User talk:Andrwsc

Thanks for your help on the Haslingden article

Thanks for your help on saving the Bruce Haslingden article from deletion. I greatly appreciate it. Chris 20:09, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Template:6TeamBracket

Hello, can you add an optional third-place match option for this? Thanks. --Howard the Duck 14:47, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't think you can add a 3rd place option for that. The template is not set up to allow it. If you ask someone who contributes to those types of templates regularly, though, I'm sure they would be happy to add the option to that template for you. _└^Jared_┘^┌_talk^┐  14:53, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Maybe an entirely new template like "Template:6TeamBracketwith3rd" or something to that effect? (I've noticed several bracket templates were ripped off like that.) --Howard the Duck 15:46, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Flag calling

Hi! I wonder which template calls the flag Image:South African Olympic Flag.png? Anyway, it seems this image has been superceded by Image:South African Olympic Flag.svg, so a replacement could be useful. Punkmorten 08:10, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

The call {{flagIOC|RSA|1992 Summer}} renders  South Africa. There's no non-Olympic template call for this flag, as I can tell. The image replacement has been made, thanks! Parutakupiu ^{talk || contribs} 15:58, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, Template:Country flag IOC alias RSA was the right place to make that change, and Parutakupiu has fixed that already. Andrwsc 17:16, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

US state abbreviations

Oops! Thanks for correcting that. I always get Michigan and Minnesota mixed up. Both up north somewhere. Being from London, England, though, I might be excused slips in US geography! BTW, I see you have a thread on your talk page about flag icons. You wouldn't know how to do state abbreviations as templates, like the ones at Wikipedia:WikiProject Flag Template? Carcharoth 23:23, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

No worries! I'm not sure what you are looking for, but you can use something like {{flag|Michigan}} to render Michigan, but if you just want the flag icon, you can use an abbreviation like {{flagicon|USA-MI}} for Template:Country data USA-MI. If you are looking for something as simple as , then we don't have those templates, and to be honest, I'd rather keep it that way. I'm not a huge fan of the set of templates listed at Wikipedia:Inline templates linking countries, even though I help maintain them, because in many cases readability is compromised. Is it really so onerous to use {{flag|Germany}} instead of {{GER}}, for example? In my editing travels, I've seen instances where the editor has used comments to explain obscure country codes, which totally defeats the purpose! Why write {{DZA}} <!-- Algeria --> when {{flag|Algeria}} does the same thing? Anyway, I digress, but I hope this answers your question about the US states. Andrwsc 23:44, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm looking for a template where I can type the name of the state/country in full, and it will render the abbreviation, but link to the article. ie. CA (cos I can't remember all the abbreviations, but could remember a single "US state postal abbreviations" template name). It would also be handy if I could just type the template name and the parameter California, and it would link to State of California, rather than the disambiguation page California. Part of the reasoning is that this would allow the template to be used to indicate the use of such abbreviations separately from the links directly to State of California (I think). Does that make sense? Carcharoth 23:53, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, bad example. I though California was a dab page, as you changed the links on that baseball page! :-) Carcharoth 23:54, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Oops. You changed those links from 'State of...' to 'California', not the other way round. I need to look more carefully next time! Carcharoth 23:55, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not aware of templates like that. (I usually just work on the flag templates). And yeah, California is not a dab page, so my edits were to avoid the redirect. Andrwsc 23:56, 1 May 2007 (UTC)

Arsenal FC list of players and the flag issue

About your proposal to include FIFA country codes alongside flags: well, it's a possibility, but I don't know the FIFA country codes, and I don't think to be the only one; and to me flags are more recognizable than FIFA country codes (I would never associate RSA with South Africa, or MDA with Moldova/Moldavia). Anyway, if a consensus on your proposal should emerge, we might consider implementing a template which returns the FIFA country code for the given nationality, in order to make thing easier for the editors. --Angelo 00:05, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I note that all the international football team templates use FIFA codes (e.g. {{RSAf}}, so I assert that editors working on these articles would be somewhat familiar with most codes, and would know where to look for the unfamiliar ones. Andrwsc 00:21, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I've seen you've already modified the List of U.S. Città di Palermo players article without having found any consensus yet. You could wait to find it before doing that. By the way, I was thinking: what about double nationalities? --Angelo 00:09, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

In my edit summary, I offered that you can revert if you don't like it. It's trivial to do that, but without making the change, it's more difficult to visualize the end result. Andrwsc 00:11, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

What about using sandboxes? :) --Angelo 00:13, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Be bold in updating pages :) :) Andrwsc 00:21, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Mmh... anyway, look at my sandbox, no matter about the content, just look at the design. I tried to fit both flags and full nationality names into the table to some extent. --Angelo 00:27, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, that looks good too! I think I was just reluctant to see the flag icon by itself, so your solution also works to address that issue. I thought the country code might be a good idea since I thought that the "flagicon by itself" format was initially chosen to conserve table space, so I tried to stay within the current column width.

