Talk:Waiters' race

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On 26 December 2023, it was proposed that this article be moved from Waiters' Race to Waiters' race. The result of the discussion was moved.

This is a Hoax

This looks to be a 13-year-old hoax that somehow hasn't been deleted. Perhaps there are real "Waiter Races", but even if there are, this article doesn't contain any real information about them.

I have looked at all the citations and external links they're all broken links, and with one exception I believe none of them ever existed. There are links to AOL, Yahoo, and I think a French media company, they're all broken. I'm working off a mobile phone so I've not gone trawling through the Wayback machine to absolutely prove it all.

Then there's links that go to empty addresses, which are up for sale by domain squatters. For example: www.nationalwaitersday.com is supposedly the UK website for "national waiters day". Even if this existed, a UK address would be .co.uk and it wouldn't be a commercial .com address for a national day either.

The only one that seems to have ever truly existed was www.waitersrace.com, which did exist in 2010 when the page was set up. It's now defunct. A quick look shows it to be another joke. It was probably set up purely to be the primary citation for the hoax, but the owner got sick of paying for the site somewhere in the last thirteen years.

I've marked the page for deletion. I have never done that before, in fact I avoid getting involved in editing, but this was just too stupid to ignore. I thought marking for deletion was the best way to get an admin to look at this thing. 124.170.147.15 (talk) 21:44, 3 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

It's clearly not a hoax, as a cursory web search will show.

Jfire (talk) 02:26, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

"Perhaps there are real "Waiter Races", but even if there are, this article doesn't contain any real information about them."

That people worldwide engage in games based on some of the skills involved in waiting tables isn't surprising. But it certainly isn't "A Real International Event". People compete in three-legged races around the world, but that doesn't make it a "Real International Event", the way that say Formula 1 or the Olympics would be considered international events. It's not a sport with a global governing body.

International aside, I wouldn't call it a real event either: an event implies that it is significant, and that it is organized. There is no organization that auspices competitions, codifies rules, trains officials, etc. There are no athletes, amateur or professional, who compete in the event around the world. There's no leagues, series, championships, circuits, etc. People don't look up the results in the next day's paper or online, and follow their favorite athlete. These are just ad-hoc games that have some relationship to waiting tables. One of the photos is captioned "100M German Waiters Race" - as though there's a Men's 100M Waiters Race, with boys are training to take the title, become the German Men's 100M Waiters Race champion, and then go on to represent their country at the Olympics.

I suggest looking at the way three legged race or egg and spoon race is written, compared with this. This article isn't written in encyclopedic language, and it uses hyperbole - as well as pure earnestness in the title "Real International Event" - to try make "Waiter Races" sound... well... significant. A previous editor flagged this article for lacking notability, and I can see why, although I'd say it's no less notable than say wheelbarrow races, sack races, etc, all of which have their own stubs articles with years old notices about how they need to be improved on the top.

An example of the way the few short sentences in the article twist the truth, the last paragraph refers to "The Jerusalem Waiters Race" - but you can find on YouTube (Google the name) the exact interview that was apparently once cited here, and it more accurately refers to the "Grand Court Hotel Waiters Race". The city of Jerusalem didn't auspice the race, the way New York does for its marathon. Also the victor wasn't promoted to manager of the hotel, he was promoted to floor manager of the dining area.

We've also got: "Up-to-date, more than 724 waiters races in the world from the beginning have been listed by the International Waiters Race Community Website WaitersRace. And races are found every day." Again, no citation, but then it's obvious what the citation should be... if the site wasn't long defunct. And if creating a site to recording "Waiter Races" around the world, and then citing it, wasn't Original Research.

I flagged this as a potential candidate for deletion for good reason. It's so ridiculously earnest in its confabulation that I mistook earnestness for irony and thought it was a hoax, an attempt to make people think "Waiters Races" are, as it says "A Real International Event" complete with a website for its governance. The lack of citations is only one facet of the problems. A stub like this with "needs more citations" sitting at the top isn't likely to see any improvement. 124.170.147.15 (talk) 10:21, 4 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Requested move 26 December 2023

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Seawolf35 ^T--C 21:02, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Waiters' Race → Waiters' race – Can't see any need for capitalisation. GnocchiFan (talk) 14:35, 26 December 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. Lightoil (talk) 03:31, 3 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose It's capitalized in the majority of sources that I can find -- see the sources I posted in the prior thread, for example. I believe it's treated as a proper noun, similar to Olympic Games or Ironman Triathlon. Jfire (talk) 15:44, 26 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Support. Clearly not a proper name. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:02, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Support: Particular instances like "Soho Waiters Race" and "Bastille Day Waiters’ Race" (from the above section) are proper names, but the general concept is not. Cf. marathon vs Berlin Marathon. BegbertBiggs (talk) 18:50, 16 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.