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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted by Karanacs 15:08, 14 September 2010 [1].

Winter Olympic Games

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Winter Olympic Games (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): H1nkles (talk) citius altius fortius 16:06, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured article because in the previous FAC nomination the article received a degree of support but was not promoted due to a legitimate object for content reasons. I've addressed the content concerns raised and gave the article some time to breathe. I'd like to renominate it for FA consideration with the hope that it is worthy of the star. H1nkles (talk) citius altius fortius 16:06, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

    • I find this sentence a bit confusing: "The Games were held every four years from 1924 until 1940 when they were interrupted by World War II. The Winter and Summer Games resumed in 1948 and were held in the same year until 1992, when the Games were placed on separate four-year cycles."
    • The images on the page might be visually improved if they alternated sides, and if people were facing the text.
    • Is it necessary to mention every Olympic Games in the history section? It seems odd that each Games is given equal treatment, rather than focusing on important moments. For example the boycotted 1980 Games. Why does that paragraph only mention boycott "rumors", rather than the actual boycott? If the history section is going to discuss all games, would it be possible to integrate the "List of games" at the bottom into this section? I'm uncertain how this section is subdivided. I would like to see more discussion of trends during different time periods, like the number of athletes, participating countries, or number of sports.
  • There was significant debate as to whether the history section required a synopsis of each Games. See here and here for thoughts that trend towards keeping the history as is.
  • I've added info on the 1980 boycott.
  • I'm reticent to move the list up to this section. I think that would break up the prose and signficantly impact the readability of the article. I'd like to hear what others think of this idea.
  • I've sprinkled participation statistics into the history section at five different Games to show progression. More could be added if deemed necessary. H1nkles (talk) citius altius fortius 22:23, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • This is unsourced: "Brundage's concerns proved prophetic. The IOC has charged more for television broadcast rights at each successive Games.", as is this: "The more television companies have paid to televise the Games, the greater their persuasive power with the IOC."
    • Why is the 1992 switch to occurring in off-years to the summer Olympics discussed under the "commercialization" section rather than the "history"? I think it should be moved, but I can see that the motivations for the switch were commercial.
  • There are two sentences in the history section about this switch. I intentionally kept the information here brief so as not to duplicate information found later. It is further discussed in the commercialization section because as you point out, many of the motives for the change were financial. H1nkles (talk) citius altius fortius 20:13, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
    • This is unsourced: "The process for awarding host city honours came under intense scrutiny after Salt Lake City had been awarded the right to host the 2002 Games. Soon after the host city had been announced it was discovered that the organisers had engaged in an elaborate bribery scheme to curry favour with IOC officials"
    • This is unsourced, and the first two sentences are out of place: "Hosting an Olympic Winter Games leaves a significant mark on the community after the Games are finished. This impact is felt for years afterwards. Until recently the cost of hosting the Games was assumed by the host nation."
    • Unsourced: "The organisers claimed that the cost of extending bullet train service from Tokyo to Nagano was responsible for the huge price tag"
  • Looking through the article again, I have a few more questions, which are less nitpicky this time:
    • When cities are mentioned as hosts, should the host country also be mentioned? As in "Sochi, Russia". This is inconsistent, which is not necessarily bad, but deserves attention.
  • Ok so here's what I did, I added the country name to each reference to the city in the history section. If there were duplicative references to the same city I used my discretion. I did not add any more country names to cities after the history section because the reader can refer back to the history section if s/he has a question about the city name, also several of the city references are in the format of, "the Grenoble Games", or "the Turino Games". It is cumbersome to put a country name in this context. Let me know what you think.
    • Should the commercialization section be moved inside the controversy section? It seems like it's given undue weight as its own section, but it's not necessarily a controversy either.
  • I'm not sure, I don't want to give it undo weight, I've trimmed it down but if it is still unbalancing the article I would prefer to shorten the section. It could be seen as a controversy though since much has been written both in support of and criticising the IOC's push for financial investment in the Games. I'll reread the section and see if it fits.
  • Ok, I've moved "Commercialisation" into the controversy section. I'm fine with that as it has generated quite a bit of controversy though that isn't explicitly stated in the section. I may add a sentence or two about that to help it fit within the context. Thanks for the suggestion. H1nkles (talk) citius altius fortius 17:21, 27 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your review, I appreciate your efforts to critique the article. I've worked through your suggestions and would like to know your thoughts at this point. H1nkles (talk) citius altius fortius 22:23, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Otherwise, sources look okay, links checked out with the link checker tool. Ealdgyth - Talk 23:56, 24 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comment – Good to see such a comprehesive article - detailing each games. Aaroncrick TALK 03:48, 25 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comments There are some issues in the refs. Mixture of NJ, New Jersey, UK and expansions. I think they should be expanded as it shouldn'e be assumed etc. Also in the links, there is a style of only shorthanding "Jones (2004)" etc and then plugging the page number off the end of the tag; except in some cases, the book title is listed seperately in repeats. Also there are cases where the book is linked to, but no page given, eg several of the 27s linking to "Judd 2008" don't have a page hanging off the end YellowMonkey (new photo poll) 02:18, 27 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thank you, Yellowmonkey, for jumping in, I was hoping you'd return to review this article again. I'll expand the abbreviations. Regarding the books/page number issue, someone had reformatted some of the books in this way and I didn't know if this was a new requirement in formatting book refs. The contributor didn't do it for all the books so I tried to finish the job though personally I like having the page number in the ref rather than shorthanding it. I think I will convert all the book refs back to the way they were, keep it all consistent. H1nkles (talk) citius altius fortius 15:49, 27 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Ok, I have expanded the abbreviations and I pushed all the page numbers into the reference rather than having them hang off the in-line citation. I like that format better anyway. Please advise if it is consistent with FA criteria and works within the article. H1nkles (talk) citius altius fortius 17:12, 27 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Comments – Reviewed through the history section last time; now to tackle what's left...