I would also suggest that the flag icon looks best aligned with the country name, so instead of putting {{flagicon|Italy}} in one column and ''Italy'' centered in the next column, to put {{flag|Italy}} left-aligned in a single column. Andrwsc 00:34, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I splitted in two columns just to have the chance of changing text formatting and, in case, abbreviating its name. Anyway I agree the fact both flags and country names should be left-aligned. But what about double nationalities? It's untrue they don't exist, just look at List of F.C. Internazionale Milano players for an example. --Angelo 00:39, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I've just finished updating that one to see what it looks like. I kept the pair of flag+code combinations together on one line, similar to the appearance of just two flags. An alternative would be to put a line break between them, which would keep the flags better aligned, but would make those rows twice as high. Andrwsc 00:42, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Don't feel offended, but as it is now, the players' rows with double nationalities look awful. And yeah, if we're gonna consider the left-aligned flag+countryname solution, line breaks seems to be the sole existing solution. --Angelo 00:46, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

How about now? Andrwsc 01:30, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Looks much better, but maybe it's even better to align the "flag" template to the left, possibly including the full country name rather than its FIFA code. --Angelo 01:54, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, I was thinking that if we have room for the full country name, then perhaps the wikilink ought to point to the article for the appropriate national team instead of to the country article. The standard football templates would be used. For example, {{ITAf}} for Template:ITAf, instead of {{flag|ITA}} for ITA. What do you think? Andrwsc 06:33, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Might be a good idea, even if I don't think the ITAf template has a correct name: there should exist as a unique "football flag" template in its place with the possibility to specify the name as a parameter. I can create it, anyway. --Angelo 15:41, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Actually, I had started some experimentation with that idea, with the intent of replacing the 900+ templates in Category:National football team templates with at most four templates. There was a short discussion thread about my idea on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Flag Template a few weeks back, but I haven't progresed the idea (working on other stuff in the meantime). Basically, I think it is essential that all flag templates be built on the same infrastucture (using the templates in Category:Country data templates and Category:Country data redirects), so I created Template:fb as a test of that. I've only added support for Italy at the moment, but the idea is to use {{fb|ITA}} or {{fb|Italy}} (take your pick) to replace {{ITAf}}. The result is the same: Italy — but now the country name is parameterized, which opens up a lot of flexible options for templates built on top. Also, the mechanism handles historical flag variants by default, so you could use {{fb|Italy|1861}} to render Italy for articles like the 1934 FIFA World Cup, for example. I would also want this generic mechanism to be used to similarly replace hundreds of similar templates for other national sports teams (ice hockey, cricket, rugby, basketball, etc.) The possibility of creating a far more elegant solution to the template overload of today is irresistable. Andrwsc 16:00, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

"Fb" is a bad choice for the template name, as templates fb start and fb end already exist for giving a support to football-related navigational boxes and that name might generate confusion; better using different names, such as "football flag", "footyflag" or something similar. For the rest, the idea is fully agreeable, and it is what I meant on my previous comment. --Angelo 16:04, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

So we can change it. No big deal. I think I chose an intentionally short name because I didn't want any objections to forcing a replacement of "ITAf" (4 characters) with something like "football flag|Italy" (19 characters). That's how the mess of templates at Wikipedia:Inline templates linking countries originally got created, independent of the work on the generic {{flag}} template, because certain editors wanted to minimize work for users of these templates. *sigh*. In any case, I've only discussed this idea with two editors (including you), so it's not like the name is cast in stone. Andrwsc 17:48, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Possibly I'd add a feature to change the shown country name in order to shorten it when it's too long (for instance, to set "Ireland" or "Eire" rather than "Republic of Ireland" as the shown country name, of course keeping the wikilink unchanged). --Angelo 19:16, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I believe that name was chosen for good reason. FIFA refer to the team as "Republic of Ireland" (in full), and if you look at the Ireland national football team disambiguation page, the full name is used there because Ireland national football team refers to a different entity. Andrwsc 20:05, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I know the reason for good (it's just to distinguish with Northern Ireland football team), but that was just an example. There are several country names that might be convenient to shorten in case they don't fit with the table, such as "Democratic Republic of the Congo", "Republic for Ireland" and others. --Angelo 20:41, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, agreed. {{CODf}} renders Template:CODf, and a similar effect is easily managed with a parameter-based template. I think I'd leave Ireland naming alone because the Irish are rather picky about issues like that...  ;) Andrwsc 20:48, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Ch'Pong

Hey, sorry about that. I had not seen that article before. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Melonflavour (talk • contribs)

No worries, the temptation is there to write your first articles about new things, but once you learn about Wikipedia standards, you'll understand what kind of edits can be kept! Andrwsc 22:50, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Templates CRO and HRV

Hi,

I noticed:

03:23, 10 March 2007 Andrwsc (moved Template:CRO to Template:HRV: The ISO code should be the main location for the template; the IOC and FIFA code can be the redirect)

While I tend to agree with the change, there's an unfortunate side effect - the {{CRO}} transclusion in the infobox at Zoran Primorac no longer shows up.

Can you please check why that happens, and secondly can you change all links from CRO to HRV directly so that we avoid this from happening in the first place?

