Talk:All-time Olympic Games medal table

Serbia is successor

All medals of Serbia and Montenegro and Yugoslavia going under SERBIA! Correct please! 79.175.115.120 (talk) 20:05, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

There is a mistake in Your Summer Olympic Totals for Yugoslavia.

There has to be a mistake as it contradicts the individual totals for Wikipedia's own individual 1996 and 2000 Summer Olympics Medal Tables. Yugoslavia had to begun to break apart already, but still won 7 combined medals under its original name in the 1996 and 2000 Summer Games. According to this table, it won nothing after 1988. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.199.51.94 (talk) 23:12, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

YOG Medals

When you search a medal at the IOC site search gear (http://www.olympic.org/medallists-results), it offers you results for both Olympics and Youth Olympic Games (YOG) medalist (try searching a medal for Bolivia and you'll see). Does anyone knows if a YOG medal is counted as a regular Olympic medal by the IOC? Gvogas (talk) 14:03, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

USA: 48 Games / 2549 medals - Germany: 44 Games / 1618 medals - but Germany's are hardly visible!

As a proud Kraut, I am miffed by Wikipedia's current all time medal tally, which I just found right before the start of the 2012 Olympics. I feel it belittles Germany.

Germans got nearly 2/3 as many medals as Americans. Although they participated in fewer games. And although Germany has only 1/4 of the population of the US.

But the present table effectively hides the German all time standings. One has to painstakingly search for German medals in disconnected rows. On talk pages I found attempts to justify this, but they really failed to convince me. After all, Germany is the only official legal representative of all German teams that ever existed!

In a small fraction of the Olympic Games there were two German National Olympic Committees (NOCs). Some call this an unfair advantage. But actually it was a disadvantage, because in numerous team events Germany was not allowed to build a superior team from its best individuals in both NOCs. Instead it had to send inferior teams with less chances of winning a medal.

The Krauts lead the all time Winter Games medal count, and are 2nd in the Summer Games. I feel the table should make this clear. So let me repeat what many have suggested before: add an extra row for all German medals.

To the predominantly American editors of this page: this won't affect the US rank! Kraut Funding (talk) 18:14, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

It's been discussed time and time again, it's like this for the reasons given in those discussions and it has nothing to do with any American (or any other national) bias. It certainly has nothing to do with one nation being ranked higher than any other, hence the default sorting is alphabetical with the ability to sort by medal count added as a concession to editors who do want to see a "winner"; the IOC doesn't recognise any nation as coming 1st/2nd etc in an individual Games let alone in an overall count - Basement12 (T.C) 18:27, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

Please don't say it's not about the ranking when obviously by design it's all about the ranking. A bit like saying beer is not about the taste! You click at the table, and there is the ranking. And the ranking is misleading. It's biased against the Krauts. In particular, it makes the US look much better than the Krauts, although the true gap between them is not that huge. I hope you can see why I feel this should be corrected. (Or remove the ranking feature? I know the IOC forbade medal tallies - but this Wikipedia article obviously does not care.) Nice colors though in your signature, Basement! Kraut Funding (talk) 19:36, 27 July 2012 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I agree with Kraut Funding. West Germany does not equal Germany, nor did either side represent Germany as a whole while the country was divided, even though both states presumed to do so. And in fact, they still competed together under one German Olympic flag until 1968, so obviously East Germany was not some foreign nation non affiliated with Germany. She was a remnant of a country which was forcibly divided and unlike Korea is now reunited and this should be considered in the medal table. The way I see it, the table should have Germany as a whole with all German recorded medals, along with separate East and West German standings. It's really not asking too much. After all when it comes to Kraut bashing, there has never been any notable diversion. In fact, both East and West Germans had to stand in for "Germans", whenever one political block wanted to insult Germans during the Cold War but couldn't afford to alienate their respective allies. Enough said.62.143.178.97 (talk) 09:27, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the encouragement. I am attaching the corrected table. "N. Summer" and "N. Winter" count the games where at least one Kraut participated. (Sometimes Germany was banned. During certain boycotts only parts of Germany participated.) I also corrected "N. Summer" for the US.

