our fault? The lead introduction to the articles clearly states what political entity was represented at those Games, so what more can he ask? Parutakupiu (talk) 16:50, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Yugoslavia continued
Yes Andrwsc is very patient but his method of improving Wikipedia is doing reverts and discussing. But Andrwsc has strangely enough omitted the fact that I agree with his position on using footnotes, annotations, explanations. I also agree that the fact that Serbia and Montenegro which during the 1990s formed a joint state (which were not recognized by the United Nations up to October/December 2000) sent a team "Yugoslavia" with the code YUG should be mentioned, and if you want emphasized but this info cannot be in the same infobox as the one representing Yugoslavia (1920S-1992W). Any other solution would be misleading, and if Parutakupiu wants to mislead users of this Wikipedia I would like to remind him that Andrwsc wants clarity for the users (even ones who know that a team called "Yugoslavia" participated in the (1996S-2002W)). I agree with Andrwsc once more on that issue that Wikipedia should be as "clear" as possible, but not in the manner of:
 * Double listing the appearances of YUG team from 1996S-2002W in both the table row Serbia and Montenegro and the table row Yugoslavia.
 * Ommiting the fact that Yugoslavia ceased to exist and that the United Nations as well as the European Community imposed sanctions on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (among the reasons were claims by that state of succession of SFRY - its assets and international memberships).
 * Federal Republic of Yugoslavia were during the much of 1990s called Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) by several of the international organizations (UN, EU, IOC) and by lots of states like USA.
 * Furthermore http://untreaty.un.org/English/notpubl/29-1.pdf is the verified document called the Agreement on Succession Issues in which there is no doubt Federal Republic of Yugoslavia agreed that it was not the successor of Yugoslavia (despite the information of Tone).
 * And as a remark towards using links to references on both YUG and SCG row in the tables List of participating nations at the Summer Olympic Games, List of participating nations at the Winter Olympic Games. It is very much wrong to do it in a way Andrwsc did it because those were not two states that competed together like Australasia (where double linking is very much OK).

I have on numerous accounts explained to Andrwsc that my position is to stop further arguing that Yugoslavia's heritage belongs to any ex-YUG nation - except all of the nations (NOC's). Also I think that we should use a method of clean cuts like in the case of Republic of China/Chinese Taipei.

Using the logic of Parutakupiu why should we "take care" users who do not read the entire article but simply browse for a few seconds. In the infobox for Serbia and Montenegro there is a footnote that explains under which team name and code Serbia and Montenegro participated in 1996 S, 2000 S, and 1998 W and 2002 W. The matter should have been solved by that template (which for the matter of fact was created by Andrwsc).

Andrwsc intentions may be good but we cannot make those references, footnotes, annotations in the cells of the years of appearances nor in the template infobox Yugoslavia. We can list those references, footnotes and annotations by the name of the team (in the row-cell dedicated to team name and flag). And in the infobox we can list related appearances, but not what Andrwsc suggested "breaking" the list of years of participations in infobox olympic Yugoslavia like it was a simple break in attendance or change of the countries names.

Yugoslavia (1996S-2002W) changed its name in 2003 to Serbia and Montenegro (SCG). This is important.

Yugoslavia (1920S-1992W) has not changed its name in 1992 to FR Yugoslavia.

Imbris (talk) 18:55, 16 August 2008 (UTC)


 * OK, after reading your detailed explanation, I agree with you on most points. I agree that Serbia and Montenegro (SCG) was the successor of FR Yugoslavia (YUG), since they were the same geopolitical entity only with a revised name during 2003–2005. I also agree that FR Yugoslavia was not the same state as (SFR or FPR) Yugoslavia, since it only consisted of two of the former's states (Serbia plus Montenegro), after its breakup in 1992. That we agree.
 * I can also agree that on the lists of participating nations, there should be nothing added after 1988, in Yugoslavia's row, since the six-state federated Yugoslavia didn't exist anymore and none of the breakup states is considered its successor (am I right on this?). However, Yugoslavia should be present in the year columns before 1992, as it was the predecessor state to Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, FYR Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro (and "Serbia and Montenegro"), and Slovenia.
 * What I have a hard time to cope with is seeing an infobox for Serbia and Montenegro (with its SCG code emphasized) present in Olympic Games pages where the country's NOC code was YUG and its name was not de facto "Serbia and Montenegro" but Yugoslavia. People go to Yugoslavia at the 1996 Summer Olympics and see an infobox with another name on top! Even with all the annotations below stating that in such year it was called "FR Yugoslavia" and used the YUG code.
 * If you or anyone can find me a precedent situation involving another country at the Olympics, I'd refrain myself from further arguing on this matter. Parutakupiu (talk) 20:16, 16 August 2008 (UTC)


 * A hard issue indeed. Maybe I can point out Austria, that was not the same country as it is now before the WWI, because it included several other countries. So maybe the same situation could apply here... --Tone 20:43, 16 August 2008 (UTC)


 * When Austria was given its IOC code, AUT (1956), it was already an independent and geopolitically stable country; besides, it always participated as "Austria", even when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire (like Hungary did). Such geopolitical transformations were still to happen to the SFR Yugoslavia (YUG), giving origin to a myriad of smaller states, as you know. Anyway, when I asked for similar situations it was in terms of a country's Olympic participation page displaying an IOC code and nation's name different from the reality at that time; like what happens with Yugoslavia at the 1996 Summer Olympics, Yugoslavia at the 1998 Winter Olympics, Yugoslavia at the 2000 Summer Olympics and Yugoslavia at the 2002 Winter Olympics. Parutakupiu (talk) 22:33, 16 August 2008 (UTC)


