User talk:Andrwsc/Archive 2

This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Congratulations

You're now an admin. Have fun using the new tools to help keep the project improving. Use them conservatively, but as you get comfortable help clear out the backlogs too. Spend some time on the administrator's reading list and don't hesitate to ask questions. Again, congrats – Taxman ^Talk 23:18, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! I'm glad that I was able to demonstrate my trustworthiness to the community. I will use the extra tools and extra responsibility wisely. Andrwsc 23:21, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Congrats. I see you're already at work [1] :-). --Ligulem 23:33, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, and yes! Andrwsc 23:34, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Wow! And admin? Congratulations, Andrwsc! You totally deserve it! ;) Parutakupiu ^{talk || contribs} 00:02, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! If you think you need any help (e.g. page moves, protected templates, etc.) let me know and I'd be happy to help. I think it will be useful for the Olympics WikiProject to have an admin around on a full-time basis. Andrwsc 00:05, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for being available. You bet it will help a lot having someone with "powers" managing the WikiProject! It's one great assurance. Parutakupiu ^{talk || contribs} 00:14, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Olympic Games semi-protected – at last! It would never have the chance to regain its featured status with all this regular petty vandalism. Nice move, Andrwsc. Parutakupiu ^{talk || contribs} 19:09, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I felt it was necessary. I could only find two edits from IP users in the past week or so that were useful contributions. The rest was garbage, and I was getting tired of reverting it. ;) Andrwsc 19:11, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Congrats and thanks for the protection. I saw the page in my watchlist and figured it was more vandalism, but it was in fact your protect! Haha. _└^Jared_┘^┌_talk^┐ 19:58, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm just glad to have the tools to contribute to the WikiProject even more than I have been! Andrwsc 20:00, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Flag project

That sounds interesting. I found the project from researching about the templates in this TFD (comment if you like). I like making things into tables, and anything with ParserFunctions, so I might be helpful (also I enjoy intense tedious work during medium-short intervals). I'd love more info, just to see if it's something I'd like (probably would be). By the way, congratulations on adminship :) Gracenotes^T § 04:51, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that! I had nominated those templates for deletion. I find it interesting that it was the path by which you found Wikipedia:WikiProject Flag Template. I've been close to that project for a while, so I may not be able to see the forest for the trees. It might be useful to have a fresh set of eyes look at the documentation and provide feedback from a "new user" perspective. I'll let you know! Thanks, Andrwsc 05:23, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Oh, you nominated them? Heh, I didn't take note of the name of the nominator :) I you need help/commentary, don't hesitate to ask. Gracenotes^T § 19:46, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

United Kingdom

Alot of people seem to have different opinions on whether United Kingdom is a country or not. I am one of those who happen to live there and am quite sure that it is not! There are of course arguments for and against but England, Scotland, and Wales stand up to every definition I can think of, while the United Kindgom does not. Apart from definitions, it is general opinion that those three are countries, I believe this has some sway. I do not see any ambiguity in the updated page.

Regards,

Lemontree255 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lemontree255 (talk • contribs) 01:05, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Your edits to the List of countries may differ from your personal opinion, but on Wikipedia, what matters more is Wikipedia:Attribution. All of the five references listed on that page (in the Reference section) are "reliable, published sources" that all show the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as a single sovereign nation. If you want to make that kind of a change to a featured list, you will need high quality sources that say definitively that the United Kingdom is not a country... Andrwsc 17:13, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Kirby WikiProject

I've formed a WikiProject dedicated to the improvement of Kirby articles. If you're interested in participating, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Kirby's Dream Land. Thank you. - A Link to the Past (talk) 00:37, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Figure skating at the Olympics

Where is the sense in putting articles in categories and subcategories ? There is a Figure skating at the Olympics category in Figure skating competitions. All the "figure skating at the Olympics" articles are there and I have even organised them clearlier (by dekades). (83.4.8.85 23:33, 2 March 2007 (UTC))

The point is that you made these changes without any discussion or without any edit summary to explain what you were doing, and you also made this sport completely inconsistent with every other Olympic sport. Looking at Category:Figure skating competitions now, I see your point about having these articles in both a category and a subcategory, so I would support that change if you make the change with a proper edit summary on each article. However, please do not change the category sort key for the year (by "decades"). The common convention is to use the full year (e.g. "2006" and "1908"). Andrwsc 23:38, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Talk:Byetteism

