A fact from Femke Bol appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know column on 7 December 2023 (check views). The text of the entry was as follows:
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Conflicting sources for Femke Bol's height lead to repeated corrections, and corrections thereof. This is my attempt to settle this. Four sources (that I consider relevant) define it as 1.84 m: newspapers de Volkskrant in 2020 (used on Dutch WP) and NRC in 2024, the Rome European Championships, and Eurosport. Only the Paris Olympics defines 1.80 m.
Additionally, Olympics.com is inaccurate about Lieke Klaver's height of 1.83 m, as 1.82 m is given by (again) de Volkskrant - which was verified in person by Dutch athletics Wikipedian @Piet.Wijkerlast year. It is backed up by this photo where Bol is at least as tall as Klaver, and likely a bit taller (I know... perspectives, neither is standing up completely straight... but it's a reasonable visual comparison).
So I think Olympics.com is inaccurate for Bol's height too, and local newspaper sources are more reliable here (backed up by the other international sources). Thus I applied the height change and hope that it'll be the last one. --Xymph (talk) 13:25, 31 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Two anonymous edits changed Bol's height in the infobox from 1.80 m to 1.84 m and these edits were reverted because the height no longer corresponded with the information in the referenced source with the first edit or had no source reference at all with the second edit, which are both not acceptable for a good article. I think it comes down to which sources for the height appear to be most reliable, because original research or guesswork based on a photo are not as suitable to resolve the issue of conflicting sources on Wikipedia.
The de Volkskrant article seems inaccurate about her weight and the Rome 2024 article seems inaccurate about when she started with athletics. The Eurosport and Olympics.com profiles are collections of facts that could have been based, at least in part, on Wikipedia. The NRC Handelsblad article discusses Bol's physique in detail and appears to be based on interviews with three of her coaches, so this source seems most reliable to me and this happens to be the one that is currently still referenced in the article. – Editør (talk) 11:49, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the feedback, @Editør. I understood your reverts and agreed with them, was just mentioning them as my motivation to find other, and more reliable, sources. I see the Volkskrant was dismissed as source for mentioning weight in the quote, and while that value would indeed be implausible in 2024, perhaps that editor missed that the article dates back to 2020 when Bol was 20 years old. The article mentions that at 15, she was "een heel dun meisje" (a very thin girl) and before 19 when she started hurdling, her legs were "veel te klunzig" (too clumsy). The NRC article mentions that after her growth spurt, she was "enorm slungelig" (extremely gangly). So 54 kg certainly seems plausible in 2020.
Anyway, I should have used a different Volkskrant quote ("Bol springt met haar lengte van 1.84 makkelijk over de hordes van 76 centimeter hoog") and not have drawn attention to the weight value, then the source wouldn't have been dismissed so casually, I reckon. Once full-grown as a (young) adult, people rarely loose height in four years time, so with both newspapers referencing 1.84m (as opposed to the previous 1.80m) they are equally valid as sources, IMHO. But I'm fine with the outcome that one source supports the height fact adequately. --Xymph (talk) 19:13, 17 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A quick followup: I mailed the NRC journalist last month about his source(s), and after returning from vacation he now confirmed that he indeed got Bol's height directly from one of her coaches. Also, Swedish WP sources another Dutch newspaper which wrote in 2020: "Met haar haar lengte van 1.84 meter gaat ze relatief gemakkelijker over de 0,76 meter hoge hekjes". So the Volkskrant was right back then too. --Xymph (talk) 14:59, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]
So no reason to change the height at this point. I would not recommend original research to gather information for writing articles on the English Wikipedia though. – Editør (talk) 19:24, 1 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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