 * OK. I believe I found a way to solve this mess concerning the distiction between FPR/SFR Yugoslavia (1920–1992 W) and FR Yugoslavia (1996–2002) Olympic participations (both with YUG code), without resulting in pages of FR Yugoslavia showing an infobox for Serbia and Montenegro (SCG), which seemed a nonsense. I edited so that whenever the   parameter contained any of the Summer Olympics editions during 1920–1988 (and Winter editions during 1924–1992), it only showed the participations for FPR/SFR Yugoslavia, hence only showing participations for FR Yugoslavia when any other Olympics editions were added to that parameter. So, basically, without having to create another infobox for FR Yugoslavia alone, when its IOC code was the same as for FPR/SFR Yugoslavia, I took advantage of the existing infobox (that "answered" to the code YUG) and gave it "two faces". For better navigation between Yugoslavia pages pre- and post-1992 Winter Games, I added links to the Olympic pages of the states that preceded or succeded, in the "Other related appearances" section. I've also made according changes in, to only include years post-2003, when the country actually had this name and the IOC code SCG.
 * If this solution isn't a good compromise, feel free to revert, but I can't think of anything else! What do you think? Do these changes disrupt the intricate template and navigation system you created, Andrwsc? Cheers! Parutakupiu (talk) 00:44, 17 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I like the approach of the "two faces" of Infobox Olympics Yugoslavia. Great idea, Parutakupiu!  However, I think there are still some things that need fixing:
 * On Infobox Olympics Serbia and Montenegro, the FR Yugoslavia and IOP instances have been removed from the main navigation section, with only the FR Yugoslavia ones shown indirectly in the "Other related appearances" section. This is inconsistent with the style we have for other "name changes" (assuming we all agree with the POV that "Serbia and Montenegro" is a name change from "Federal Republic of Yugoslavia"), such as Ceylon→Sri Lanka, Burma→Myanmar, etc.  Look at Infobox Olympics Ceylon and Infobox Olympics Sri Lanka to see what I mean.  Similarly, the "FR Yugoslavia face" of Infobox Olympics Yugoslavia ought to show the two SCG instances in the main section.
 * As a link target from these infoboxes, we still need to figure out what content should appear in Yugoslavia at the Olympics. My view is that those top-level articles have the flexibility to describe changes like this, so that article needs to describe all the different "faces" of a "Yugoslavia" team at the Olympics.  For example, when I expanded Serbia and Montenegro at the Olympics beyond a stub, I included the entire history, not just the two SCG years.  I'd like to do a similar treatment to the YUG article, maybe later this week.
 * On a related note, I am convinced that the YUG rows on the participating nations list must have individual table entries for all appearances of a team named "Yugoslavia" at the Games, as per the reliable sources for those featured lists. My preferred version had bullets for the SFR years, and footnote links for the FR years.  I think the current version, which shows a greyed out area, implies that no Yugoslavia team existed after 1988, which directly contradicts the sources.  The footnote version is sensitive to the political situation, while factually indicating that teams named "Yugoslavia" (YUG) existed past 1988.  The current version is a political POV I cannot tolerate. The "double linking" that Imbris describes does not imply two states.  It merely attaches the footnote to the two places where it is needed.  Nowhere in the table legend, etc., is a meaning applied to the footnote style per Imbris' description.
 * Again, thanks Parutakupiu for your assistance. It helps to have more voices in this discussion. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 07:19, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Glad to know my idea was a good contributed. As for the points you listed:
 * Wasn't aware of that Ceylon–Sri Lanka case. So you have the same instances on both "faces" (in this case on two separate infoboxes, because the nation's names are very distinct), but alternating footnotes? I've seen you did that for but haven't you forgot to add the two SCG instances to the "FR Yugoslavia" face of ? Or was it intentional because there's already a link to Serbia and Montenegro at the Olympics in the "other appearances" section?
 * Yes, I think so. From the YUG perspective, it seemed more logical to include just the top-level SCG article in the "Other" section rather than in the Games navigation section, but from the SCG perspective, it seemed more logical to use the "name change" style conventions.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 22:03, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with you. Simple.
 * I don't think my idea can be applied in a plain row table, as it did with the infobox. You're right, I made a mistake by commenting that there should be nothing added to YUG rows after 1988. It's well-sourced that a team named "Yugoslavia" (representing FR Yugoslavia) continued to exist post-1988. I've thought hard but can't find a solution for now. Parutakupiu (talk) 21:51, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I have started to make some of these changes, most notably to the Yugoslavia at the Olympics article. Now it makes a clear distinction between the different YUG teams at the Games, instead of grouping them together.  I think this is more neutral, but doesn't pretend that YUG did not exist as an Olympic team after 1988.  Also note that the infobox displays no flag at all.  I think the presence of the SFR flag as the default was harmful to this article being a top-level summary of all the YUG years.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 21:00, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
 * OK, good. You did well by not displaying SFR Yugoslavia's flag as the default flag for Yugoslavia's complex Olympic participation. Parutakupiu (talk) 21:51, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

List of multiple Paralympic gold medalists?
There is currently a List of multiple Olympic gold medalists. It would be good to have List of multiple Paralympic gold medalists. I've been creating articles on Paralympic athletes, and I've started a draft version of an article that would list all Paralympians who have won three gold medals or more. You can find it here. If anyone wants to help me with that, you'd be very welcome. Even if it's just adding one athlete that you know of to the list. The problem is, I'm not entirely sure where to find information. (By the way, kudos for All-time Paralympic Games medal table!) Aridd (talk) 22:59, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Proposal to remove date-autoformatting
Dear fellow contributors

MOSNUM no longer encourages date-autoformatting, having evolved over the past year or so from the mandatory to the optional, after much discussion there and elsewhere of the disadvantages of the system. MOSLINK and CONTEXT are consistent with this.

There are at least six disadvantages of using date-autoformatting, which I've capped here:

Removal has generally been met with positive responses by editors, and the consensus for change is overwhelming. I seek in-principle consensus here for the removal of date autoformatting from the main text of articles related to this WikiProject, using a script; such a move would also be sensitive to local objections on any article talk page. The original input formatting would be seen by all WPians, not just the huge number of visitors; it would be plain, unobtrusive text, which would give greater prominence to the high-value links.

You may wish to peruse the following capped text to compare two examples, with and without date autoformatting. The DA is set at international style—the one pertaining in this particular article—to show all WPians how the blue dates are displayed to visitors. MOSNUM prescribes rules for the raw formatting, irrespective of whether or not dates are autoformatted, analogous to our highly successful guidelines for the use of varieties of English. The choice of style is audited during the running of the script to ensure that it is appropriate to the article (i.e., consistent, and country-related where appropriate).

I look forward to your feedback. Tony  (talk)  07:25, 16 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I think a single instance of date linking is useful in our articles, at the top of the page when the event date(s) are provided. But I agree that we don't need to link every single date that appears after that.  Also, would these guidelines also apply to the   parameter in templates like ? I use those a LOT and always include the access date. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 14:57, 16 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I find it extremely odd that Tony is masterminding some kind of anti-date autoformatting drive in a secluded corner of wikipedia, when the vast majority of pages and editors make attempts to conform to it. As opposed to his assertions, MOSNUM does not discourage date-linking. It explains the reason why we link them at all, and that is to allow users to determine the way dates are displayed on their screens via their user preferences. I am afraid that your move may encourage readers who are accustomed to alternative date formats to start changing them to suit their tastes, and that may very well include myself.--Huaiwei (talk) 16:37, 16 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Actually, every time it has been brought up on the Village Post over the last year or so, consensus has been that Wikipedia needs a way to auto-format the date, without generating wikilinks. In the meantime, the general consensus has been that it looks better to not autoformat, than to have non-valuable wikilinks that are only there to generate the auto-formatting. Bluap (talk) 21:29, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Responses to Huaiwei:
 * I am one of the main proponents, but it is unfair to label me as "masterminding" a drive. Several other editors have been behind this for some time; check for yourselves at MOSNUM and elsewhere.
 * MOSNUM is not "a secluded corner of wikipedia", but an engineroom of stylistic cohesion and, where appropriate, of change. Anyone is free to participate.
 * Run past me again the logic of why a move for change "is odd" because people make attempts to conform to existing practices. Why would anyone bother to propose changing anything but existing practice. It's a no-brainer, yes?
 * Please do not misquote what I wrote, which was that MOSNUM "no longer encourages date-autoformatting" (it used to mandatory, in fact). You have falsely ascribed to me the assertion that MOSNUM "discourages" date-linking. I ask that you strike through your claim above, unless I'm missing something.
 * Your fear that the "move may encourage readers who are accustomed to alternative date formats to start changing them to suit their tastes, and that may very well include myself" may well be set next to lots of fears that editors will spell or format inconsistently within an article, or simply not write well. WP is an ongoing process of collaborative writing, checking, editing, fixing. MOSNUM clearly states what the two acceptable date formats are. Set this against the many mistakes in autoformatting syntax that we have to deal with, and it puts things in perspective.