Can this page also be protected aganist recreation so they don't recreate it there? -Dark Dragon Flame 04:03, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

If that happens, then we can take measures there too. Andrwsc 04:04, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Brian boston Article

Hello. I hope that you saw the message on my talk page earlier. Imagine my surprise at the coincidence when you just deleted the article that I speedy-tagged. At the same time, I noticed that it has been deleted 3 times in 2 weeks. Is this a candidate to salt? --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 04:21, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I didn't see your message; I was just working on CSD and picked that one at random, and agreed with the speedy nomination after looking through the history, etc. It might be a good "salt" candidate if it pops up again.... Andrwsc 04:26, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

byetteism

I noticed you just SALTed straight over the top of the old revision. I'm no admin, but can I recommend you delete all the revisions first then SALT? That way you're actually *deleting* it rather than just editing over it, where the old revision can still be seen? Thanks — Deon555^talk_desk^{sign here!} 04:28, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Ah, makes sense, thanks! Andrwsc 04:29, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Aye.. no worries :). I see you've only recently got your shiny new mop, you're doing fine though! See you round — Deon555^talk_desk^{sign here!} 04:31, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

This might be getting out of hand he just created Byettism and now they are coming after people that have been deleting this nonsense, isn't about time that User:Bman22 and User:Taylor317 got blocked for vandalism, even worst I believe the first is a sock puppet of the last one. -Dark Dragon Flame 04:37, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

So are User:Tomtomtom1234 and User:TaylorGilster, there is no way they could be somebody different. -Dark Dragon Flame 04:41, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Please i beg you! PLEASE. THIS MAy SEEM LIKE NONSENSE AND VANDALISM, BUT IT IS A REAL RELIGION! WE ARE DEEPLY OFFENDED BY YOUR PROMPT RUDENESS!

Bman22 04:57, 3 March 2007 (UTC)bman22Bman22 04:57, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Vigilance

User blocking can be counter productive. This guy knows all about sock puppets so a block will just make it more difficult to find the next manifestation on yet another variant title (see User talk:Taylor317). You forgot to protect your last creation of byetteism. I am now using the WP:PT method. It has one small drawback – there is a delay. Check after five minutes to make sure that there has not been a re-posting. -- RHaworth 09:41, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

I didn't user block him; I was just working on the articles. I had to get off the computer last night when I was right in the middle of "CSD patrol", so I guess I missed one. Thanks for picking that up, and thankd for the hint. Andrwsc 16:54, 3 March 2007 (UTC)

Rude, plain rude

Stop editing my personal user pages user:Sysin/Travel with content that you know, very well, I and another 2 million Macedonians find extremely insulting. Would you like my editing your user page, telling you that your nation does not exist? Do whatever you want in public space, but editing user pages shows in this way is a sign of very poor social skills. The content of my user pages is for me alone to decide. sys < in 13:03, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Not to intervene, but you don't own the page either. While you have the right to edit your user pages, they're not just yours and other people have the right to edit them, too, although it is usually discouraged. A simple request to stop editing should be enough to convey to a user that they would rather you keep clear of their pages. Next time, maybe you could suggest to the user that he should stop editing your pages. _└^Jared_┘^┌_talk^┐ 13:58, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Which is exactly what I did. Forbidden or not, editing another user's page with insults about his nationality is clearly a sign of deficient social skills. sys < in 10:19, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Replied on your talk page. Andrwsc 18:15, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Template help needed

Hello, can you help me with a template please. I have recently created {{State pageantry}} and have realized that I need a conditional statement, but I can't figure out how to get it to do what I want. I currently have a wikilink for [[Miss {{{State}}}'s Outstanding Teen]], but I need to use the apostrophe without the "s" (i.e. Arkansas' instead of Arkansas's) when the state ends with an "s" (Arkansas, Illinois, Kansas, Massachusetts, Texas). Is this possible, and if so can you please help me out with this? --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 20:36, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't know of any way to look at the string and test for a trailing "s", so I put in a conditional based on the existence of the page or not. This works for Arkansas, and for other states that don't have a trailing "s" (e.g. California), but it leaves the wrong redlink if the article does not exist (e.g. those other four states you listed). If you were planning to create all thise articles shortly, then all would work as planned. Please let me know if this is sufficient to solve the problem. Glad to help! Andrwsc 22:06, 4 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, that will do the job well. There are only two people who are likely to create the articles in question and I'm one of them, so we should be OK. Thank you very much. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 02:17, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

Can you check this one out?