  • Controversy: "The results of the investigation were the expulsion of 10 IOC members and another 10 members were sanctioned". I think this would read better as "the expulsion of 10 IOC members and sanctioning of another 10".
  • Done
  • Sports: "Through the years, the number of sports and events conducted at the Winter Olympic Games have increased." Since "have" is referring to the number of sports, it should probably be the singular "has" instead.
  • Done
  • Replace "Whilst" with "While" here; it's a shade simpler. Plain isn't always bad.
  • Done
  • Discontinued sports and demonstration events: "by having an competition without granting medals." "an" → "a".
  • Done
  • Are there actually any discontinued sports? If not, why is the title the way it is?
  • Done

*Support - Prose looks good to me. ceranthor 14:37, 9 September 2010 (UTC) Abstaining from FAC at this point. I know I'm in no place to sit here disagreeing with Tony, and I intend to come back when this article's prose is tightened. ceranthor 12:53, 12 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose—Problems in the prose, just in the lead. The whole article needs an independent copy-edit; a careful one.

  • "The Winter Olympic Games are a winter multi-sport event held every four years, starting in 1924." Anyone else get a past/present juddering in this opening sentence ("starting")?
  • Then the dramatic statement that it consists of winter sports? Why not work this into the opening sentence; in fact, the opening needs to be rewritten.
  • I'll take a stab at the opening to address the above two bullets.
  • "Other events have been added as the Games have progressed"—the last word is vague. (Do you mean "as time went on", or something like that?)
  • I mean it mostly in the sense of evolution.
  • Rather than an apparent dictionary-term link piped to "demonstrate", why not use the real name in the link ("demonstration sports")?
  • good suggestion.
  • Just a personal thing: "Prior to" could be plainer as "Until then,". Ah, but we don't want anything at the start of that sentence—the time thing occurs a second later.
  • I'll remove "prior to" and put in the Summer Olympic years that figure skating and ice hockey were contested.
  • "Very"? They say it's usually very redundant.
  • removed
  • Links to that list of country-names: readers need to know that they aren't just the useless country links—that they actually lead to valuable, specific articles. Can you unlink and use those links, explicitly, further down? They are totally wasted in their deceptive form. Tony (talk) 15:42, 10 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]
  • Interesting thought, I've never run across this criticism before. I could spell them out a little bit, I just felt that piping to the country name would unclutter the prose and remove some redundancy. I certainly didn't intend it to be deceptive. I'm a strong advocate of not linking to generic country names so I'll see what I can do.

Image issues:

  • File:1956 Winter Olympics opening ceremonies.jpg: The disputed PD-Italy is for simple photos. I do not consider this a simple photo; the photographer certainly had to decide where to position himself to capture the ceremony, effectively presenting the event in an artistic manner suitable for a newspaper or report.

These two image issues should be resolved before promotion. The other images are verifiably in the public domain or appropriately licensed. Jappalang (talk) 03:49, 13 September 2010 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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