User talk:85.165.200.37

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[edit] Flags and Athletics World Championshup results

Hi, I see you are adding the flags to the results of several of the Athletics World Championships pages. We had a disscusion about it a few days a go where we decided to delete the flags from the results themselves and just have them in the medals table. The discussion can be found on Talk:2005 World Championships in Athletics , if you want to discuss the changes further. Evil Eye 14:56, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Hi, it's possible that you have missed the notices at the top of the pages of the World AThletics Championships and that you have failed to see this message on this page. So I thought I'd just post here again to draw your attention to them and to the discussion page at Wikipedia talk:Flags in results tables for athletics (track and field). Would you be able to discuss things there before you ad any more flags to the pages? Evil Eye 17:27, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Hei, jeg er ikke sikker på om du kan snakke engelsk, men vi tror du kanskje snakker norsk. Har du sett notisen om å ikke legge til flere flagg til sidene nå? Kan du være så snill å prøve å diskutere dette her:Wikipedia talk:Flags in results tables for athletics (track and field) Før du legger til noen flere. Takk.

(The translation of the above goes something like...Hi, I'm not sure if you can speak English, but we think you might speak Norweigen. Have you seen the notice not to add any more flags to the pages for now? Could you please try and discuss this here: Wikipedia talk:Flags in results tables for athletics (track and field) before adding any more. Thanks) Evil Eye 18:47, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

Image:No symbol.png -> Wikipedia talk:Flags in results tables for athletics (track and field) (SEWilco 19:19, 4 August 2005 (UTC))

[edit] Your input is requested

Wikipedia talk:Flags in results tables for athletics (track and field)

At the page linked above is a discussion on if and how to incorporate flags into sporting event tables. Below is some of the discussion to date. Why don't you come and join in? We need to reach a consensus before we edit the tables.

Every thing below this line was the discussion as of Aug 7th

First, here is an example of the two styles that are being discussed with respect to the results tables.

Event:	Gold:		Silver:		Bronze:
5,000 m	Eamonn Coghlan Ireland	13:28.53	Werner Schildhauer East Germany	13:30.20	Martti Vainio Finland	13:30.34
10,000 m	Alberto Cova Italy	28:01.04	Werner Schildhauer East Germany	28:01.18	Hansjörg Kunze East Germany	28:01.26
Marathon	Rob de Castella Australia	2:10:03	Kebebe Balcha Ethiopia	2:10:27	Waldemar Cierpinski East Germany	2:10:37
3,000 m Steeplechase	Patriz Ilg West Germany	8:15.06	Boguslaw Maminski Poland	8:17.03	Colin Reitz Great Britain	8:17.75

I will reiterated that I think we should have flags in the medals table but NOT in the results table. My reasons are out lined above. David D. (Talk) 15:57, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Detract from readibility

The flags detract from the readability of the table of results according to tested principles of usability and information graphics. The major issue is that multiple (more than 3) colors pull the reader's eye every which way and distract from reading the text. A secondary issue is that readers are often familiar with only a few flags, so flags are less effective to communicate many-country information than text. I concur to not use flags in detailed results tables. I also empathize with the user who took the time and trouble to add the flags, having done work like this before, only to also find that it wasn't as effective. -- Sitearm^Talk 17:31, 2005 August 4 (UTC)

[edit] Flag issues

I see some issues, some in conflict, if flags are used here. I'll list them below. (SEWilco 16:14, 5 August 2005 (UTC))

• The athlete's name should come before the name of the country.
• Having the flag separated from the name of the country seems somewhat undesirable.
• For Olympic events, another option for country identification is the IOC three letter abbreviations.
• Flags at the start of an entry create a consistent appearance, as opposed to the various placement following the variable-length text.
• Flags allow visual scanning for specific nations, but is easier if flags are in consistent locations.
• Flags, and country name|abbreviation, could be in a separate column.
• Another way to find specific country entries is similar to footnotes in the article Jew#Notes, where individual entries are linked to, in this case, a note for each country which has backlinks up to each individual mention of the country.

These are all good points. A possible compromise is to add the flags before the country name. In this way they are in the same location and with the country name. For example, the style could be similar to one of the options below:

Event:	Gold:		Silver:		Bronze:
Marathon	Rob de Castella Australia	2:10:03	Kebebe Balcha Ethiopia	2:10:27	Waldemar Cierpinski East Germany	2:10:37
3,000 m Steeplechase	Patriz Ilg West Germany	8:15.06	Boguslaw Maminski Poland	8:17.03	Colin Reitz Great Britain	8:17.75

Event:	Gold:		Silver:		Bronze:
Marathon	Rob de Castella AUS	2:10:03	Kebebe Balcha ETH	2:10:27	Waldemar Cierpinski GDR	2:10:37
3,000 m Steeplechase	Patriz Ilg FRG	8:15.06	Boguslaw Maminski POL	8:17.03	Colin Reitz GBR	8:17.75