Can you check out the page Mobile billboards? I'm not sure if it is a poorly organized article or if it is an advertisement of some sort. It just seems awkward to me, as if it doesn't seem to fit Wikipedia. Let me know, please. Thanks in advance! Steven Williamson (HiB2Bornot2B) – talk 22:29, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, it certainly needs some cleanup, but I think it is salvageable as a useful article. It doesn't seem to promote any individual company, so I do not think it should be speedy deleted as spam. Just from personal observation, I've seen an increase in mobile billboards in the past few years (especially at trade shows), so my gut feeling is that there is an encyclopedic article that could be written about them, with verifiable sources, etc. I think the current cleanup tag is appropriate for now. Hope this helps, Andrwsc 22:35, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

A move, when you get to it.

Hey there. Since you're an admin now, I guess I can request that you fix Figure skating at the Olympic Games so that its talk page has the same name as the main page. I don't know how that happened, but it did. _└^Jared_┘^┌_talk^┐ 00:24, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Wait a second. Maybe I was just viewing it wrong, because it's fixed now. Haha. Sorry. _└^Jared_┘^┌_talk^┐ 00:26, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I was wondering what you meant at first, but Figure skating at the Olympics is a redirect that has a unique talk page. I shall try to use my new powers and merge them somehow. ;) Andrwsc 00:28, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

I think I fixed it. I think the mix-up was as a result of some page moves when this article was split to create List of Olympic medalists in figure skating. The talk pages were out of sync. Does this look right to you? Andrwsc 00:41, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

3Round Template

Sorry about that! The page that broke was A-League 2005-06#World Club Qualification Competition. I set team-width=180 and score-width=25, but it only seemed to affect the first column when previewing. The changes you made (setting all 3 columns to use the team-width variable) looked correct though, so I'm not sure why it broke. -- Chuq 21:12, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

No problems at all, go for it! -- Chuq 21:18, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Ahh thats better – yep, it looks great! Thanks for taking the time to fix it up :) -- Chuq 05:01, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

So...

You edit my user page with a reference that, by your admission, you know to be insulting to my nationality, and you excuse yourself as "doing me a favor"? You have issues. sys < in 10:19, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

At the risk of being uncivil, I suggest it is you who has issues – namely, paranoia. Please re-read my comment. I don't know your nationality (and certainly had no idea when I repaired the redlink on your user page), nor did I say anything insulting. What I actually did was use the standard ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 country code for that nation, replacing a single-use template (Template:Country data FYROM) that you had created solely to support your unlinked vanity user page – clearly an inappropriate use of the template namespace. I have explained this already. How you make the leap from this explanation to the claim that I insulted your nationality is rather illogical.

Again, please re-read my previous message carefully. The "favor" I thought I was doing for you was leaving your user page in a usable state, instead of leaving redlinks etc. I've had other users thank me for being that thoughtful, yet you choose to use profanity and accuse me of some other agenda. In your future interactions with Wikipedia editors, I suggest you have an open mind and not think that everything is about your POV battles. Andrwsc 18:03, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

User pages are, by definition, POV. Don't pretend that this is about "standards". I was using the name in use by the United Nations, the European Union, and the majority of countries worldwide. You replaced it with a non-standard name, that also happens to be inflammatory and not internationally accepted. It is simply amazing that you are still trying to defend your hate-baiting edit, rather than admitting that you made an inappropriate edit, apologizing, and moving on. sys < in 22:54, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Are you serious?!? I changed "FYROM" to "MKD", and that is a "hate-bating edit"?? Get real. Furthermore, this discussion is about what you did to the template namespace, and using that namespace for single-article transclusions, especially vanity pages in the user namespace, is far more inappropriate than any of my edits. Andrwsc 23:13, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

You changed a standard United Nations designation to a non-standard one, in my personal user space, knowing very well that I, as a Macedonian, will be insulted by this action. Since this was my personal user page we are talking about, there was absolutely no purpose in your edit other than insult and provocation. The fact that you have yet to apologize, and your feeble "I was doing you a favor" excuse, further prove the point. Regards, sys < in 11:31, 12 March 2007 (UTC)

Flags

Hi! I'm inserting old flags, using your methods. So far {{flag|Egypt|1958}} (File:Flag of United Arab Republic.svg, although one could use {{flag|United Arab Republic|name=Egypt}} and {{flag|Hong Kong|1959}} (File:Flag of Hong Kong 1959.svg) hasn't worked. I don't understand how to fix this, perhaps you can help? Punkmorten 14:36, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Categories renaming