Responses to Andrwsc:
 * Date autoformatting is an entirely different function from the linking of chronological items such as years, decades and centuries (in relation to which MOS has recommended caution and, in some cases, deprecation for some time). We don't normally autoformat dates so people can click on the month or the year.
 * Your point about citation templates is a serious issue. These templates have grown like topsy in an uncoordinated way, sometimes in breach of basic MOS guidelines (e.g., the use of ISO); I recommend against their use, to retain local control over formatting and consistency within the reference section of articles; the consensus is that manually keyed-in date formatting (with square brackets) be consistent within the running prose of an article, and that citation templates be internally consistent in an article. As time goes on, I expect that the citation templates will come under pressure to be more coordinated in relation to each other, and more flexible for users. Tony   (talk)  02:15, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh my God, this is here too? Dude, get over it, and deal with this in the appropriate venue! Prince of Canadat 15:53, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
 * 1) If you want to abuse me, make fun of me, or criticise my role in trying to persuade people at key pages that this move will improve WP, have the decency to do it directly on my talk page.
 * 2) I am not a dude.
 * 3) I have assumed good faith at all times; I ask that you do so too. Tony   (talk)  09:39, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Good faith was easy to assume the first time I saw this. The seventeenth?  Not so much.  You know full well that what you are doing is engaging in a crusade to make a change that is not, despite what you are saying, met without disapproval.  The proper place to deal with this, as you well know, is at global pages which deal with style and formatting across all of WP, and not at individual articles.  Doing this the way you are is attempting to implement site-wide changes without site-wide consensus at the appropriate venues.  I'm going to be taking this to whoever the relevant admins are, because it's just getting ridiculous. Prince of Canadat 09:51, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Notes column not clear
The acronyms are rather confusing. While WR and Q are probably self explanatory, what about AS, ER, or the like? It seems like either a key template needs to be made, or a page that can be linked to, or simply spell them out. Thoughts? Others have already expressed confusion. --Falcorian (talk) 08:08, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
 * In the past, I've seen broadcasters use "CR" for "Continental Record" Bluap (talk) 21:27, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I found out what they were...posted here  C T J F 8 3 Talk 03:22, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

A potential solution is a universal template with meanings of acronyms. It could be in a way like that used for politcal parties in Template:United States political party shading key. Reywas92 <sup style="color:#45E03A;">Talk 23:29, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Which is day 1?
I notice that in the highlights page, Day 1 is 9th August, while for the daily medals table on the Great Britain page, Day 1 is 8th August. Obviously, these should agree with each other. Which standard should we use? Bluap (talk) 20:57, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Those tables will go away after the games will have ended anyway. But otherwise, good question. The Opening ceremony was on the 8th so IMO this is the day 1. (if you are not a programmer that starts counting with a 0 :-)) --Tone 21:08, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
 * http://results.beijing2008.cn/WRM/ENG/Schedule/index.shtml Day 0 was August 8th - opening ceremony day, so day 1 was Saturday. Yboy83 (talk) 21:43, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Programmers then... :-) Make sense in a way since the first medals were given out on that day as well. --Tone 21:45, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
 * But how about some soccer(football) match that took place the day before the opening ceremony? <b style="color:#0000FF;">OhanaUnited</b><b style="color:green;">Talk page</b> 21:56, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
 * -1,-2 etc. No problem. --Tone 21:57, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't the Event Tables Include the Projected Favorites?
Wikipedia is already probably the best Olympic site on the web to prepare for TV viewing. Adding the projected favorites would annihilate the competition. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.159.192.204 (talk) 15:37, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

New articles
Alex Bakharev who operates AlexNewArtBot, a great bot searching for new articles according to given criteria, created new Olympic feed on my request. When it will begin to operate I will notify the WikiProject. - Darwinek (talk) 17:08, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
 * New articles feed here. - Darwinek (talk) 09:48, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Section order in main articles
Greetings. I think we are "burying the lede" in the main articles for the Olympics. The Olympics are all about the sports, medals, and the athletes who earn them. Yet, information about the bid, mascot, ceremonies, media overage, and even upgrades to the host city's infrastructure all appear in these articles before the sports and medals sections. The "1996 Summer Olympics" article even puts the critisism and bombing sections in front of the sports.

From a reader's perspective, I'd like to see the sports and medal sections at the top of every main Olympic article immediately after the intro and TOC. Other sections could also be rearranged based on relevancy. I think putting the important sections first trumps the apparent present philosophy of presenting a rough chronological view of the evolution of the event. Opinions? -- Tcncv (talk) 21:34, 17 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Good point. Olympics are about sports. I say let's give it a try. Take one of the previous Olympics article and reorder the paragraphs in the way you propose. We shall see whether there are some unpractical issues then. --Tone 22:22, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It is a good point. One thing that might be said in defence of the current style is that the pages are in a rough chronological order, the bid, city upgrades, decisions on broadcasters and opening ceremony do all occur before the sports begin. Not sure if thats how the order was intended but I can see how it would make sense. basement12 (talk) 23:49, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I recognize the chronological nature of the current layout, but I propose separating out the "Main Event" material (sports, medals, and highlights) from the secondary and "Behind-the-scenes" material (bid process, preparations, mascot, venues, ceremonies, media coverage, etc.). The main-event material would be moved to top, while the remaining material would follow and could retain its largely chronological nature.
 * I'm still soliciting opinions. I don't want to make any sweeping changes unless there is a consensus.  -- Tcncv (talk) 02:29, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Side bar template at WP:TFD
I created a sidebar template Template:Nations at the 2008 Summer Olympics to complement Template:NOCin2008SummerOlympics for some of the larger countries. I think it would be useful for quick navigation on larger nation pages. It has been nominated for deletion at Templates for deletion/Log/2008 August 18.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 05:26, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I think it would be useful for all countries that have won more than five medals or have more than a dozen competitors that are longish.--TonyTheTiger (t/c/bio/WP:CHICAGO/WP:LOTM) 05:34, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Posted by opinion directly on the TfD page. Parutakupiu (talk)

National Flags at the Olympics
Here's something to consider. Flags at the Olympics are always in a 2:3 ratio, regardless of their actual proportions. That means that Switzerland competes under a rectangular flag instead of a square one (🇨🇭), the UK's flag is squished to look like this  instead of this  and Canada's flag is squished to look like this:. You can see this really clearly during the medal ceremonies:.