Team (IOC code)	№ Summer	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total	№ Winter	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Total	№ Games	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Combined Total
United States (USA)	25	929	729	638	2296	23	87	95	71	253	48	1016	824	709	2549
Germany (GER)	23	400	413	447	1260	21	128	129	101	358	44	528	542	548	1618

All that remains to be done now is to insert the corrected rows in the article's table. Kraut Funding (talk) 16:34, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

German medals should not be combined with East German medals. Two reasons. One, this is not how the IOC does it. They separate out the medals for each of Germany and East Germany because they were separate nations, competing under separate NOCs. Secondly, those medals were won by separate NOCs. Medals of the Soviet Union are not combined with Russia or Russian Empire. Australasia medals are not combined with Australia and/or New Zealand. Etc. To combine them is NPOV pushing. The table follows the IOC standards, IOC doesn't combine, so the table doesn't. If someone wants to add them to compare, they can do those additions themselves. End of story. Ravendrop 17:08, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Not convincing. 1. You say "This is not how the IOC does it." But the IOC does not even compute all time medal counts at all! As pointed out by others, the present article has a WP:No original research problem anyway. 2. You compare Soviets/Russians etc to Krauts. But many Soviets were not Russians. The German NOCs, however, were all German. Kraut Funding (talk) 19:07, 28 July 2012 (UTC)

Kraut is right. This table confuses the reader about the total medal count of the German team. IOC has no influence on the outcome here. The split of the German medal count was wrong in the past and is wrong now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.179.143.118 (talk) 20:36, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the support! I did some more research. It's clear that this article violates WP:No original research. The IOC does not do all time medal tallies. The article does, without proper source. So it's an easy target for deletion.

The only way out may be this paragraph of WP:No original research: "Routine calculations do not count as original research. Basic arithmetic, such as adding numbers, converting units, or calculating a person's age, is allowed provided there is consensus among editors that the calculation is an obvious, correct, and meaningful reflection of the sources."

However, it's clear that the "basic arithmetic" conditions are not met, as there is no consensus among editors. Proud Krauts like myself think all Germans are equal, and all their medals count. Many all time medals tallies on the web adopt this view. But here at Wikipedia some editors disagree, for whatever reasons.

To satisfy WP:No original research, one could create separate Wikipedia articles for each source offering a different medal tally. Not sure that's what we should strive for.

Or we find a consensus on what's right. Not easy, because such tables are unfair in so many ways! Some nations participated often. Others didn't. The US participated almost always. Soviets did so rarely (and usually won when they did). Germany often was banned. The US all time medal count greatly profited from the 1984 boycott of the two strongest NOCs of that era: USSR and East Germany. And from the fact that in 1904 just a few non-US athletes participated. Similar possibly "unfair" advantages existed for other nations hosting early Olympics. In rare cases, Germany profited from having two teams (East & West) winning two team event medals where a single team could have won only one. More often Germany suffered as it was not allowed to build a medal-winning team from its best individuals in both NOCs.

I am sure many other sources of "unfairness" could be found. But let's remove at least one obvious such source: Don't split the German medals.

Krauts have feelings, too! Germans stripped of East German medals feel like Americans stripped of East Coast medals. Kraut Funding (talk) 20:46, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Basement21, I found that today you undid my corrections in a way that exhibits a certain bias: 1. You inserted wrong (underestimated) "N. Games" for the US. 2. You claimed there was a consensus to split the German medals. There wasn't. Obvious from the present thread and the talk archives. I'd greatly appreciate if you didn't identify "consensus" with your own personal preferences. Note that the US is still #1 even when you don't split the German medals! Note also (as shown above) that lack of consensus implies: article violates WP:No original research. Kraut Funding (talk) 18:53, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

