Talk:2008 Summer Olympics medal table

how 20?

how it is possibe 20 medals?maybe 21?? there alwayes should be 3 medals no?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.178.106.115 (talk) 11:40, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

In some events four medals are awarded, two of them bronze, where losing semi-finalists do not play each other for 3rd and 4th places. Strayan (talk) 14:05, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Two tables?

I noticed that the text says the table will organize first by gold, then by silver, then by bronze. I think it would be better to have two tables, one that organizes by gold through bronze, and one that does it on total medal count (unless rankedmedaltable has a sortable option I've never noticed). Kolindigo (talk) 02:40, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

The default is gold, but the table will be sortable, so people will be able to arrange the table to sort by gold, total, silver, bronze or nation. Like this one. -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 02:42, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Wow, it is sortable. *laughs* Thanks, now I feel like an idiot. Cool functionality! Kolindigo (talk) 03:17, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

The table should default sort (and rank) based on total medal count, as that is how the IOC's table is sorted/will be sorted. -- Me^Holla! 22:57, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Actually, the IOC goes by gold medals, they do that with all of their other medal tables, such as this one -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 23:06, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

First gold

On the Current Events section of Wikipedia, there are two news items, each claiming that said event was the first gold of the Games. Perhaps someone here can fix the issue and allow more clarity. Kaiser matias (talk) 05:16, 9 August 2008 (UTC)/

I have a feeling it was the Womens 10m air rifle shooting where the Czech Repulic won that gold 86.132.88.42 (talk) 16:30, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Olympic Event Medal Table

Can someone put the Individual Event table back up, as i found this really helpful earlier this morning 86.132.88.42 (talk) 15:58, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

It may be helpful, but this is not the right place for it. I'll ask some users if there is precedent for creating an individual page for a list of medalists. -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 16:17, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

If we do create a new page, can we try and do this for other olympics i.e the 2000 and 2004 olympics 86.132.88.42 (talk) 16:28, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree. I think the Individual Event list was very helpful and should be somewhere on Wikipedia, if not in this article. Seancp (talk) 16:29, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I'm sure we can find the individual medals from any olympics in there indivuidal articals e.g the mens road race that was held this morning 86.132.88.42 (talk) 16:32, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

The thing is, there are already pages that sort the medals by event (ie. Fencing at the 2008 Summer Olympics), there are already pages that sort medals by nation (ie. China at the 2008 Summer Olympics) and there is now a page that includes gold medalists (2008 Summer Olympics highlights) so having yet another page of medalists would be overkill. Would it really be that much more useful than the current pages that we have right now? -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 16:37, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I think it would. Just imagine if your doing a report on whos won what at the games and your internet is on a very slow dial-up connection. Imagine how much time it would take to load all 302 page up 86.132.88.42 (talk) 16:40, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Most people doing such a report would not use wikipedia. You have to remember, wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a sports site. -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 16:42, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

But an encyclopedia has to have everything covered inside out and back to front if you know what i mean 86.132.88.42 (talk) 16:44, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

An encyclopedia only gives broad coverage about a topic. For example, in film articles we don't describe the entire plot, only major plot details. Please see WP:NOT for what Wikipedia is not. --Madchester (talk) 16:50, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I just think though that whoever thought of that table up this morning had a brilliant idea. All i get is someone on the tv saying that this country won gold. With the Table it breaks the medal count to an easy to read table, and i don't mind filling the table in for past olympics 86.132.88.42 (talk) 16:57, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

I strongly agree that having a table that lists the event winners is both useful and not overkill. It allows someone to access the information in one place, not try to figure it out when it is not clear what events have occured. Jvsett (talk) 23:40, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Blue Background

I am very much an advocate of the overall medal count determining the leader, but when users edit the page, it is crucial that China always be highlighted in Blue (or whatever color you like), as the home country._-Z-_ (talk) 23:54, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

It does. -- Scorpion⁰⁴²² 23:57, 9 August 2008 (UTC)

Ordering of tied countries

There seems to be at least some edit warring going on regarding the ordering of tied countries in the list. I'd propose a well-defined policy of what the ordering should be - either alphabetical by country name or country code would make the most sense to me. I just think that this needs to be stated somewhere. --Mbell (talk) 02:58, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Country code is probably the better choice. JPG-GR (talk) 02:59, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Searching for precedent at the moment - the 2000 list seems to prefer by country name... but also contradicts itself within itself... JPG-GR (talk) 03:05, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

1996 prefers country name, so does 1992 and 1988. JPG-GR (talk) 03:08, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Going by the official Beijing 2008 medal standings the IOC is using the country codes for the rankings. Since country names can be spelled differently in the two main IOC languages (English and French), I believe the organization uses the country codes for sorting purposes. For example, we don't have one English ranking using "Spain" and one French ranking using "Espagne". --Madchester (talk) 03:13, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

The IOC itself seems to sort by country name in whatever the language is - see the English and French rankings from 2000. I agree with JPG-GR and Madchester that country code is probably the better choice, though. --Mbell (talk) 03:22, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

First, I didn't realize the IOC had separate publications for each language.

On that note, I noticed in the 2000 rankings that both Chinese Taipei (TPE) and Morocco (MAR) are ranked 58th overall. However, instead of following the IOC code, it seems to be going by English spelling, thus Chinese Taipei is listed "before" Morocco.

I think there needs to be more investigation (and discussion) to resolve this matter. --Madchester (talk) 03:26, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Is this only after using silver and bronze medals as second and third tiebreakers? -- Me^Holla! 03:27, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

We're just figuring out what to do if two (or more) countries have the same distribution of medals.

For example, if you review the 2000 English and French standings, the 61st ranked nations are listed differently depending on the language used. I'm leaning towards using the IOC's English table (and sorting method) as our main reference, since this is English Wikipedia. IMHO, the IOC should have simply used the country codes to standardized the listing procedure for tied countries. --Madchester (talk) 03:35, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

We should use either the English names or the country codes. Considering official rankings are put by name, that would be more correct, I guess. I think we all agree that using country codes is better, but alas, it's only our opinion. BalkanFever 03:39, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Source?

The table currently says the US has 10 medals, while the official Olympics website lists 8 [1]. Either the table is wrong or people are getting information from some more rapidly updated source. If there is a more current source can people say what it is? Dragons flight (talk) 05:20, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

The US won two medals in the Men's swimming final at around 22:15 local time (GMT - 08:00)--there is live news coverage of the event here. Dirc (talk) 05:26, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

You mean Phelps and Locte? That happened 3 hours ago. The "live" coverage being fed to the West coast of the US is actually a tape of the live coverage that was shown on the East Coast. Dragons flight (talk) 05:28, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

It looks like there's some double-counting from redundant sources, then. Hopefully the problem will be fixed before the error propagates too far :-/ Dirc (talk) 05:38, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Okay, as of right now the list matches the official Olympic list. Dragons flight (talk) 05:40, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

The Official Medal Count on the Beijing 2008 Olympics Website does not reflect that the US has additional medals. Also, no additional players are listed on the United States for these medals --Toolofthesystem (talk) 05:49, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Medal count incorrect

The medal count has an extra gold, silver, and bronze medal added to the US' count and an extra gold added to South Korea's count. This is blatant US-centrism editing. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.233.156.172 (talk) 05:34, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

See above section: editor error and assume good faith. And sign with the tildes. Kingnavland (talk) 05:39, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Why are there (as of this post) 14 bronze medals but only 12 gold and 12 silver? I thought for each event, equal numbers of medals were awarded. This is not a mistake in this article, as I see it is in the source, but an explanation might be useful.-gadfium 05:49, 10 August 2008 (UTC)