Does anyone see any value in changing the flags on the various infoboxes and templates to reflect this? It would mean making new images in many cases, but once they were done, it would just be a matter of changing the various Country flag IOC alias templates. Orange Tuesday (talk) 13:13, 18 August 2008 (UTC)


 * What do they do to the flag of Nepal? -- Jao (talk) 15:51, 18 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I think it would raise a lot of questions: "Hey! That's not the flag of Switzerland! I know it's supposed to be square."  We would have to add footnotes to the captions in the infoboxes, perhaps.  Also, this appears to be some recent "innovation", as the official report from 1988 (in pages 5–16 of this PDF file) shows the true flag aspect ratios, so unless we can find some reliable source that says when and why this change took place, I'm inclined to leave things alone.  Good observation, though!  I hadn't noticed that.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 17:29, 18 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Yeah, I definitely can't tell when the practice started. FOTW claims they did it at Mexico 1968, but they don't have much information about other games. (Also, to answer the question about Nepal, they keep it in its natural shape and make it the same height as the other flags.) Orange Tuesday (talk) 02:02, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Medal count vs. Medal table
At what point in the past week were all of the medal pages changed from, for example, 2008 Summer Olympics medal count to 2008 Summer Olympics medal table? Was there consensus somewhere in doing so, because I was mildly surprised to see that this happened. Obviously, I think either one makes sense, so before I form an opinion here, I just want to know when/where/why it happened in the first place! Jared  (t)  &ensp; 13:31, 18 August 2008 (UTC)


 * From what I understood, the changes were made because some users didn't agree that medal-winning countries should be ranked by number of golds, but by total number. There was (and still is, I think) a huge gold sorting vs. total sorting discussion and at some point, it was thought that a rename of such pages, replacing "count" (which seems to favor sorting by total medals) with "table" (a more neutral word) would be an appropriate measure. Parutakupiu (talk)


 * Works for me! Jared   (t)  &ensp; 15:28, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

List of Olympic games "winners"
At the Summer Olympic Games and Winter Olympic Games pages, users have been adding a list of games "winners" (countries with the most medals) because it's "interesting". I have been removing the lists because they are OR and because the IOC does not recognize "winners". Out of curiosity, does anyone here think that this information should be included? -- Scorpion0422 19:39, 18 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Of course not. The 'winners' at the games are the individual athletes.  They compete under national flags, yeah, but no country 'wins' the games, as you so rightly pointed out. Prince of Canadat 19:43, 18 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Strongly agree with your removal of those edits, Scorpion0422. Thanks!  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:45, 18 August 2008 (UTC)


 * No, you were right to remove them. basement12 (talk) 21:30, 18 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Completely agree - the IOC posts a medal table on its website but it's for "information only". No one "wins" the Games. – ukexpat (talk) 21:44, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

There is now a discussion about this here, so if anyone wants to chip in their two cents, they are welcome to. -- Scorpion0422 03:37, 26 August 2008 (UTC)

2008 Summer Olympics medal table image
This has been a slow paced edit war that I am getting sick of. The page contains an image of Michael Phelps, Lazlo Cseh and Ryan Lochte with their medals. Now according to various users on the talk page:
 * 1) Showing two Americans is biased Americans and not fair to other nations. (Something tells me that if the image had 2 people from any other nation, a lot less people would be bothered)
 * 2) Showing three swimmers is biased towards swimmers and not fair to other sports. (Something tells me that if the image didn't have Michael Phelps, a lot less people would be bothered)
 * 3) Showing three men is biased towards men and not fair to women.
 * 4) Showing three caucasian people is unfair to those of other ethnicities.
 * 5) Having three people dressed in white, red and blue is unfair to the colours yellow, green, purple, black and orange. (Okay, I made that one up, but it wouldn't surprise me if someone did complain about that)

The reason the image is there is because we don't have a free one of the medals, and it's better than nothing. I think of it as a temporary image that will replaced as soon as one of the medals comes along (and hopefully one will). So, I was wondering what others think? Is it worth keeping the image, or should we just replace it with nothing or one of the opening ceremonies? -- Scorpion0422 22:15, 18 August 2008 (UTC)


 * It's a stupid edit war. As you say, "we don't have a free one of the medals, and it's better than nothing."  It is certainly better to show an image with medals or medalists than something more generic, like the opening ceremonies.  If we can get some free images from additional medal ceremonies (so that there were 3 or 4 of them on the page), and have some diversity of nations/genders/ethicity/sports then all would be well. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 22:19, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Virgin Islands Links
Not sure if it was due to the above actions but as you can see the  and  links no longer work as they attempt to direct to the United States Virgin Islands at 200X games. I assume its the same for other games as well. I don't know how to fix this (short of setting up redirects, which should probably be done anyway) so could someone look into it? Basement12 (talk) 23:42, 18 August 2008 (UTC)
 * — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 00:20, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I've set up redirects from United States Virgin Islands at the XXXX Games pages anyway as people may go there looking for results. Basement12 (talk) 10:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Header style
On most articles on individual events, the first section is the medalists. The first section header should always be a second-level heading i.e. with two equals == on each side. However many of these articles' first header is third-level ===. I have fixed some: this wrong version to this correct version. As I don't have the time to fix every article with this minor mistake, I ask that you please fix this with a simple edit when you come across it. Thanks, Reywas92 <sup style="color:#45E03A;">Talk  00:11, 19 August 2008 (UTC) Please explain this. It is fib that it's been standard since day 1, as you made it that way in the first place on day 8. It makes absolutely no sense for a 1st level header (title of article) to be followed by a 3rd level header. Every other article begins with a 2nd level header, and I see no reason to go 1, 3, 2, 3 in these articles. The medalist list is a unique section which should be top-level. Per WP:HEAD, You claim that it being bolder blends it in with the first paragraph, yet there is a TOC in the way and there is no reason for the first unique section to blend in. Reywas92 <sup style="color:#45E03A;">Talk 01:53, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, you should reconsider this because the form that you call the "wrong form" has been the standard since Day 1 of the Olympics. The one that you call the "right form" has been rarely used and has been corrected properly. Mannschaftskapitän (talk) 00:56, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The nesting hierarchy for headings is as follows:
 * the automatically generated top-level heading of a page is H1, which gives the article title;
 * primary headings are then ==H2==, followed by ===H3===, ====H4====, and so on.