Hello, Andrwsc. Here is my first request to you, "our" administrator: can you rename some wikiproject categories, so that the word "Sports" is removed from them? This task cannot go through speedy rename and, well... I don't want to go through CFD :P

Here is the list:

Thanks! Parutakupiu ^{talk || contribs} 19:39, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Your edits to Latvia & Estonia infoboxes

Do you have any references that show that any specific Latvian and/or Estonian athletes competed in the 1908 and 1912 Games (as part of the Russian Empire), or did you just make your changes just because those countries were not independent at the time? Andrwsc 22:59, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi!

Those edit were made by me and I probably wasn't logged in. If you look here (http://users.skynet.be/hermandw/olymp/topsto12.html) and scroll down to see the participants from Russia, you can see that some of them were from Estonia and Latvia. Those lists are actually incomplete and have some errors. Estonian Olympic commitee lists that 12 Estonians participated at the 1912 Olympics of which Martin Klein won silver and Mihkel Kuusik bronze medal. Latvian Olympic commitee lists 31 athletes that participated at the 1912 Olympics and Harry Blau won a bronze medal. Also Georg Lind, who came 19th at the marathon in 1908 was Estonian.Gh 17:17, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Ok, perfect! Thanks for the reply. I've seen other instances where editors have been a bit over-zealous in attributing past Olympic appearances. For example, the West Indies Federation competed as British West Indies at the 1960 Summer Olympics with athletes from Jamaica and Trinidad & Tobago (only), but I've seen some edits where all the Carribean nations that were part of the brief federation (such as Cayman Islands and Antigua) competing in 1960. I wasn't sure if your edits were like that, or really reflected actual Estonian and Latvian athletes. Someday when we get around to completing Estonia at the Olympics and Latvia at the Olympics, the athletes you mention ought to be included. Andrwsc 17:32, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Template:Current events box

Hello. Is it reasonable to sprotect this template?. It should only really be changed once per month when the new month starts, unless someone makes an error which needs to be fixed. I don't think that an IP or new user has ever made a constructive edit to the template. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 03:48, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

It doesn't sound unreasonable to me, given your rationale. It's not vandalized on a regular basis, but then again, it's use on portals makes it vulerable. I will semi-protect it. Andrwsc 00:27, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. --After Midnight ⁰⁰⁰¹ 03:28, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Olympics WikiProject membership update

The Olympics WikiProject is performing a membership update to check for currently active and idle members.

Because your username appears on the members list, we kindly ask you visit this page and put your name under the appropriate section, using the code #{{user|USERNAME}}, in order to renew or cancel your membership.

The Olympics WikiProject team

Yippie!

I know it has nothing to do with our project but, because I have you in great consideration and this was something I worked on for many weeks, and succeeding at the first attempt is really rewarding, I really need to tell someone — Flag of Portugal is my first featured article! Yey! :D

Let's see if my 2nd FA is Olympics-related ;) Parutakupiu ^{talk || contribs} 01:50, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

Palestine

I did my best to respond to your question at Talk:Palestinian territories. I don't think there is a single easy answer, see my comments there. - Jmabel | Talk 04:58, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

editor vs. author

Of course not. The "editor" is intended specifically for multi-author book with an overseeing editor (we want to ultimately cite as "author" the person who wrote the text being cited). If you cite an entire book with an editor, cite that editor(s) as the main author (alternatively, use the "author" to specify "(ed.)" after the author's name).Circeus 16:30, 20 March 2007 (UTC)

Pantelimon

Hi! Thanks for clearing up multiple Olympic-related pages! I'm curious about the official result list for the women's high jump though.

I understand that the IAAF result lists may not be trustworthy (i.e. DQ for USA in the 4x400 m...). But it does show the following data:

1   Yelesina Yelena           RUS  2.01 (SB)
2   Storbeck-Cloete Hestrie   RSA  2.01 (SB)
3   Bergqvist Kajsa           SWE  1.99
3   Musunoiu-Pantelimon Oana  ROM  1.99 (PB)

And, when examining the height-by-height results, there is no difference between the two athletes whatsoever.