Thanks. --Joy [shallot] 10:56, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

The problem turned out to be quite unrelated to those two templates, but was instead due to some edits to the internal Template:country flag2, which I have reversed. Andrwsc 16:52, 9 May 2007 (UTC)

Lithuania at the 1928 Summer Olympics

Hi,

I put a prod tag on this, but before proceeding to tag other non-notable country/yr/olympics articles wanted to alert you. If you feel I am wrong, and this is contested, I can list the batch at AFD instead. Jd2718 20:07, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Another editor removed the prod since it is part of a series. I'll alert you when I put the batch of them up for afd. Jd2718 20:11, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Sysin

Andrew, I believe you had some problems with Sysin (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) a few weeks ago - join the club! Please see WP:AN/I#Macedonia-related problems and feel free to leave any comments. -- ChrisO 18:44, 16 May 2007 (UTC)

Mildred Fizzell

Hi...I noticed you changed all my edits of Mildred Fizzell incorrectly to Mildred Frizzel. She was my grandmother and I know her name is often misspelled. I have corrected it to the proper spelling, please don't change it back to the incorrect spelling. We're very proud of her accomplishments and we wish these accomplishments be attributed to the proper name. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Alisontheice (talk • contribs)

I used the spelling found in the International Olympic Committee medal database, which is our primary source for Olympic articles. Please leave an edit summary when you make changes like this, as it looks like vandalism without any explanation. Also, please provide some additional sources for your grandmother's name if you have them. Andrwsc 03:01, 18 May 2007 (UTC)

Re flag-based templates

Hi Andrwsc,
Thanks for your message. I'm sorry to've appeared to be undoing your work – please be assured that this was not my intention, with my apologies for not making myself more aware of the context.
I was motivated to create the redirection templates as I'd begun trying to use the shorter three-letter templates for flag+country links but couldn't remember or correctly guess a fair number of them. At the same time, I began this to place here and (hopefully) here as a kind of two-pane reference sheet (two pages' worth of listings at the former). (The template is still very much work-in-progress; for example, it's probably even misnamed.)  I'm grateful, though, for your message, as it's allowing me to step back for a moment and think that I agree with you, viz. that multiple redirects encourages unofficial three-letter codes to be thought of as official.
However, rather than (re-)eliminating them as redirects – it may only be a matter of time before other folk unwittingly recreate them again – perhaps they could be recoded to leave a message such as "Please use XXX, the official ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code, or, if in a sporting context, YYY or ZZZ [or...], the IOC [or] FIFA [or...] codes."...?  Maybe, though, this too is unwise...?
Meanwhile, I'm also thinking:

(a) To me, "{{flag|X}}" suggests a template that produces only (an icon-sized) flag of X (i.e. per {{flagicon}}), not the flag followed by a link to X. Suggest, therefore, that {{flagicon}} is rendered unnecessary to leave {{flag}} and {{flagcountry}}, e.g.

{{flag|Algeria}}
{{flagcountry|Algeria}}	Algeria

In turn, it might be useful to make {{flagcountry}} defunct as the default output of a more general {{flag+link}} template; I was experimenting with the latter here some time ago. This would yield:

{{flag+link|Algeria}}     Algeria

(b) Renaming Wikipedia:Inline templates linking countries to (something like) Wikipedia:Inline flag-based templates in order to include "flag" in the title; similarly, renaming Category:Flag templates to Category:Inline flag-based templates, or Category:Flag-based templates (inline) (or...).

Thanks again for your message. For now, I'm going to continue working through this without creating any further redirection templates and preparing to remove the non-ISO/IOC/FIFA/etc variants (which should simplify the code considerably!)  Best wishes, David Kernow (talk) 13:40, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi David, thanks for your thoughtful reply! I think you are spot-on in your recommendation of improved documentation, especially if it leads people to the more readable template calls to replace the often-confusing shortcuts. I had been contemplating some kind of "directory" of the complete set of parameters that could be used with {{flag}}, {{flagicon}}, etc., similar to the idea behind the Wikipedia:Inline templates linking countries page and your improvements to it, but I haven't got around to that yet.

As for the template names, perhaps I should explain some history. The original templates as developed by User:SEWilco about two years ago had the following effect:

• {{flagcountry}} (as a shorthand way of writing {{country|flagcountry|...}}), rendered the flag icon followed by the linked country name. The input argument could be the country's name or a country code.
• {{flagicon}} (as a shorthand way of writing {{country|flagicon|...}}), rendered the flag icon only.
• {{flag}} (as a shorthand way of writing {{country|flag|...}}), rendered the flag icon followed by the wikilinked ISO country code. For example: DEU.

Now, earlier this year, User:Ligulem started work to clean up these templates, specifically to remove the extra layer of transclusion by the {{country}} template. We also extended the syntax to make historical flag variations possible. At the time, flagcountry and flagicon were used in many thousands of instances, but not many people used flag. I guess there was no compelling reason to have a template that took a full country name as input parameter but output the ISO country code only. Therefore, I took advantage of that to redefine flag to it's current usage:

• {{flag|Germany}} → Germany
• {{flag|GER}} → GER
• {{flag|DEU}} → DEU
• {{flag|Germany|German Empire}} → Germany

So, that's how we got to the current state. Since flagcountry and flagicon were transcluded many thousands of instances, we only made backward-compatible changes to those templates but left the names alone. The flag template name seemed "valuable" to me — as a short, easy-to-use name, it could be widely adopted because of its simplicity — and it wasn't used in many articles at the time. That's why I redefined it to do the most-common thing (i.e. render a flag icon followed by a wikilinked country name). I would certainly be reluctant to redefine flagicon to the flag name at this point, as flagicon is already transcluded in tens of thousands of instances with that name. For better or worse, that's the name people know and use. In fact, it seems that a large number of editors know about flagicon but don't even know about flagcountry. I can't tell you how many times I've seen this structure coded: {{flagicon|Algeria}} [[Algeria]].

