Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/1896 Summer Olympics

1896 Summer Olympics

Self-nomination. Jeronimo 19:40, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Comment It looks great but I think it might be worth mentioning where all those athletes stayed at. Revth 02:51, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
  • They stayed in hotels or with friends, like normal visitors or tourists. An Olympic Village didn't exist. I'll put it in the article somewhere. Jeronimo 07:53, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Added. Jeronimo 14:58, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• • Thank you and support. Revth 12:54, 8 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Support. Comments. Three references seems pretty thin. The 'Medal count' section refers to "all sources have the countries as listed below", which seems hard to justify with three. Besides, the IOC site gives a slightly different listing for the lat ones. Also why in the world is there a separate UK and AUS listing and then a combined one? If there were no gold medals awarded at all, why are gold, silver, and bronze listed in the table? Shouldn't that be silver, bronze and third place as the previous section seems to require? The IOC page in the external links has this exact conflict too. Clicking on the medal give the detail that a silver medal and an olive branch was given to the winner, and a copper medal to the second place. - Taxman 22:21, Mar 8, 2005 (UTC)

1) The sources listed are the most authorative I know of. The Official Report mentioned is the main source for most contemporary sources. Mallon & Widlund contains an overview of the most important other contemporary and later works, and contains verbatim copies of some of the most cited contemporary works. The work also discusses differences between sources in detail. All the other works I know of only contain short bits about the 1896 Games, usually based on the official report. I'll list some of these works in the further reading section. 2) I'll look into the medal table problem in more detail. Two things: the gold/silver/bronze thing is done for consistency with other articles, as mentioned in the text. I suppose I could change the listing to a more correct 1st/2nd/3rd heading. The Australia/UK combined listing (just like the Germany/UK one) is because one of the medals (well, a third place actually) was won by a combined team (a mixed double consisting of one Australian and one Brit). Some sources count one medal for both nations in such cases; others add a half medal to both. I found this method (used by Mallon&Widlund) to be the best. I'll add further explanation to the article about this . Jeronimo 08:03, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ok sounds good. If those are the best sources, so be it. And the changes to the table look good too. I guess you could also add that bit about why there are two combined listings. I bet I won't be the only one to wonder that. - Taxman 16:15, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

I've added footnotes about the shared medals, and listed two extra "further reading" works. Jeronimo 20:08, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Support Weak Object Substance good, but stylistically I believe this falls short. I made many changes, including the substantive one of naming Phidippides, and fixed several wiki-links. My "object" vote largely rests on the preponderance of dead-end links in the second half of the article. Minor point: Wouldn't the pictures look better on alternating sides? Sfahey 00:20, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the editing. I do, however, believe that the presence of red links is not a reason to object to this article; the absence of other articles is not a reason to object to this one, in my opinion. But I could fill (some of) the links with stubs, if that's what you really want. Do you have any other specific points you'd like me to address? Jeronimo 08:03, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. The criteria asks that an article be judged on its own merits, not on the existence or not of other articles. The only thing that needs to be avoided is linking to something that should not be an article for reasons such as lack of notability, being encyclopedic, etc. One could argue that perhaps some of the people linked are not that notable, but maybe they are, so it doesn't look like a real problem for this article. - Taxman 16:15, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

I've eliminated a few of the wiki-links, mostly on Greek athletes. Very little is known about them, and it seems very unlikely an encyclopaedic article can be written about them. If there is, I'm sure somebody will put the link back. I'll be adding stubs on Schuhmann and Boland shortly. Jeronimo 20:12, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Re the pictures: I like them as they are but, I'm not opposed to placing them on alternating sides. Go ahead and be bold ;-) Jeronimo 07:46, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

• Support - Great job! Nice use of summary style as well. :) --mav 02:16, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)
• Support--ZayZayEM 08:10, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)