 * Reywas92 is correct on what the pages should look like. That the correct format has not generally been used for the 2008 pages to this point (I'm fairly sure it is used for most other years) is not a reason that it should not be corrected. But, as Reywas92 says, this is a fairly minor error and while it should be fixed, isn't a particularly high priority. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 01:55, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * It makes no difference whatsoever, most readers would not even notice it. If anyone happens to be on a "wrong version" style page then it should be fixed but its not worth going out of our way to edit hundreds of articles just to comply with a small part of the manual of style. Basement12 (talk) 02:27, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Well, in response to Reywas92, I did not precisely make it a standard: the format was already in use in previous articles and as far as I could see a week ago, the preferred header style was the ===H3=== over the ==H2== thus, every article that has come into my attention has been treated likewise (just as other users have done). The reason for this is that the medalists table is basically a summary chart and the starting paragraph intends to be a summary section that prepares the reader for the in-depth information. So, you have the medalists chart at the start of the article and the complete results further in the article, which indicate the numbers that led to X or Y athlete to win the medal. Of course, we all know that Wikipedia has a policy on this matter but it doesn't necessarily meet the needs of all article types and topics. Another user, Tcncv expressed to me concerns regarding the header style (check my talk) but finally, we agreed on some basic points. But well, as Jonel and Basement12 stated, I agree that this is a minor style issue and we shouldn't trigger a edit rampage over it, let's just leave it that way and then we'll make up our minds in the verge of the next Olympics. Sorry if I wrote too much about the topic. Mannschaftskapitän (talk) 04:35, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I want to be clear in what I'm saying. These headers should be second level. Changing them to that would be a good thing, ought to be done, and I will do it whenever I see them as anything else (and remember to do so). It's just not going at the top of my priority list. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 05:36, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Thank you Jonel. Team Captain, your reasoning still doesn't make any sense.  I understand that you want the medalists as a simple summary of them as part of the lead as the full results are later, but the fact that it has a heading at all completely separates it from the lead.  Adding a heading, 2nd or 3rd, makes it a unique section below the TOC, apart from the introduction/summary.  Per the MOS and and IMO aethetics, the first header must always be 2nd level; 1st, 3rd, 2nd just doesn't make sense to me.   Reywas92 <sup style="color:#45E03A;">Talk  21:21, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I found an apparent bug with using H3 without an H2. I have the "Add an [edit] link for the lead section of a page" gadget enables in my preferences. It works fine for all pages except those that have the orphaned h3. For those pages, the lead section "(edit)" will actually open some other section (usually the first h2 section). At least half of the event articles for Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics articles exhibit this problem. -- Tcncv (talk) 07:12, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Tha problem has now been fixed, at least on the pages I've been monitoring. Thanks to. -- Tcncv (talk) 04:37, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I've sorted quite a few as I've come across them in the last few days (as has Reywas92) but by no means all of them. Basement12 (T.C) 13:03, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

They should ALL now be fixed. Basement12 (T.C) 15:41, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

I suggest... Spanish, French, Romanian and other names with symbols
On ,the issue of athletes' names, I have seen that the vast majority of Slavic names and others are spelled correctly with all the symbols and special characters that they contain but Spanish, French and (in a lesser frequency) Romanian names are poorly spelled. For instance, Spanish and French names often carry accents like in González, Pérez, Gaël, etc. When writing a name please, respect the original spelling most of the time. I know that this could be a minor, unimportant issue but if you happen to know which is the correct spelling I think there's no problem to type it right. Mannschaftskapitän (talk) 01:32, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, it would be nice if people would type in the name correctly the first time, but very often they don't know. The official Beijing results webpage, and many other pages that have results, use only unaccented characters. Most English speakers, and thus likely a high proportion of the editors adding results, don't know where accents go in names derived from other languages (not to mention entering accented characters can be inconvenient and confusing). So, if you do know how the correct spelling, please do enter it correctly and fix it where you see the unaccented form, but I wouldn't worry about people entering it as they see it elsewhere. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 01:51, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I agree more care should be taken over this, but as User:Jonel says if you don't happen to know where the accents are neccessary finding out can be difficult, and guessing would just result in the names being even more incorrect. Basement12 (talk) 02:36, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Yes, the problem is we simply don't know what they are. The Official Beijing website does not have any diacritics. My wild guess may be because Chinese don't use such accents (separate pinyin...) --Jh12 (talk) 02:32, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The official website is managed by an international staff, not an only Chinese staff. --LZRacer (talk) 13:32, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Interesting, but they still fail to use diacritics. --Jh12 (talk) 04:10, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Dwain Chambers
The article about Dwain Chambers is currently at FAC. Please could anyone help by leaving comments and suggestions? This would be the first sprinter FA if it passes and might serve well as a future template. Thanks. Sillyfolkboy (talk) 04:26, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Event specific records section
Hello all. Many event articles have a Records section showing the world and Olympic records that existed prior to the competition. Whenever a new record is set, it is rightfully noted in the event details later in nthe article. However, many well meaning editors attempt to update the "prior records" table, necessitating repeated rollbacks. I don't blame these editors, because the section header "Records" is a natural place to record the updated record.

I propose following adding a new-records-set table to the Records section following the prior-records table. I know it duplicates information, but I think it is useful to have this summary and natural for it to immediately follow the prior records. I've prepared some prototypes that I've added to the Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's 50 metre freestyle and Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's 100 metre freestyle articles. I've also repeated them below. One design feature is the use of dedicated columns for OR and WR. The could be expanded to include columns for each of the continental records if desired. I also would suggest using a similar format for event category record sections such as in Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics. I've also included a sample below.

'Single record sample - Men's 50 m freestyle

Single record sample - Men's 100 m freestyle. Note that some records were set in a related event.

Proposed event category sample (incomplete)

Please comment. If the concept meets with general approval, I (and anyone else who would like to contribute) can add them to other articles. For events where no records were broken, I'd also suggest adding a brief note to that effect. -- Tcncv (talk) 05:57, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I like it. We did a similar thing with the records set by British competitors at GB 2008 page. I would suggest making the records sortable by athlete, date, event and time though. Basement12 (talk) 15:57, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * OK. I've added the table to the Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics page and all of the relevant swimming event pages.  I've also noticed that someone has started to add similar tables to a couple of the athletic pages.  -- Tcncv (talk) 23:38, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Medals
We seem to have articles on people who have won medals, lists of people who have won multiple medals, information on who is presenting medals but no articles on Olympic medals themselves or how they are awarded and how this has changed. Strange. I only point this out as a question relating to tied medal positions is currently on the ref desk. Sure we have articles on Gold, Silver and Bronze medals in a general sense which touch briefly on the Olympics but no in depth history. 84.68.60.156 (talk) 14:49, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Bolding in opening sentence
There's incorrect bolding in the opening sentence of numerous articles (namely, "[Country] at [xxxx] Olympics"). See the second bullet here. Can someone with a script (or some free time) help me fix this?-Wafulz (talk) 15:15, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I may be wrong but surely this is not actually "incorrect" merely a choice of style used in these articles. The second bullet here actually states that if the title appears verbatim in this kind of article it is not in boldface. In these articles the titles mostly do not appear verbatim (except in a few articles on the current games which have been modified by well meaning users) but are broken up by a few additional words (e.g "Nation competed at xxxx games") and therefore this does not apply. Basement12 (talk) 15:52, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The first bullet says items in boldface are not linked, meaning you're left with "China is the host nation of the 2008 Summer Olympics" versus "China is the host nation of the 2008 Summer Olympics." The bold doesn't provide any useful purpose; more importantly, the latter provides links to relevant topics.-Wafulz (talk) 16:39, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I guess I'm to blame for most of this, as I created about 1500 of those article stubs, and that was the style I chose. Upon looking at the MOS link, I would say the second bullet is the most appropriate description of these articles: If the topic of an article has no name and the title is merely descriptive—such as Electrical characteristics of a dynamic loudspeaker—the title does not need to appear verbatim in the main text; if it does, it is not in boldface.  Therefore, I would prefer to remove the bolding but keep the links.  Clearly an article name like China at the 2008 Summer Olympics is an example where the "title is merely descriptive".  Sorry for the mess. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 20:39, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * This is only the recommended/normally desired style for articles and is not set in stone, so surely is it not perfectly allowable that we leave both the bold and links in place? That is if Users decide that is the way the articles look best. Not that i'm particularly against removing the bold either, just seems like a massive amount of potentially unnecessary work. Basement12 (talk) 20:48, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * One of the tasks on my "to do" list is go back and correct the references for all past Games, with a proper cite book reference to the respective official reports, and not just a link to the aafla.org page, which is now a broken link since they moved to la84foundation.org. I also want to update the infobox statistics at the same time, and it would be trivially simple to unbold those links at the same time as I make those more valuable edits.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 21:02, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm not going to argue, but my opinion is that bolding the title in the first sentence is important and looks better than without bold. I think what MOS is refering to is not to use bold when the title is awkward, which I do not feel this is. I would advocate keeping both the aesthetic bolding, even if broken up, as well as the useful wikilink. Reywas92 <sup style="color:#45E03A;">Talk 21:31, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