There is long-standing consensus that separate NOCs should be counted separately. It's objective, it requires only arithmetic, and it doesn't require getting into issues of whether two NOCs create an advantage or a disadvantage. We don't add together Netherlands and Aruba, or Great Britain and British Virgin Islands, or any other instances where there are/were two separate teams. We don't go through Yugoslavia results to pick out which medals were won by this nationality or that. If Guor Marial wins a medal this year, we won't add that to the South Sudan results in the table (though we will, appropriately, mention it in text on the South Sudan at the Summer Olympics page). -- Jonel (Speak to me) 22:56, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

How can you claim there is a long-standing consensus? Please provide evidence if you can find any! Which I doubt - this thread and the archives show that there is no consensus whatsoever. It's not always easy to guess nationalities of editors, but the archives seem to have a lot of: Americans & Brits vs Krauts. Again: lack of consensus implies that the article violates the "basic arithmetic condition" of WP:No original research and thus is ripe for deletion. I'd prefer to find a consensus though. Kraut Funding (talk) 07:47, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

User:Kraut Funding. It appears from your comments that have read at least some of the previous discussions. If you have read through the archived discussions you may have seen that the German medals were at one time split into four different entries [1]: Germany (GER), West Germany (FRG), East Germany (GDR) and Unified Team of Germany (EUA). The ensuing discussions from that unfortunate situation led to the current two-entry table. There were those who argued for the four-entry version, but it was decided to include the FRG and EUA medals in with GER, but leave GDR seperate. This is the current stable version. Sorry but it is your arguments that I find unconvincing. I can see no reason why the medals of two countries, two seperate NOCs, competeting at the same Games, should be combined into one total. It's just the plain and simple fact they competed at the same time is what I can't get around, regardless if it was fair or unfair, an advantage or not. --RacerX¹¹ Talk to me^{Stalk me} 08:08, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Sure, as you say, they competed against each other at the same time, instead of working together to get more medals, but why use this fact to make Germans look worse? What's the basic problem? They were all Krauts. Kraut Funding (talk) 08:19, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

The basic problem is they competed against each other. Two different teams. Yes, it would tend to hurt any country if it were have to field two seperate squads in the team events. They would be unable to put forth their best team. Its a disadvantage in general, but that's irrelevant. Also irrelevant is that East Germany, in spite of this disadvantage, managed to become a very successful Olympic power during that time. It is relevant however that East Germany and West Germany at times each won medals at the same team events because, more importantly, it was possible to do so; something that is an impossiblity for all other countries competing as single entities. Addressing another point, they were all German yes, but they competed as West Germans and as East Germans and at the time (I'm old enough to remember) this distinction was made very clear to everyone. Trust me, I have no desire to make Germany "look worse" and it has nothing to do with whether the situation was an advantage or disavantage. They were clearly two seperate teams competing against each other. It makes no sense to combine them. --RacerX¹¹ Talk to me^{Stalk me} 10:52, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, had an edit conflict earlier and didn't read your latest post and that you have indeed read the archives. If you feel a proper consensus was never reached, I have no problem with attempting to reach one now. I for one oppose a single German entry medal table. --RacerX¹¹ Talk to me^{Stalk me} 08:43, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Well, this thread and the archives show there are quite a few who support a single German entry. So we don't have a consensus. This probably means the article should be deleted, for the reasons above. Or what about this: keep two German entries, but add an entry with all medals of all Krauts. Kraut Funding (talk) 08:19, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

In my opinion, it would have to be done outside the table in a footnote or something. I dont know if it could be done in a way that would please most everyone. Are you planning to propose this article be deleted by the way? --RacerX¹¹ Talk to me^{Stalk me} 10:52, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

East Germany should be seperate they had an own national olympic commitee (the national olympic commitee of the German Democratic Republic) everythng else was German olympic commitee which was renamed (just renamed) German Olympic Sports Federation a the early 2000s 178.210.114.106 (talk) 16:00, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

To this I answer: They were all Germans. Imagine somebody taking away a third of the medals of your compatriots! Kraut Funding (talk) 08:19, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