I still think this looks a bit cluttered and agree with the comments made by Sitearm above. Specifically, "The major issue is that multiple (more than 3) colors pull the reader's eye every which way and distract from reading the text". With regard to the country names, that is another issue of style that we have discussed and decided to go with the long names since they are unambiguous, whereas a flag and three letter abbreviation can still leave you unsure of the countries name. David D. (Talk) 17:17, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Hey, I was just reading the discussion here and I'd like to show you the format that has been used on the 2005 World Aquatics Championships page. I think it worked quite well, perhaps you would consider using a similar style for athletics pages as well. Javacava | leave a message! 14:50, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

If a country abbreviation is used, it can be linked to the country's Article. This lets people check the meaning, and in some browsers a mouseover the link will display the article name. USA (SEWilco 17:11, 6 August 2005 (UTC))

Trying separate country columns. Notice that the browser deals with adjusting the number of lines needed for an entry. (SEWilco 17:11, 6 August 2005 (UTC))

Event:	Gold:			Silver:			Bronze:
Marathon	Rob de Castella	Australia	2:10:03	Kebebe Balcha	Ethiopia	2:10:27	Waldemar Cierpinski	East Germany	2:10:37
3,000 m Steeplechase	Patriz Ilg	West Germany	8:15.06	Boguslaw Maminski	Poland	8:17.03	Colin Reitz	United Kingdom	8:17.75

Event:	Gold:			Silver:			Bronze:
Marathon	Rob de Castella	Australia	2:10:03	Kebebe Balcha	Ethiopia	2:10:27	Waldemar Cierpinski	East Germany	2:10:37
3,000 m Steeplechase	Patriz Ilg	West Germany	8:15.06	Boguslaw Maminski	Poland	8:17.03	Colin Reitz	Great Britain	8:17.75

Hi SEWilco, I've been playing with the mouse over technique and that works very well. Using those templates it is possible to use the three letter code and yet see the full country name by mousing over the flag or the name!! This seems like a great compromise and could be uitlised in one of the two formats below. I'm still of the 'no flag' tendancy but if we do have a flag either one of the styles below would work well. The second of the two is my favoured choice and this also is compatible with the 2005 World Aquatics Championships, although, they do use the full names without taking advantage of the 'mouse over' templates.

Event:	Gold:			Silver:			Bronze:
Marathon	Rob de Castella	AUS	2:10:03	Kebebe Balcha	ETH	2:10:27	Waldemar Cierpinski	GDR	2:10:37
3,000 m Steeplechase	Patriz Ilg	FRG	8:15.06	Boguslaw Maminski	POL	8:17.03	Colin Reitz	GBR	8:17.75

Event:	Gold:		Silver:		Bronze:
Marathon	Rob de Castella AUS	2:10:03	Kebebe Balcha ETH	2:10:27	Waldemar Cierpinski GDR	2:10:37
3,000 m Steeplechase	Patriz Ilg FRG	8:15.06	Boguslaw Maminski POL	8:17.03	Colin Reitz GBR	8:17.75

I just want to point out the style differences that are being discussed here with respect to User talk:85.165.200.37 who is continuing to add flags to Olympic, European and World championship pages. I am of the opinion that we will be using the mouse over style templates GBR {{flag|GBR}} as above. The format that is being used by User talk:85.165.200.37 is the following Great Britain [[Image:Flag of the United Kingdom.svg|20px]] Great Britain. While they look the same at first appearance the flag using the template has infomation regarding the full country name (mouse over) as well as providing a link to the country in question.

The other style issue is with regard to the location of this information. I think the examples above represent two alternatives. An advantage of having an extra colomn for the flag is that the flag colours are retricted to that colomn. This is good if you want to scan the name colomn since the flag do not compete with the names. Despite what I have said above, I am now leaning towards a three column table with one specifically for flags. I think this may work the best on a full size table. David D. (Talk) 19:47, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Thinking some more, if the flag colomn is moved before the athletes name it is possible to scan the name and time without making eye contact with a flag. This would be preferable for people like me, since all I care about is the athletes name and time. The nationality is not as important.

Event:	Gold:			Silver:			Bronze:
Marathon	AUS	Rob de Castella	2:10:03	ETH	Kebebe Balcha	2:10:27	GDR	Waldemar Cierpinski	2:10:37
3,000 m Steeplechase	FRG	Patriz Ilg	8:15.06	POL	Boguslaw Maminski	8:17.03	GBR	Colin Reitz	8:17.75

Having the flag first does seem to make the text flow together, so does have a different appearance. I happen to like it. There may be an issue with apparent priority of having athlete or country first. However, I'll also note that the proposal is oriented toward competitions with national teams. Although some sports don't have national teams, the nationality of competitors is quite visible. Several major auto racing series are examples. (SEWilco 04:33, 7 August 2005 (UTC))

I experimented putting the flag after the time but it did not scan well. My tendancy is to look for the result on the far right and the flag interferred with that. With regard to auto sports I presume that colomn could be used for their car number or team name. David D. (Talk) 12:48, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

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