Athlete                    185  190  193  196  199  201  203
Bergqvist Kajsa            o    o    o    o    xo   x-   xx
Musunoiu-Pantelimon Oana   o    o    o    o    xo   xxx

If the above figures are displayed correctly in the IAAF result list, there is no way that anyone could have won or lost on countback.

The IAAF profile for Oana Pantelimon still shows a third place finish in Sydney 2000 (although that might not be fully reliable. Look, for instance at the preposterous IAAF profile for Stian Andersen).

Could you tell me the url for the official (IOC?) result list? We should compare the two. And by the way let's keep the discussion on this page. Punkmorten 22:30, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

My two primary references for all Olympic-related results are the IOC medal database here and the official reports from each Games in PDF format here. In the case of the women's high jump in 2000, both of these sources agree with each other that only a single bronze medal was awarded (to Bergqvist), so that's why I made the changes. I have been going through all the Games adding up the per-sport medal counts we have on Wikipedia, comparing to the official totals to find any discrepancies, and this was one I found.

As for the 4x400 relay, the IOC database still showed USA with the gold, not NGR, so I googled around to try to see if the IOC database or the IAAF database was more current. I found the references to the CAS ruling that seemed to support the IOC list with USA-NGR-JAM as official, so that's why I made those changes.

Hope this helps, Andrwsc 22:50, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

The Sydney results PDF perfectly matches the IAAF result in terms of each attempt ("x" and "o"), but it also clearly shows Pantelimon as ranked 4th instead of a tie for 3rd. There are tie rankings further down that list at 9th and 11th, so some tie-breaking method had to have been used between Pantelimon and Bergqvist. I have no answer to that, but I still think our best approach is to align with the IOC/SOCOG results as our primary sources. Andrwsc 22:57, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

I noticed the same thing, I will investigate the issue. So I'll get back to you over the weekend, thanks for the link. Punkmorten 23:01, 23 March 2007 (UTC)

Ski jumping at the Winter Olympics issue

Just wanted to let you know I have put some comments on the discussion pages on both Ski jumping at the 1952 Winter Olympics and Ski jumping at the 1956 Winter Olympics regarding number of positions shown. The two links for this only show the top six finishes, a practice common in the FIS results until well into the 1970s. Do we want to get biographies on all these athletes who compete? To me, what most people seem to remember at the Winter Olympics are the medalists and maybe up to the top eight or ten finishers. Anything else, IMO, is overkill. You can discuss with me or the article talk page if you prefer. Just a thought. Chris 02:47, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I've also replied on both those talk pages because you asked different questions on them, but to address the one you ask here, here is my personal opinion: I like to see complete results for each Olympic event page. Ignoring for the moment the issues that arise if you pick an arbitrary truncation point, I think there is interesting information to be gleaned from a complete results list. How many athletes participated? From what countries? Perhaps a notable athlete was disqualified and therefore wouldn't show up in a top 6/8/10/whatever list. However, I should also say that while I like to see complete results, that certainly doesn't mean that I believe we need to resolve every single redlink and create articles for every participating athlete! Over 100,000 unique people have competed in any past Games, so it is obviously unreasonable to expect that we have articles on all of them. I think it will be difficult enough to create articles for every medalist, which is not unreasonable. Andrwsc 04:34, 25 March 2007 (UTC)

I am already in process of doing this with the ski jumpers, being up to the 1984 Winter Games as of today. I should have this part done by Sunday. Then I will work on getting this done for Nordic combined, and then cross country skiing. Just an update. Chris 14:50, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

That's great work, Chris! Pages like List of Olympic medalists in ski jumping look terrific with no redlinks! Andrwsc 15:54, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Flag Templates

RE: flag deletions for Ibiza, Mallorca and Bearn with the reasons that they are not useful to the mainspace.

You are correct, I did create them for use on my userpage but they are useful to other Wikipedians. Each represents a geographical region with a distinct identity- especially the two islands of Ibiza and Mallorca. Bearn has a strong cultural identity and even a small separatist movement. There is a precedent for this templates use in areas other than countries- for example Template:Country data ASEAN and Template:Country data Ottoman Empire; example of regions of France include Template:Country data Brittany and Template:Country data Alsace: from these very similar examples it can be shown that is not the case that these templates "will not be used in any mainspace articles". Given half a chance these ones most likely would be too.

Thank you for using your administrator status to take the time to discuss this with me before deletion. Bobbacon 07:11, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

I completely disagree but i'm going to get worked up about it. Bobbacon 21:20, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Awesome work!