I personally think an all time medal table is irrelevant anyway, as many more medals are awarded in (for example) the combat sports and weightlifting than in football. More useful to me (and not requiring any original research) would be to put each nation's ranking by year together on one page, so that one can see how nations have risen and fallen in the rankings. Has this been done anywhere ? Rmallett (talk) 17:21, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Is this something like what you have in mind? Its a pretty cool interactive graphic and gives one an easy to way to see trends in strength for different countries. --RacerX¹¹ Talk to me^{Stalk me} 10:52, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I had forgotten about that one, thanks. Rmallett (talk) 18:13, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Editors should be aware that this discussion has been canvassed at Talk:Germany and Talk:Germany at the Olympics in violation of WP:CANVASS, see [2] and [3]. These violate the canvassing prohibition against campaigning messages and possibly votestacking. Kahastok talk 14:11, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Kahastok - I was not aware of canvassing policies. Sorry! Kraut Funding (talk) 20:07, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

• Good lord, not this argument again! Every Olympiad, like clockwork... To summarize the consensus on this article, we do not combine the totals for East Germany and Germany in this article because there were two NOCs (two teams) competing from 1968–1988. This is a unique situation in Olympic history. We've actually gone further than most sources by combining the GER, EUA and FRG totals together. The International Society of Olympic Historians, whose own tables can be found at Sports-Reference [4], only combine the GER and EUA teams, leaving FRG and GDR as separate entries. Why must this always turn into a nationalistic debate (look at the headline; making this a USA vs. Germany issue!!) instead of encyclopedic content based on reliable sources? — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 18:34, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Andrwsc, you cite some sources that split German medals. You know that many other sources don't. So this is not a convincing argument. In the archives there is no evidence for your so-called consensus. Where is it? Imagine somebody taking away a third of the medals of your compatriots! This can't be right. That's why there never was a consensus. That's why there never will be a consensus. Without correction, this will come up again and again, as it has done before. Once more: lack of consensus implies that the article violates the "basic arithmetic condition" of WP:No original research. So it's just one step from deletion. Kraut Funding (talk) 20:07, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Actually if you look through the Archives, there are countless topics on this subject about combining all German results. But as is stated before, they competed as two separate NOC's and it has nothing to do with the results being biased towards any country. BosleyTree (talk) 20:21, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Sure, there are countless topics on this subject in the archives. And no consensus. The issue is not whether the IOC once had two German NOCs. The issue is how to combine medals of those two NOCs in an all time medal tally, although all time medal tallies are not supported by the IOC. Wikipedia editors had to conduct original research to obtain this table. Since there is no consensus, it looks like the entire table must go. Kraut Funding (talk) 21:02, 1 August 2012 (UTC)

Combining medals of separate NOCs would be original research. Appeals to nationalism or emotion are ("how would you feel") do not advance the argument. Should we next combine KOR and PRK because they're all Koreans? I think not. Also, your repeated references to deletion are getting old. WP:AFD is that-a-way, if you truly believe that there is no consensus for the common sense proposition that separate NOCs get counted separately and that this article violates policy. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 01:00, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Germany is one nation that has been divided into separate states after WW II but not different nations. The current German NOC isn't simply the former West German one, as the two NOC's merged equally. Hence, the current article is not locical. If you follow the argument made by Andrwsc and others, you could also sum up the East German medals and the medals won by the unified German teams and count the West German medals separate. So either count them all as separate, or sum them all up. The current situation makes no sense and there will never be a consensus on a solution like that. I would prefer to combine them. If there will ever be a unified Korea, we should also combine KOR and PRK. Simply because they're all Koreans! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.34.179.78 (talk) 21:08, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Stupid anti-German bullshit, as very 4 years, and in between. -- Matthead  Discuß   21:50, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Andrwsc deleted my harmless text (a compact form of the above) from Talk:Germany at the Olympics, calling it a "racial epithet for Germans". I must say that I consider this the lowest form of personal attack. I feel hurt. Is this the Wikipedia way of "consensus building"? Kraut Funding (talk) 09:25, 3 August 2012 (UTC)