Medalist vs. Medallist
The correct British-English spelling of this word is medallist (two L's). Refs:. I suggest therefore that Category:Olympic medalists for Great Britain and related categories/articles are changed to reflect this as per WP:ENGVAR-Strong national ties to a topic. I don't want to start an edit war making the changes without agreement from contributors here. Yboy83 (talk) 20:21, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I really hate to see inconsistent spelling as I hop from country article to country article, so perhaps we should say "medal winners", which is the IOC's terminology. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 20:29, 19 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Sorry Yboy83 undid your last edit before seeing you'd brought it here. While I appreciate that medallist is the more correct British-English spelling, the spelling medalist is in common use in Britain (e.g an example from the mirror newspaper's website) and is the one used on all wikipedia olympic pages.It makes more sense for these articles and categories to be consistent when both spellings are recognised in British English. Basement12 (talk) 20:36, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Additionally I would point out that it took nearly two weeks of hundreds of edits a day for anyone to notice this, and I suspect that even then we all had to check a dictionary first? As far as the medal(l)ist sections go (for all nations) i'm in favour of renaming to medal winners, or just medals as in the 2004 page. But i don't think moving Category:Olympic medalists for Great Britain and other pages is particulary necessary. Basement12 (talk) 21:03, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

I was asked to comment here by User:Basement12 as I'd comment on this issue at Talk:Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Olympics. The discussion on that page seems ungoing so rather than repeat comments here I suggest that anyone interested in this issue also looks at the comments there. Dpmuk (talk) 00:11, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Everyone copies us.
I just ran into what appears to be a bit of plagiarism. On the part of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games. Check it out: compare to.

The first is Luxembourg's NOC summary page from the official Beijing Games website. In the "highlights", you'll find this paragraph. "It was discovered that Michel Theato, competing for France at the 1900 Olympic Games, was actually Luxembourgish. However, the gold medal Theato won in the marathon at the Paris Games is still credited to France by the IOC."

The second is a version of our Luxembourg at the Olympics page. Note the date on our version; it's from nearly two years ago. At the end of the lede, you'll see the following. "Recently, it was also discovered that Michel Théato, competing for France at the 1900 Summer Olympics, was actually Luxembourgish. However, the gold medal Théato won in the marathon at the Paris Games is still credited to France by the IOC."

Quite similar, no? Neither Wikipedia nor the IP editor who added that paragraph are credited, of course. Not sure what to make of this. No idea how many more instances of this there are in the Beijing pages. It also makes me leery of using the Beijing results page as a source for Luxembourg, Haiti, Peru, and Iran competing for the first time in at the 1900 Summer Olympics (see the participating nations section of that article for more info on why). -- Jonel (Speak to me) 04:34, 20 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Wow. That would seem to be a clear violation of Text of the GNU Free Documentation License.  Maybe post something at Administrators' noticeboard to get the attention of some GFDL experts.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 18:17, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Discussion on talk:2012 Summer Olympics
Could project members please review the newest discussion on talk:2012 Summer Olympics? Thanks. 16:50, 20 August 2008 (UTC)

Categorisation
My understanding of categorisation, form reading WP:CAT and WP:SUBCAT is that the articles should not be in both a parent category and a child category. Now, one editor has been going around adding Olympians to thier nationality category as well (So, for example, articles in have been also added to  (where it is the parent cat of the former), claiming it is consensus; Now I've not been involved with the Sport WikiProjects long enough, but this seems to go against the wiki-wide conventions. So, is this the case? should Olympians be in both their national (sport) category and their national olympions for (sport) category, or not? Is the consensus documented, if it exists? -- ratarsed (talk) 19:55, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't recall any WP:OLY consensus about that, so I would look for broader Wikipedia guidelines to help resolve that issue. The only "gotcha" I can envision is that "Olympic gymnasts of Russia" would include anybody who specifically competed for the Russian team at the Olympics, whereas "Russian gymnasts" would include anybody of Russian nationality or background.  Sometimes, those two are not the same.  Consider Becky Hammon, who ought to be included in Category:Olympic basketball players of Russia and Category:American basketball players.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 20:27, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * If is a subcat of, then an article should only be in the subcategory to reduce redundancy.  Except in the obvious exception as pointed out by Andtwsc.  Otherwise only one should be used.   Reywas92 <sup style="color:#45E03A;">Talk  22:11, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Actually all these articles should be in both the category and the subcategory, according to Categorization and subcategories, because it does not make sense to have a category called "Russian gymnasts who have never participated in the Olympics". Chanheigeorge (talk) 02:07, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I hadn't seen the toll bridges example (which is the closest analogy) on my first read through, I'd always interpreted the categorisation to encourage jagged hierarchies in this situation, but thanks for pointing me in the right direction! -- ratarsed (talk) 08:49, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I disagree with this logic. For example, very few notable Category:American rowers exist who are not also in the subcategory Category:Olympic rowers of the United States. If I'm looking at the entries in Category:American rowers, I'd like to see the major sub-category juxtaposed to those NOT in the subcategory. Repeating everyone who exists in the subcategory in the parent category makes no sense whatsoever.--Appraiser (talk) 02:20, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

GB or GB & NI?
Please see: Thanks. --Mais oui! (talk) 13:48, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Requested move