Thanks again for the feedback, and we should keep in touch on how to improve the documentation for all these templates. Andrwsc 16:53, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks for your positive response, Andrwsc; as you may've already noticed, I've begun replacing the unofficial three-letter redirects such as {{CAR}} with little notes and am reorganizing User:David Kernow/Template:Country-code templates. Thanks also for the insight into {{flag}} / {{flagicon}} / {{flagcountry}}'s histories– although collectively they may be transcluded in thousands of articles, I'd hope one or more bots should be able to reorganize them; would you like me to enquire here...?  Yours, David (talk) 12:14, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

• Hi David, sorry for taking so long to reply to this! First, I had noticed the changes you had made to the deprecated redirects. To be honest, I'd go ahead and speedy delete them — especially the ones you recently created and are currently orphaned. I should mention one other wrinkle - there are a handful of country codes on that list that are used in Commonwealth Games articles, so it's not just an ISO/IOC/FIFA list. Specifically, the unique codes are:

• Anguilla — ANG
• Falkland Islands — FAI
• Guernsey — GUE
• Isle of Man — IOM
• Jersey — JER
• Kiribati — KRI
• Montserrat — MNT
• Norfolk Island — NFI
• Saint Helena — SHE
• Saint Vincent and the Grenadines — SVG
• Turks and Caicos Islands — TCI

Of those, ANG is problematic because it is the IOC/FIFA code for Angola, so it should take precedence. {{SVG}} has a Wikipedia purpose, so I wouldn't change that. And three of the others don't exist as shortcuts. I only mention this because you had changed {{GUE}}, {{JER}}, {{MNT}} and {{SHE}}.

Second, as for the template names, I'm not so sure we need to change them, even with a bot. I think the most fundamental operation people want is to have the flag icon precede the wikilinked nation name. Therefore, I think it should have the most convenient name. The simple "flag" name works for me because it is so easy to use. Even new editors can grasp the idea of replacing [[Country]] with {{flag|Country}} to add the flag. Perhaps you can consider "flag" as a verb instead of a noun if you think the name is inappropriate for the result! You use the flag template to "flag" a nation's article name.  ;) Andrwsc 18:57, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you very much for your answer about football in 1912. Nice to see, that at least YOU are interested! Doma-w 16:56, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

No worries! It seems as though the folks who patrol new pages are very picky these days about proper references and notability, so I just think you need to make sure that new athlete articles aren't started as stubs without properly asserting the person's notability. Andrwsc 17:00, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

AFD

Hi! I thought you should know about Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sudan at the 1968 Summer Olympics. Punkmorten 17:34, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, I just replied. Damn. What a mess this will cause if these are all deleted. Andrwsc 17:40, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I just finished my exams, so I have time to write them all up. I started with Ghana. I want to make a contribution here, expanding them, so I can ensure you that none will get deleted. Punkmorten 19:03, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for that!!! I'm going to finish a couple more "small ones" myself (working on AHO now) just to prove that they can be expanded beyond stubs. I think that's the crux of the argument here — is it better to have stubs or nothing? I vote for stubs. It will take us a long time to do all the articles in this series, but I think we are proving that it can be done. Andrwsc 19:08, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I wanted to say I don't like the way they're forcing us to expand the articles just for completion and noteworthiness sake, when we (or is it just me?) still haven't discussed properly about the graphical/structural layout of a nation's results on those types of pages. Parutakupiu ^{talk || contribs} 19:13, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, that thought occured to me as I'm working on them! I would say that I don't think I'm being forced into expanding these stubs, but I think it's necessary to make our point. I think completion of a handful of these might be sufficient, and then we can figure out our strategy for layout etc. so that we minimize rework later. Andrwsc 19:18, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Just a quick question: The "sports" parameter in the infobox is for number of sports like athletics, boxing etc right? High jump and long jump don't count as two sports, do I understand correctly? Punkmorten 19:44, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, exactly. We count swimming and diving as distinct sports, however, instead of combining them as one sport ("aquatics") as you sometimes see in offical reports. But high jump and long jump are events in the sport of athletics. Andrwsc 19:54, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

What do we do when the infobox country code doesn't correspond with the contemporary country code? Such as Côte d'Ivoire at the 1968 Summer Olympics. Punkmorten 19:25, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

We use the current country code for all Games. Country codes weren't standardized until about 1972 (and a few have changed after that), but we want to use codes for all past Games results. Certainly, the Games in the 60s that used pre-standard codes have the greatest deviation (e.g. "GIA" for Japan - Giappone in Italian - for 1960) but it would be quite confusing to show "GIA" for those results on Wikipedia when everybody is familiar with JPN.

I intend to update List of IOC country codes to fully document the historical differences, and I have some extension to {{Infobox Country Olympics}} in mind so that we can add footnotes to the individual articles (e.g. add a footnote that mentions "GIA" to Japan at the 1960 Summer Olympics), so please be patient until I roll those out!  ;) Andrwsc 19:56, 22 May 2007 (UTC)

Participating nations

Thank you for your speedy repair on all those nations!

May I ask you for some help on the English side? :) Doma-w 00:48, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, but I'm not sure what you mean...? Andrwsc 02:21, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

I do not want to appoint you with work! I only ask you, because I think my English is not good enough to do this. I ave expanded this article: Ice hockey at the 1920 Summer Olympics. And I have added some copyrighted text (you can still find it in the history). I know, that this was not the best idea, but I was so surprised and fascinated about this facts! Now the problem is, that the text had to be rewritten, but in this special case my poor English is not enough.