Actually German results should be divided further if to fit how IOC does it. On IOC's page you can see different teams results in different olympic games; see http://www.olympic.org/sweden . On the right it lists Sweden's medal totals in each olympic game. The equivalent, http://www.olympic.org/germany , lists German medal totals in several olympic games, including all results up to 1936, as well as the German totals in 1952 and from 1992. Medals in the 1956 to 1988 games are not included. So that's how they do the medal count.Lejman (talk) 14:57, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

GDR seperate NOC

the NOC of the GDR was a seperate entity - GDR (socalled East Germany) should be listed seperate — Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.3.76.108 (talk) 16:46, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

GDR had the NOC of the GDR that was a NOC of its own, while the 19th century funded Frankurt am Main based German NOC served the German REich (Kaiser/WeimarRepublic/Nazi) and both Germanies in the 50ies and 60ies and after the establishment of the NOC of the GDR only the Federal REpublic of Germany (which is the country that still exist because in 1990 there was not a new Germany establich, but the GDR and the NOC of the GDR where abolished and the land/people/organisation joind the Federal REpublic of Germany and the German NOC 134.3.76.108 (talk) 18:20, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

the section (of the article) clearly says NOCs with medals not countries/nations with medals and the GDR had in the 70ies and 80ies an NOC of it's own the NOC of the GDR, so please do not change that all the time 134.3.76.108 (talk) 18:22, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

First medal by year?

Hi all, I thought quite a nice addition to this article would be a section to list the year each NOC won its first medal, as far as I can see such a list does not exist elsewhere. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TF100 (talk • contribs) 09:29, 29 July 2012 (UTC)

Hm, not a bad idea. Just worried about the space--the table is already pretty huge. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 23:03, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

Yes, not a bad idea, but maybe it should be done as a different article, with information such as first medal, Summer/Winter/Overall, and first gold medal, Summer/Winter/Overall. Here it would really get huge.177.17.92.95 (talk) 12:20, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

Egypt

Egypt must be split in Egypt (7/6/9 - 22, EGY) and United Arabic Republic (0/1/1 - 2, UAR) --141.6.11.20 (talk) 14:08, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

The Egyptian Olympic Committee was the NOC for the entire time. -- Jonel (Speak to me) 23:03, 30 July 2012 (UTC)

USSR/Russia to combine

Russia is the legal successor of the USSR. Should the counts be combined? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Succession_of_states

75.147.19.86 (talk) 15:05, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

don know about that maybe not (USSR was much more than Russia like Yugosloslavia was much more than Serbia) but Russia and Russian Empire should definatly be one (and right now it is seperated)178.210.114.106 (talk) 15:55, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

No. Makes about as much sense as combing USSR's totals with Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Phizzy 20:07, 31 July 2012 (UTC)

How is Russia the successor to the USSR? It's like saying Great Britain should include all Indian and Australian medals from the commonwealth era. Czolgolz (talk) 02:54, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

The IP linked the article Succession of states, which mentions Russia inheriting some obligations from the USSR, and asked if this should be considered for medal counts. The question should be: Is the NOC for Russia (RUS) essentially the same as the former Soviet Union NOC (URS) (basically a re-name) or are they two separate and distinct NOCs? I would answer "no" to the IPs original question and that they are seperate NOCs to my second question. The medals should not be combined. --RacerX¹¹ Talk to me^{Stalk me} 11:18, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

logic/illogic of GBR/GER/USSR

I fail to see the logic where "great Britain" gets all the medal counts from when it was with the entirety of ireland added to the "modern" GBR. Russia is not gaining USSr's medals -- which is a directly comparable situation. And Germany being separated is probably an even more egregious on a principle standpoint, though the situation is not directly comparable. It looks like the "rules" being applied here are simply biased by the nationality/personal prejudices of editors instead of any non-biased formulaic approach that wikipedia should be applying by in such circumstances. Either GBR's get separated, or russia needs to combined, and in either case germany's should be combined, of course with a footnote noting the years germany competed as more than one team. 68.115.53.79 (talk) 17:05, 5 August 2012 (UTC)