Hey, Andrwsc! I've just spied this page of yours and was flabbergasted by the concept and excelent organization of it! And seeing your latest edits, I predict a huge structural change to the many "Country at (Season) Olympics"-related pages. Terrific job! If you need help, you know where to go ;) Parutakupiu ^{talk || contribs} 23:45, 27 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi Parutakupiu! I was planning to do a bit more work before posting a message to the project talk page for feedback, but I'm glad you like the concept so far. I have gone through all the past Games medal tables (per sport) fixing any errors I found, and I built an Excel spreadsheet that automatically creates the wikicode, so it should be easy to create these pages quickly and accurately. I've created Belgium at the Winter Olympics and modified Belgium at the Summer Olympics and Belgium at the Olympics as a test of a nation in the first category, and created Algeria at the Olympics as a test of a nation in the second category. If you've got some feedback already, I'm interested! Thanks, Andrwsc 00:01, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

As far as I can tell, it all seems well thought and structured, especially the countries' Olympic record categorization and distinguished treatment. I think that this will quickly become a guideline ;) I already saw Belgium's examples (and tagged the newly created Winter page, along the way) and the testing seemed very good. Just one question: for those countries which isn't feasible to display the complete medalist table, what is your idea on how to direct viewers to this data? Will they be guided towards the varied per-Games pages, where the list is much smaller? Parutakupiu ^{talk || contribs} 01:11, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, for "large history" nations (USA, URS, etc.), I thought that a "notable medalist" list in combination with a link to the appropriate category of athlete articles (e.g. Category:Olympic medalists for the United States) would serve the same purpose. Also, there are certainly multiple links to the per-Games articles (from the infobox and from the medal tables) so that will help too. Andrwsc 03:15, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Sounds a very reasonable method. Go forward! Parutakupiu ^{talk || contribs} 03:43, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, great job! I totally agree with everything there! Also, as far as assessment goes, should there be any bias according to the "large" "small" "no medal" "only one season" countries? I definitely think that nations that haven't won medals should be on the mid to low spectrum, but I'm not sure about the others.

And also, great job at Olympic sports! That's very valuable info there! _└^Jared_┘^┌_talk^┐ 22:17, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks! My next step is to update all the individual Games articles to include those numbers in a "Program of events" section, and since I have all those numbers in an Excel spreadsheet, it should be easy to automatically generate the wikicode for that. As for the assessment, I'm not sure what you mean — can you elaborate? Andrwsc 23:20, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Flag of Northern Ireland

The Flag of Northern Ireland article makes it clear that Northern Ireland dosen't have a legal flag, the Ulster Banner is not a legal flag and hasn't been for 35yrs.--padraig3uk 20:12, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

But that article also doesn't claim that a greenish blob is the flag. In my opinion, there are two solutions for Template:UKFlags. One is to put "(1953–1972)" as a caption after the flag image, which is what I have done. This is also fully consistent with the infobox in the Northern Ireland article. The UKFlags template serves as a navigation box, so anybody who clicks on the wikilink to Flag of Northern Ireland will get the full story. I believe this is an appropriate NPOV solution. The other acceptable (to me) alternative would be to remove the flag altogether from that template, but I don't like that idea because it will spur editors to put it back in, continuing this seemingly endless edit cycle. I'm certain that there are many people like me who knew about that flag, but not about its legal status until they read Wikipedia articles. That's the desired effect of navigation templates, in my opinion. Therefore, I would rather keep that image in the template, with whatever reasonably short disclaimer is required to satisfy POV problems, and attract people to learn more about it.

Of course, putting that green blob in the template (implying that it is an actual flag!) next to the link to the Flag of Northern Ireland article, is clearly the wrong thing to do. Andrwsc 20:22, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Well I would rather remove the image of the flag from the template completely, it gives the false impression that it is a legal flag by including it.--padraig3uk 20:28, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I think removing it from that template is simply an invitation for other editors to put it back in. Like it or not, that flag is used to represent Northern Ireland in several contexts (for example, next to Darren Clarke's name in golf tournament results). Consider it a de facto flag instead of a de jure flag, if you will, but that does not negate the usefulness of keeping that image next to the link to the detailed Flag of Northern Ireland article in that navigation template. I think we need to find a way to keep it in the template, so I'd like to reach some consensus with you. Is there any caption or other reasonably compact notation we could add to the navigation template that would satisfy any of your POV concerns? Do you not think the "(1953–1972)" label is sufficient? Or, what if we also added a couple of other historical flags with similar captions (such as "