 * See previous discussions here, here, here and here. - Basement12 (T.C) 14:05, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Any further comments from project members should probably be made at the Great Britain talk page. At the moment it seems quite a lot of support for a move appears to be coming from users who may be unfamiliar with how the IOC and olympic associations work. Some input from users more knowledgable in the area may be needed. Basement12 (T.C) 23:19, 21 August 2008 (UTC)


 * Whenever this argument pops up, someone who doesn't regularly work on Olympic articles but is resident of the UK invariably claims the best name is "United Kingdom at the 2008 Summer Olympics". There is no way that would ever make sense.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 23:23, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Olympic medal rankings
Does anyone else think that page could be deleted, or at least merged with another page? -- Scorpion0422 15:53, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I'd support a merge. After all, the useful info in the article you get about the ranking is that it officially doesn't exist at all... Suggest, where it could be merged. --Tone 16:09, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Probably Olympic Games. I'm going away for a week in a few hours, so someone else will have to get the ball rolling on an afd/merge discussion (if they wish). -- Scorpion0422 16:24, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * When I first saw that article, I was dubious about where it could go, but I'm willing to give it a chance for a few more days before we figure out what to do with it. Honestly, I think that the only "controversy" about how medal tables are sorted is a Wikipedia phenomenom that doesn't reflect real life.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 17:09, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Check out the talk page. It looks like another forum to gripe about the IOC's sorting algorithm.  Geez. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 17:14, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I would consider the above comment as hands-off. I rather not offend anyone lease of all those who are experts in their field. I would like to understand the whole ranking system and have no axe to grind. I really don't appreciate the inference to establish a forum to gripe, it was not my intention. --HJKeats (talk) 20:03, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I honestly don't see how this representation issue deserves an article dedicated it. It is an issue that borders on POV and probably the only reason it exists is because people disagree with the standard ranking approach. I think it should be deleted or merged at the least. Maybe it would be best to wait after the Olympics have finished. Nirvana888 (talk) 20:07, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Based on this comment, the article was created to address confusion from Wikipedia talk pages. That's not the right reason to add to the encyclopedia—notable coverage of the "controversy" by outside reliable sources is.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 20:48, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * There seems to be a lot of confusion with ranking as the last topic noted here exemplifies, plus the many other threads that get generated. If you feel that a ranking article is not warranted and good reasons for it, I'm in total agreement to remove the article. It seems as though the question will never be answered and we will be bound to respond to all those like me who can't seem to understand the ranking and why is there a ranking. Why not list the NOC's alphabetically and get away from ranking altogether.--HJKeats (talk) 21:06, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm with you, but that's still not a reason to create a new article. The topic of any article must be notable, with coverage from external reliable sources.  We need more newspaper articles, for example, that directly talk about the two systems of ranking and any resultant controversy, and not just links to the medal tables themselves.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 21:18, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

Olympic Games - Correct Naming
The correct titling for the Olympic Games is Olympic Summer Games not Summer Olympic Games. The games are "Olympic" not "Summer". The ancient Greeks attended Olympic Games not Summer Games - even though they were most likely held in Summer. The same applies to Olympic Winter Games - they are not Winter Olympic Games. The games again are "Olympic" not "Winter". I think with respect this needs a Wikipedia wide review. Peter Konnecke (talk) 02:43, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The correct titling would actually be the Games of the (XXIX) Olympiad (for Beijing 2008). Summer/Winter Olympic Games is however inline with WP:COMMONNAME. Basement12 (T.C) 02:52, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually yes I agree Basement12 it's referred to in the Olympic Charter Peter Konnecke (talk) 02:58, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Beach volleyball
Should there be a separate Beach volleyball at the Summer Olympics? I just discovered this article, created on the first day of this year's Games. Nyttend (talk) 04:36, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I have no big issues with a separate top-level article for all-time beach volleyball history, but I strongly prefer that the individual Games pages be organized as discussed previously, as event pages within the summary-level Volleyball at the 2008 Summer Olympics. See Category:Volleyball events at the 2008 Summer Olympics.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:21, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

DQ or DSQ?
I know this might be pretty lame and unimportant but here are the facts. The official BOCOG Beijing 2008 Olympics webpage uses the odd abbrev DQ for athletes wo have been disqualified while the official BOB TV broadcasting service uses the more commonly adressed DSQ. DSQ seems more logical to me as we have DNF(did not finish), DNS(did not start), etc; when specifying the reasons for why an athlete officially doesn't complete a sporting event. To which one should we stick?


 * I think DQ and DSQ are both widely used. A google seach of "DSQ Disqualified" yields about 42,700 results, while "DQ Disqualified" yields about 180,000 results.  (Your results may vary.)  I've also seen DISQ, but that's much less common.  (A day or two ago, I changed a DISQ to DSQ and then DQ before I realized that both DSQ and DQ were common usage.)  Different sports seem to have different preferences.  For example, swimming seems to have a strong preference for DQ.  It would be nice to standardize the Wikipedia Olympics pages though.  (I vote for DQ.)  -- Tcncv (talk) 06:10, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Estonia at the 2008 Summer Olympics
Hi, i'm having a few issuses at the above article where a few users seem to think that the style of displaying results should be different to that used in all other Nations at the 2008 Summer Olympics articles. Users keep undoing edits i've made, for example putting reults in bold or various colours,changing the medals table and changing the format of timed results. also unreferenced PB or SBs are being added next to results which I and others at least at the GB page didn't believe belonged in the article. Some input from others would be appreciated before it becomes an edit war. Basement12 (T.C) 18:48, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
 * You certainly have the MOS on your side for time formats. On en.wiki, it is MM:SS.ss.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 19:19, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I like this information on these pages, cause it gives more information about competiton. Official reports of the olympics and athletes pages are enough for reference for these and OR, ER, PB, SB, NR... are not for change later on, cause these are valid at the time. There is no point to over fill the references section from local language newspaper links to the english wikipedia for these records.Jaanusele (talk) 19:35, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Jaanusele, the project has decided what the format of these pages will look like, and aims for uniformity across all Olympic pages. And yes, all facts need to be referenced. Prince of Canadat 19:52, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