So maybe you are interested and have fun to do this when ever you want. But of course I will also understand, if you say no! Thanks in advance and :) Doma-w 13:48, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Ah, I understand now! You'd like me to help with the prose in some Olympic articles. I certainly fix things up when I see them, but I think I need to spend the bulk of my time getting the basic "foundation" of the articles in place, etc. Andrwsc 15:40, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes. :) This is the point. But I am open to learn. This is the reason why I mainly add or expand only results.

I have added footnotes on 1960, 1964, 1980, and 1988. Hope they are O.K. Thanks! Doma-w 15:59, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Changes

Yes, of course your changes are perfect! I am sorry, your version is the better one.

May I ask you, in a team sport when the squad composes e.g. 22 members, but only e.g. 16 of them already participated. Who many competitors will I add?

Please have a look here: Field hockey at the 1928 Summer Olympics or Field hockey at the 1936 Summer Olympics and here: Afghanistan at the 1936 Summer Olympics. Is this O.K?

Also I would suggest to add the number of competitors of each sport to the nation at the year Olympics. E.g. here: Great Britain and Ireland at the 1908 Summer Olympics, a very long list, but I can not see, who many e.g. swimmers competed. Maybe we can add next to Swimming (28)?

So we can add on the AFG 1936 page Athletics (2) and Hockey (12)? Thanks and :) Doma-w 22:48, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

Well, I have no clear ideas, especially for "old" Games before good records were kept. The only thing I strongly adhere to is the IOC medal database — if they say a person won a medal, I include them in the list at the top of the article. Andrwsc 00:47, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, I have included all persons, which were listed in the IOC medal database.

Sorry, my question was not clear. My question was not about the medalists.

In the list "participating nations" on the page Field hockey at the 1928 Summer Olympics (not on the page 1928 Summer Olympics) e.g. for Switzerland. The squad was 22 players strong, but only 16 players competed. I have listed all 22, but how many players do I add behind Switzerland in the count of the competitors on this page? 22 or 16?

The same on the page AFG 1936. There were 19 different sportsmen in Berlin, but only 14 of them competed. The hockey squad was 18 members strong, but only 12 played. How many do I add in the infobox? I have shown 14 in 2 sports. Is this O.K.? Doma-w 01:19, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Ah, sorry, I should have read your message more carefully! We don't really have any "standard policy" in the Olympics project for that situation, but my intention with the infobox on individual "Nation at the year Olympics" pages was to include the full size of the delgation. That's why I included parameters for both athletes= and officials=. So, if Afghanistan sent 19 athletes to Berlin, I'd say athletes=19 in the infobox. A single sentence in the "Hockey" subsection of "Results by athlete" could state that 6 of the reserve players didn't see any action. That's my opinion, for what it's worth! Hope this helps, Andrwsc 02:36, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

I am still pondering. I am not really happy, because when I add 19 athletes then it is impossible to see that only 14 of them competed. In all cases I prefer version, which allow to see every information very quick and clear. I do not want to count the athletes to know how much competed. :) Doma-w 01:44, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

Flag Templates

I haven't visited wikipedia for some time, so could not comment in the deletion discussion. I also have my login data not available on this computer, so my signature does not correspond to the IP I am using.

I defend against your accusation of my using "invented" three-letter codes. The codes I used were from the ISO 639-3 standard of the unique languages that are spoken in those regions were possible. Using invented abbreviations would not be of use.

Apart from that, you will notice that Wales, England, Northern Ireland and Scotland also use three-letter templates that are not standardised in ISO 3166-1. This ISO only addresses nations, not regions.

Please answer on User talk:Dingo.

--Dingo 21:35, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

More flag templates

You are welcome to delete my templates but make sure the replacements are created soon; FIBA tournaments are fast approaching and it's so much work adding {{flagicon|USA}} [[United States men's national basketball team|USA]] instead of {{USA-b}}.

If you can't create them can you defer deleting those until September perhaps? Most FIBA tourneys end by that time... on the meantime I'd just create more templates and just substitute them. --Howard the Duck 06:12, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm here to inform you that ROC doesn't work... --Howard the Duck 06:29, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

It looks like you figured out how to fix it. The only issue is the redirect to Chinese Taipei national basketball team. If you think that's fine, then no problem, but if you want to avoid it, the only way would be to manually code {{flagicon|ROC}} [[Chinese Taipei national basketball team|Republic of China]]. Andrwsc 15:33, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Is there another way to do it besides the redirect? Hmmm... --Howard the Duck 16:00, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I've got something in mind, but I haven't implemented it yet. if we can live with the redirect for a week or so, then I can update it later. Andrwsc 18:17, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Actually the redirect is rather fine, but if you something else which is a better solution, just implement it. --Howard the Duck 07:39, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

What makes the most sense (to me) is to keep the main article at Chinese Taipei national basketball team, and include all history, even before the "Chinese Taipei" name was used. There would never be content at Republic of China national basketball team (other than potential use as a redirect only). This is precisely the same approach taken for Chinese Taipei national football team. Therefore, the flag of Taiwan would be a "historical flag" for the TPE team, and we would use {{bk|TPE|ROC}} to render Chinese Taipei. Does this seem ok to you? Andrwsc 08:23, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