(1606–1801) and

(1753–1922)") to the template? That would add weight to the non-current status of the NI flag by providing some additional comparables. Andrwsc 21:01, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Your idea of adding other historical flags to the template has some merit, if these are placed in a seperate historical flag group along with the Ulster banner, I regard the use of this flag in a Home Nation section as POV and misleading.--padraig3uk 21:12, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

I've re-worked the template (also to use standard navigation box style). Let me know if this is a "keeper". Andrwsc 21:40, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

That puts it in its proper context, I find that acceptable. Thanks.--padraig3uk 21:43, 30 March 2007 (UTC)

Sortkeys

I started a discussion at Template talk:Sortablename, since there seem to be a number of unconnected efforts to create sortkeys for sortable wikitables. ~ trialsanderrors 20:55, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Template:Dts

I've just redirect it over to your template since it'll be a pretty harmless redirect. Thanks for telling. -- Oakster Talk 10:30, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

List of Australian Test batsmen who have scored over 5000 Test runs

That's a neat sorting solution, thanks --Steve _(Stephen)^talk 03:02, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

We're just rolling out those templates now, so that's one of the first pages to use them! Andrwsc 03:15, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Edits

Yes, I agree, my edits were immature. I should be punished and insulted further, for it is deserved, and i shall be cast into my rightful place as a contributor to the corruption of humankind. I'm sorry for being so naive and stupid. Cheers, -- Hrödberäht (gespräch) 21:27, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, alright then. Andrwsc 21:28, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you

Well, I think, this is the right moment to introduce myself! My name is Martin and I am from Austria. Thank you for the nice discussion: Talk:Gymnastics at the 1904 Summer Olympics Doma-w 14:06, 8 April 2007 (UTC)

Hi Martin, thanks for the spirited, yet civil, debate! Andrwsc 15:55, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Request to issue comments on Bruce Haslingden

FYI. Do you remember our discussion we had on all of the information for the competitors of the Olympics earlier this year? I completed Bruce Haslingden, an Australian cross country skier who competed at the 1952 Winter Olympics, but that article is now nominated for WP:AFD. Please click on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Bruce Haslingden to issue comments. Thanks. Chris 12:01, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Sailing

I am sorry! I only tried to level these sides as I have seen for the boats: Sailing at the 1908 Summer Olympics and for the sailors: Sailing at the 1900 Summer Olympics. So now the sides for 1900, 1908, 1912 and 1920 had all the same formatting. But now you have changed 1912 again. :-) Doma-w 18:04, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

:-) Same idea at the same time! ;-) Well, if this is the standard formatting – not problem! But it was impossible for me to see, that there is/was a standard... Doma-w 18:09, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, the 1900 and 1908 articles had not been updated to use the standard templates yet, so that's why you saw the discrepancy. Rest assured that if you see articles that use templates like {{flagIOCmedalist}} in a "Medal Summary" section, that they have been updated to follow the conventions we have agreed to in Wikipedia:WikiProject Olympics. There are also quite a few pages that have yet to be re-formatted at all (like Sailing at the 1968 Summer Olympics), but we're fixing them up slowly as time goes on. Thanks for your help! Andrwsc 18:11, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the restore to the standard templates! Once more, I am sorry! May be I have also destroyed the pages with the details for 1912? I hope my contributions will become more helpful. :-( Doma-w 20:53, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

No worries, I just wanted to point out the standard style we are trying to adopt. We are certainly happy to have more people helping on the Olympics articles, but it is a massive project, with thousands of pages, so we're trying hard to move everything towards a high level on consistency, and that's where the templates etc. help out. I certainly don't want to scare you away! If you have any questions or comments, there are a handful of us that regularly communicate via the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Olympics page, and you are more than welcome there. Andrwsc 20:58, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you! Well, I would like to help! I have been fascinated by the Olympic games since I was a boy... And yes! I have a question. Is there an easy way to learn, who I can transfer a picture to English wiki from a foreign language wiki page? For example de:Adolf Schmal there is an interesting picture, which I would like to add to the English page. Doma-w 21:37, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Well, actually, I don't think I know how to answer that one! Perhaps ask at Wikipedia:Help desk? Andrwsc 21:51, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

O.K. I will try. Well, this was not an Olympic question. :-) Doma-w 23:23, 12 April 2007 (UTC)