Inconsistent Ranking of Heat and Semi-Final Results
I've noticed an inconsistency in how athletes' results are ranked in heats and semi-finals on Nations at the 2008 Summer Olympics articles. Most pages with tables rank the athlete by his/her overall placement in that round. So if an athlete won her heat but came in tenth overall, that athlete would be listed as tenth rather than first. That's the way I've been inputting results. But some pages, like Great Britain at the 2008 Summer Olympics list by rank in the heat rather than overall heat. I want to get a clarification/consensus, so hopefully the various Nation pages can be made uniform without edit wars. I favor providing an athletes overall rank among all heats rather than just by his/her own heat. --JamesAM (talk) 21:57, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
 * It depends upon the sport you are talking about. The convention is for the rank in athletic events to be given as the position in the heat and for swimming events to give the overall rank, this is due to the differences in how next round qualifiers are decided in the two sports. In swimming qualifing competitors are decided only on a time basis, the fastest X competitors from all heats qualify. So if, e.g., heat 1 is is faster than heat 2 it is possible that all the competitors from heat 1 and none from heat 2 would get through to the next round. An example is Men's 50m freestyle. However in athletics qualifiers for the next round are decided by the first X athletes in each heat getting through, i.e. at least X athletes from every heat will get into the next round hence the need to give the rank within that heat only. Basement12 (T.C) 22:02, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
 * We really need text on each page with athletics and swimming results explaining what the "rank" display is about. It might also be helpful to provide both ranks everywhere -- obviously the secondary in each sport is not as helpful as the primary, which is important in determining qualification, but it would be a relevant and interesting piece of information and might help avoid confusion. Thoughts? -- Jonel (Speak to me) 06:31, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I think putting both ranks is would be too confusing. An explainatary note would be better, something simple like at GB swimming would be my suggestion. Basement12 (T.C) 13:01, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, I think there definitely should be explanatory text because otherwise readers have no way to know that the swimming/track ranks differ and how they differ. Also, the ranks need to be systematically reviewed in the various nation page because of the inconsistency. --JamesAM (talk) 13:37, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

A score / B score
In gymnastics (and some others), there are two parts in a person's score: difficulty and execution. This is what NBC showed us when displaying the scores, but our gymnastics articles (such as Gymnastics at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's rings) use the terms A Score and B Score without keys to what they represent. How should this be done? Reywas92 <sup style="color:#45E03A;">Talk 01:58, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I've added a footnote to explain. Prince of Canadat 02:37, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Flagbearers
We have a page for 2008 flagbearers that at the moment only lists bearers for the opening ceremony. I know it hasn't happened yet but i'm assuming many countries will use a different bearer for the closing ceremony (and will start announcing who soon) and so this page might need a bit of work to reflect this? Basement12 (T.C) 13:26, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Indeed. Many falgbearers at the opening ceremony have already left China so I suggest we add another column for the closing ceremony. --Tone 13:34, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Section order standardization
Most event articles begin with the Medalists section, followed by Records and Schedule (such as Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Men's 100 metre breaststroke). But at least one (Swimming at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Women's 100 metre backstroke) has Schedule first. Do we have any standards for this? Reywas92 <sup style="color:#45E03A;">Talk 17:26, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Not that i'm aware of. A lot of the articles don't even have a schedule section. If the event infoboxes discussed above, and demonstrated here, come into play i imagine the problem would disappear. Basement12 (T.C) 17:31, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't think a "Schedule" section is at all useful after the event. When completing event pages for past Games, I often just put a line of prose text at the start of each of the "Heats", "Semifinals", and "Final" sections.  e.g. The heats were held from 18:30–19:00 on Sunday, August 10.  There is no need for a separate section or a table like that.
 * I think a similar comment applies to sport summary pages like Athletics at the 2008 Summer Olympics. There are several screenfuls of schedule information that are no longer necessary now that the meet is almost over. We have always tried to put the medal summary as close to the top of those pages as possible, and the medal table next.  All the qualification content really needs to move out to a subpage and/or sections on the individual event pages.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 21:45, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

British Personal Bests at the 2008 Summer Olympics
What does anyone think about nominating the above article for deletion? Is there any point to it given the records section on the GB page? The article is a mess (not reason enough for deletion I know), doesn't actually list PBs as the title suggests and is a completely unreferenced duplicate of said records section. Thoughts? Basement12 (T.C) 19:32, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Support, wholeheartedly. Let me know when/if you put it up on AfD. Prince of Canadat 19:45, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Delete, totally redundant. --Tone 19:50, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * I would say it smacks of WP:Recentism. That article would have no long-term historical perspective.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 21:36, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Strong support for deletion, the above users have already said it. Xeltran (talk) 13:12, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Nominated at Articles for deletion/British Personal Bests at the 2008 Summer Olympics - Basement12 (T.C) 21:59, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

List of medalists in nation articles
I noticed that someone listed the post-2000 medalists in Sweden at the Olympics (but for some reason only in the summer games), and now it has been extended back to 1992. Is this a good idea? Should we aim at listing all 592 medalists? The problem with this table is that it would be absurd to exclude it in, say, Iceland at the Olympics or Peru at the Olympics, with four medals each, but wouldn't it be equally absurd to include it as a 2507-row table in United States at the Olympics? -- Jao (talk) 16:24, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * For countries with a large number of medallists, we could use summary style to split them off into separate articles &ndash List of Swedish Olympic medalists etc. (The US article would probably have to be further split by sport.) Bluap (talk) 16:43, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * When I created or updated most of those top-level summary articles, my cutoff of decided whether or not to include a list or not was about 60 medals. That's about 40 of the ~210 articles in this series that would be too big.  I agree with the idea of a separate "List of ..." article for those ~40.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:47, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Seperate "list of..." articles seem a good idea to me. I'd think a cutoff closer to 25/30 would seem a more reasonable table for the main articles though. Basement12 (T.C) 17:38, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

Shouldn't they be listed at Sweden at the 2008 Summer Olympics, etc. and category:Olympic medalists for Sweden? I really don't think we need another article for every country that has lots of medals. Reywas92 <sup style="color:#45E03A;">Talk 21:12, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * The lists of medallists in most "nation" at the "xxxx" olympics articles prior to the beijing games are very variable in style and are not in a nice table sortable by sport etc. Having a seperate article would allow a reader to view all of a countries medal winners, see athletes that won medals at multiple games or in different events all in the same place. If this set of pages were created a link could also be added to the main templates used in "nation" at the "xxxx" olympics articles. Basement12 (T.C) 21:23, 24 August 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm also in favour of creating such "List of..." pages for those special cases. However, if we agree that medalist tables should have a specific number of rows, we should decide upon that number; we also have to have in mind what content to display, given this limited space. Which medal types and which Olympic Games editions? Parutakupiu (talk) 22:14, 24 August 2008 (UTC)

I've started List of Swedish Olympic medalists (since it was the first country to be mentioned) as a test for this kind article. So far only adding summer games medalists, it might make sense to move the article to List of Swedish Summer Olympic Medalists and have a seperate List of Swedish Winter Olympic Medalists. Basement12 (T.C) 13:56, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks everybody
I would like to thank everybody for a Herculean effort with the 2008 articles over the last couple of weeks. Bluap (talk) 16:41, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Indeed, a hearty congratulations to us all. In some of the event articles I was literally fighting to get my edit to go through before others do the same thing and an edit conflict occurs!--Huaiwei (talk) 11:02, 25 August 2008 (UTC)
 * Great job. Now that the Games are over, we will be able to finalize most of the articles and have a complete coverage. One article already has GA status and is a FA candidate right now, more can follow. What about bringing the main article, 2008 Summer Olympics to FA status as well? --Tone 11:07, 25 August 2008 (UTC)

Damn
Wish id come across this weeks ago. Would have saved a lot of debate with various users! Basement12 (T.C) 17:39, 24 August 2008 (UTC)