As long as it works I'll be fine with it. --Howard the Duck 08:31, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Reindent - Can you all create a template for women's national basketball teams? --Howard the Duck 08:33, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Another request: can you create/modify templates which will put the flag image to the right and make "Korea" the default displayed name for South Korea? Also for Iran->Islamic Republic of Iran, Saudi Arabia->Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Macedonia->F.Y.R. of Macedonia? --Howard the Duck 08:29, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, some of those ideas are also on my "to do list"! I've jut created Template:bk-rt for the flag on the right. This is the same naming convention I'm also using for football articles ({{fb}} and {{fb-rt}}) and will also roll out for other sports. As for the names, there are a few I need to fix up (like Korea and FYR Macedonia), and I have an idea in mind on how to implement that (coming soon). However, I am reluctant to use the official long names for Iran, Saudi Arabia, etc. We had a discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Olympics a few months ago about this and the consensus was that even though the IOC uses the official long names for a handful of nations, we would continue to use the common names for our Olympic articles and results (e.g. Iran at the 2004 Summer Olympics and  Iran). The long names make table formatting awkward, are don't add much value. Are you ok with this? Andrwsc 15:47, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

KSA's and Iran's short name will be OK but I'm worried about Macedonia since the naming issue. --Howard the Duck 09:12, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree. I have been planning to conform to the naming convention that is used for the football national team. Currently, {{MKDf}} produces Template:MKDf. I can already reproduce the same effect with {{fb|MKD|name=FYR Macedonia}}, but I'd like to make the "name=" part transparent and automatic. I have an idea of how to do that (generically for all the sport templates), and will roll that out soon. This will also be used for some other nations that have similar naming differences. In the meantime, if you are concerned about the display string for the articles you are currently working on, please feel free to use the "name=" parameter . Andrwsc 17:03, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Olympic stubs

Hi Andrewsc, sorry for not replying at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Sudan at the 1968 Summer Olympics earlier. Since that has now closed I will reply here. To answer your question about what is needed, my short answer is "more". An example of the minimum I would like to see can be seen at this stub I created recently - Yarroweyah, Victoria. If I could not find at least this much sourced material, I would not have created the article. In my opinion there is nothing wrong with leaving redlinks alone until a decent article can be written and creating substubs for the sake of merely eliminating redlinks is harmful to the Wikipedia project. Just so you are aware that I was not just picking on the Olympic articles; see here for my similar concerns to some rail line articles - Wikipedia:Australian Wikipedians' notice board/Archive 26#New railway line articles. Anyway, it seems I am in a minority and your stubs are safe. My views have not changed, however, and we will just have to agree to disagree. Good luck to you and the other members of the Olympic WikiProject. Cheers, Mattinbgn/ ^talk 07:39, 27 May 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the reply, Matt. Do you have any specific ideas of what "more" is needed for those Olympic pages? I think the difference between your stub example (which I like) and those Olympic stubs is that I put most of the potential information inside the infobox and did not repeat it as prose text. Before I developed the {{Infobox Country Olympics}} template, those stubs tended to have longer prose introductions, stating things like the number of times the country had appeared at the Games, when the first appearance was, any medals won, name of the Olympic committee, IOC country code used for results, number of athletes sent to the Games (if number is available), etc. In several cases, some of that information was "unstable", so I pulled it out of the prose intro and put it into the infobox for maintenance reasons (e.g. one edit to update a nation's pages instead of twenty). If I had left that prose alone (so that it repeated infobox data), would that have been sufficient for "more"? Thanks again for your feedback, Andrwsc 18:14, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Most recent page layout for results

Hi, Andrwsc! I've decided to create the pages for the trampoline events at the 2004 Summer Olympics (Jared indirectly showed me that there isn't yet any event-specific results pages for this sport! It's all condensed into Gymnastics at the 2004 Summer Olympics). I wanted to ask you to show me examples of the latest, most recent page layouts, so that I can see if there are new templates being used (e.g. in medalists tables, etc). Thanks! Parutakupiu ^{talk || contribs} 22:16, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Hi Parutakupui! My most recent Olympic edits have been to "match" events like judo and taekwondo (with fencing planned next), but those use tournament brackets to describe the results. I would say that the weightlifting pages are probably the most current example of a tabular results page. Hope this helps, Andrwsc 22:20, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, I'll take a look at those pages and start working. Thanks again ;) Parutakupiu ^{talk || contribs} 22:25, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I didn't realize that there were already trampoline pages. They just had a capital T in the title, so it didn't show up on the Gymnastics 04 template. I've moved the pages to the lowercase t, the correct way to title the event. I just wanted to make sure you knew those pages existed! _└^Jared_┘^┌_t^┐  22:56, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

(On a side note, that wasn't even the reason why they didn't show up on the template. It turns out, I had the total wrong name for the events in the template!) _└^Jared_┘^┌_t^┐  22:58, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

Gladly, I realized that before going on creating duplicates pages! They were just "lost" without any navigation box to link them to the parent and sister articles. Now that a whole bunch of work is done, I'm gonna update the layout then.

(Yes, Jared I also noticed the bad link too and was also about to change it :P) Parutakupiu ^{talk || contribs} 23:17, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I took a crack at editing Gymnastics at the 2004 Summer Olympics - Men's trampoline. The table seems sort of messy, though, so if you have any suggestions as to how to lessen the clutter, please suggest or edit away! _└^Jared_┘^┌_t^┐  00:02, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure how to improve that. It certainly follows all our "unofficial standards". My only comments would be whether or not we think all the individual judges scores are needed (or just the total from each segment of the competition), and whether or not we should list (and wikilink) the judges names. Would being an Olympic judge satisfy the criteria for WP:BLP? Could articles be created someday for those people? Andrwsc 18:07, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Yes, don't see the need to name the judges just because the data was available. For the artistic gymnastics event pages I've been only stating the judge's nationality right on top of the table (example: Gymnastics at the 2004 Summer Olympics - Men's floor). But as for the the individual judge scores, I think it's best to add them, if available. Sometimes there are total score ties, but may have distinct individual scores for each of the judges... Parutakupiu ^{talk || contribs} 18:16, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Hey, those look really good! I like the idea of decoupling these individual finals from the common qualification round on a separate page. I'd suggest that we make that linkage more obvious, perhaps by adding this:

==Results==
===Qualification===
{{Main|Gymnastics at the 2004 Summer Olympics - Men's artistic qualification}}
Eighty-nine gymnasts competed in the floor exercises event in the artisitic gymnastics qualification round on [[August 14]].
The top eight gymnasts advanced to the final.

===Final===

Alternately, we could include a complete list of all floor exercise (only) results. Or do you think it's better to keep them seperate? Andrwsc 18:27, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

(Unindent) Yes, I was planning to separate the qualification results from the eight distinct finals, even though the qualification round served all of the apparatus finals. I was thinking of doing a single page with the men's and women's qualification results, and all event pages linking to it. This way we have all qualifying results condensed into an unique page and avoid repeating data for each individual event page(apparatus-specific scores and as part of all-around competition). What do you think? If you come up with a better idea, I'll follow it!

I like that linkage, more obvious than a inline link on the lead! ;) Parutakupiu ^{talk || contribs} 19:03, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I like your approach (with the extra sub-section that I suggested above). Good work — the gymnastics pages sorely needed our "cleanup treatment".  ;) Andrwsc 19:06, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Template:Rugby squad player

I saw your edit to the template above and wonder if you can help with a technical problem. A decision was made some time ago that neither the flag of the Republic of Ireland nor the flag of Northern Ireland would be used to represent Irish rugby union because it is organised on an all-Ireland basis. It was agreed that a shamrock would be used instead of a flag; however this template didn't allow for this.

Now the natvar edit that you made to the template seems to open up the possibility of solving this issue. The flag I need to use has the following code {{flag|Ireland|rugby}} and it needs to go into the following codeline somewhere :-

{{rugby squad player | nat=Ireland| pos=CT | name=[[Gordan D'Arcy]] | region=}}

If you could tell me what code should replace nat=Ireland to bring up a shamrock, I'd be grateful.GordyB 20:20, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

It should work with this:

{{rugby squad player |nat=Ireland |natvar=rugby |pos=CE |name=[[Gordan D'Arcy]]}}

Hope this helps, Andrwsc 20:35, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Irish elections

I see you altered the Template:Irish elections, I tried that a while ago on Template:Northern_Ireland_elections and the edit was reverted, you can see the discussion here.--padraig3uk 16:55, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, if someone reverts it, I won't take offense. I was just trying to find a more aesthetically pleasing compromise. The use of multiple identical flag icons on each heading line was ugly, IMO. Better to have a single larger flag image than that. Andrwsc 18:22, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Flags

I left a comment at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football about the flag template changes. On the surface, I agree that it is much simpler; but, I do not know what adverse impact this could have on the wikipedia servers. The compute cycles to lookup a template and replace it with static content are different than the compute cycles to lookup a template, pass a parameter, and compute the non-static content. Intuition tells me that the {{fb}} template is more intensive on the server, so, I think it might be good to get a technical guy involved on this discussion, since the flag templates are so ubiquitous. Regards. Neier 08:28, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Flag borders

Hi Andrwsc. Please stop making mass edits to the flag templates. The reason they use the pre-bordered versions is to allow consistently-looking lists, but it doesn't work using the border feature, as the border adds an additional pixel to either side of the the image. This makes lists like the ones for town twinnings look horrible as some images are sized 20px and some 22px. See e.g. Odense_Municipality#Twin_cities_and_towns. --Valentinian ^{T / C} 20:26, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, none of them should be 20px as the standard size for flag icons is 22x20px (as coded in the {{flag}} etc. templates), but I see your concern. My motivation for using the MediaWiki border syntax is that the "(bordered)" versions of SVG flag images are rather inconsistent with respect to border width and color, so I really liked the idea of standardizing on a common, aesthetically pleasing border. I will figure out another way of doing it without causing misalignment between different flags. Andrwsc 20:35, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

You're right about the size. What I meant was 22 px. vs. 22+1+1. In the old "flagicons" system, many of the images were hard to see if they contained large portions of white in them. To solve that, people began adding borders randomly, thus garbling the lists. Others fixed this issue by introducing the pre-bordered images. I know they look clunky but it was the best solution some of us could come up with at the time. My only concern is to avoid seeing the old mess of garbled lists. I can't think of any other alternative to the old system than forcing a border on every single flag template. Whatever you do, please make the finished templates look consistent and be aware that edits like these are probably very heavy on the servers. Regards. Valentinian ^{T / C} 20:51, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm well aware of this history and current situation, having done a significant amount of work for Wikipedia:WikiProject Flag Template for the past six months or so. I certainly want to find a solution that makes all the icons the same size, but I also want to find an elegant, consistent way to add borders to flags that need them, and deprecate the "(bordered)" variants as unnecessary. Stay tuned!  ;) Andrwsc 21:00, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I will ;) And I'm fully aware that the old system wasn't perfect and that the pre-bordered images aren't loved everywhere. The more I think about it, a forced mediawiki border might be the easiest way to go. Happy editing. Valentinian ^{T / C} 21:05, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Why not just add a border for every country? I've just done it to Template:Country data Clipperton Island. This looks fine: Clipperton Island. Chanheigeorge 01:04, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, yeah, that is certainly one option, and one that I have already explored with the Olympic articles. They use a different flag template system, and I have modified it to use the border for all flags. See 2004 Summer Olympics#Participating NOCs to see a list with every flag bordered. I had been planning to post a message to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Flag Template soon to get some opinions before I update {{flagicon}} and friends to have this same behaviour. Andrwsc 04:01, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

STOP! Having grey borders around all flagicons looks like ass. I'm going to revert it if I can find the root cause of the borders... PatrikR 20:05, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Having irregular borders and uneven icon sizes looks worse than "ass". Andrwsc 20:17, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

You are of course entitled to your opinion even though it is wrong. :) But, this border change is a major edit which affects flag icons on literally thousands of pages, has this change been voted on anywhere, or did you just unilaterally decide to do this? - PatrikR 20:32, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

There was a small discussion and consensus for the change at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Flag Template. I fully understand the scope of this change, and was hoping to see some more discussion for the past week before I went ahead with the change, but there were no dissenters. Please remain civil. Andrwsc 20:35, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

Template:Country data Western Sahara

Hi. You have reverted the most accurate version to the POV version before protecting the Template:Country data Western Sahara. Can you give a reason for reverting to the version that contains a flag for a territory that has no flag. Thanks.--A Jalil 20:41, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I protected the version that was stable for months before your edit war started in the last 24 hours. Also, these templates are used for flag icons, and that map image is not a flag. Andrwsc 20:45, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

The territory of Western Sahara is not a country and has no flag. The fact that that version was there for months does not mean it is correct, actually the opposite. You could have looked at the discussion going over the subject to see that only one user, Koavf who has been blocked for months for disruptive pro-Polisario agit-prop, is behind the edit war. Is it because it is flag template, there should be a flag even if that goes against Wikipedia's NPOV policy. The french Wiki uses a map instead of a flag for WS. I invite you to rethink which version is then most appropriate.--A Jalil 20:56, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Template:Country data Ireland

I notice that you're dab-ing pages that uses Template:Country data Ireland and Template:Country data Republic of Ireland. Is Template:Country data Ireland supposed to serve the whole island of Ireland instead of the state of Republic of Ireland? Right now the link goes to the island, but the default flag is the Republic of Ireland flag, so this arrangement looks a bit strange to me. Chanheigeorge 00:56, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I am working on a generic template mechanism for national sports teams (see some discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Football), and I need to have distinct templates for teams that represent just the Republic of Ireland (e.g. football) vs. those that represent the whole island (e.g. rugby, cricket). So yeah, the intent will be to use Template:Country data Republic of Ireland, and it's "shortcut" of Template:Country data IRL for the former, and Template:Country data Ireland and it's shortcut of Template:Country data IRE for the latter. I will be updating the documentation pages for these soon. Andrwsc 03:57, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I understand the problem, as the term "Ireland" may mean the whole island or just the republic. The problem is that both meanings are used quite often, although I would think that somebody who calls or Ireland would more likely refer to the republic, since there's really no official flag for Ireland per se. As for sports teams, while it's common to use the term "Republic of Ireland" for football, and the term "Ireland" refers to the whole island in rugby and cricket, I'm not sure about the other sports. For example, "Ireland" in the Olympics refers to the republic. So this is a really complicated issue. Chanheigeorge 06:45, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks.GordyB 08:43, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Leinster Rugby is the one I can't get to work. Could you have a look please?GordyB 21:02, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure what you are specifically referring to, but if you are trying to change all the flag icons in the team squad section, then use the "natvar" parameter of {{rugby squad player}}. For example, use |nat=Ireland |natvar=rugby for those players. Hope this helps, Andrwsc 21:18, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

Checkuser Request

Just to remind you, when filing a case at WP:RFCU, you need to create the case about the puppetmaster, NOT the sockpuppet. This helps keep track of all known sockpuppets from one sockpuppeteer. Thanks for your help. :) GrooveDog 21:43, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Ah, sorry about that! That was my first checkuser request, and it wasn't obvious from the instructions that I should have done it that way. Anyway, I hope there is "no foul, no harm" here! Andrwsc 21:47, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Request

Could you please give your comment at the discussion at Talk:List of political parties by country. Electionworld Talk? 18:57, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Some doubts

Hey, Andrwsc! ;) After reading your latest reply on the project talk page, I've reviewed the 2004 gymnastics pages I created and some doubts emerged. Do you think the rhythmics and trampoline results should keep their current layout or would it be better to sacrifice some info, such as the judges scores (trampoline) and the technical/artistic/execution marks (rhythmics) so that the results can be merged into one table (qualifier + final), following your idea? I don't know... I'm not very fond of deleting content which doesn't seem superfluous to me. What do you think? Parutakupiu ^{talk || contribs} 16:51, 18 June 2007 (UTC)

You know, I think they're fine as is. I think it becomes a problem when you have to repeat 64 or 72 names more than once in those "big" events, but for a list of about 10-20 gymnasts, it's not so bad. I think the only thing I would change is the color coding to represent gymnasts who advanced to the finals. I prefer to use Q in a table column next to the scores or times. Cheers! Andrwsc 18:29, 18 June 2007 (UTC)