# Talk:Eurovision Song Contest 1998

France did, in fact, use the violin section of the orchestra but as they did not bring a conductor of their own, no conductor was shown before their entry. On the other hand both Germany and Slovenia presented conductors despite using full backing tracks and no orchestra.
Wow I didnt know about that fact.I only knew that Belgium was singing on a backing track  —Preceding unsigned comment added by ChRis (talk • contribs) 03:56, 12 April 2008 (UTC) 

Finland is shown in the map as one of the countries that didn't participate in 1998. Finland actually participated that year. YuckieDuck (talk) 23:23, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I think the point of [1] was because the map still has a mistake a year later. Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 11:53, 21 May 2009 (UTC)
I admit that this is my fault, but earlier on today the map was finally corrected. :) -- [[ axg ⁞⁞ talk ]] 16:52, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

The score per song differ with the results given at [2]. I suppose those are correct? Miho (talk) 19:34, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Why FYR Macedonia and no Former Yougoslav Republic of Macedonia??This is the true and the real name!!!  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.71.240.43 (talk) 09:07, 16 April 2009 (UTC) 

'Former Yougoslav Republic of Macedonia' is simply to long for articles, 'FYR Macedonia' is accepted as the short form. -- [[ axg ⁞⁞ talk ]] 10:38, 16 April 2009 (UTC)
And why not FYROM??  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 94.71.240.43 (talk) 14:21, 16 April 2009 (UTC) 

Because that is not how the Contest writes it. Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 14:25, 16 April 2009 (UTC)

The chart says that Israel gave 12 points both to UK and Belgium. Impossible. They only gave it to the UK. Also, no country received 5 points from Israel. So, maybe that country is Belgium? Please someone fix this.. Vuk skywalker (talk) 15:17, 14 May 2009 (UTC)

Despite what it says on Eurovision.tv and other sites, Israel actually got 174 points and not 172, see this  YouTube video. -- [[ axg ⁞⁞ talk ]] 17:02, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

To address this, this occured when the Spanish votes were incorrectly calculated - their 12 points, which went to Israel, were in fact meant to go to Germany, however they were incorrectly calculated and Germany were not given their deserved 12 points on the night. This was corrected after the contest. Sims2aholic8 (Michael) (talk) 17:09, 16 May 2009 (UTC)
I've found it in the article, after looking closely. Thanks for the info, and they see the camera never lies. -- [[ axg ⁞⁞ talk ]] 17:28, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Is it worth detailing the postcards from 1998 - the Irish flag formed from the Tube Map, Spain
ish from a hot-dog, Dutch from television interference, that sort of thing? 78.86.102.100 (talk) 10:13, 17 July 2010 (UTC)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BzhTFL9gZ0s at 02:14:00 you can see Spanish votation, 12 to Israel, not 10.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.117.203.241 (talk) 04:27, 28 June 2012 (UTC) 

As the article explains, there was a mistake in the tally of the Spanish televote, and the mistake was corrected after the contest.Xelaxa (talk) 21:55, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

The lead is all wonky. Israel won the competition, but that information is no more than a passing comment in a paragraph about controversy. I missed it altogether on my first reading, and I had to scroll down to the fifth section to find out who won. On the other hand, there is a ton of information in the lead on the UK winning the 1997 contest, which should take up no more than eight words: "following the UK's win in the 1997 contest." The stuff about the G8 summit is given appropriate weight in the "Location" section, and should not be in the lead at all. There is far too much detail on participating countries. It takes up almost one-third of the lead, and at 104 words it is barely shorter than the corresponding paragraph in the "Participation" section. The end result is just a wall of words that left this reader utterly confused.  86.41.46.188 (talk) 10:23, 14 April 2015 (UTC)

@Nickolasemp and LexPro4: to clarify as WP:MOSMAC states: 

 -- AxG / ✉  22:32, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

We say on the page that 33 European countries showed the 1998 contest. We know that's accounting for the 25 participants plus four of the relegated countries (Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Denmark, and Iceland), since we know Italy and Russia didn't show the contest, and Yugoslavia, who were ineligible to compete. But that's thirty countries. Is there any way to know the other three?

@BugsFan17: One of these countries was Lithuania who, according to the broadcasters website, aired the contest on 15th May. I've added this to the article today. Not sure who the other 2 countries may be, providing the BBC source is correct as it was published before the contest took place. Fort esc (talk) 16:05, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
@Fort esc: Thank you! That's helpful. Call it a hunch, but I feel like Latvia might've shown it too, seeing as they were going to debut in 1999, but of course we can't add anything we don't know for sure.
@BugsFan17: According to this [3], Latvia did broadcast the 1998 and 1999 contests. Fort esc (talk) 17:44, 26 May 2020 (UTC)
@Fort esc: Thank you kindly! Will add that to the page. I suppose that means we only need one more country and we'll know all 33.

This review is transcluded from Talk:Eurovision Song Contest 1998/GA1. The edit link for this section can be used to add comments to the review.
Reviewer: OliveYouBean (talk · contribs) 09:41, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

G'day, seeing as this article's been waiting for a few months I figure it's about time someone reviewed it. I've already given it a quick read-through, gonna start adding comments in the next hour or so. OliveYouBean (talk) 09:41, 6 November 2022 (UTC)

So I've finished going through the criteria and making notes. Not everything that I've mentioned needs to be changed, I'm open to hearing why you think stuff should stay the same. The most urgent changes needed are:

The word-for-word quote I mention in my note on 2d.
The "self-published" book I mention in my note on 2b.
The inconsistency in the formatting of the references that I mention in my note on 2a.
The deadlinks in refs that I mention in my note on 2a.
The other notes also need attention, but like I said I'm open to hearing your point of view if you disagree on something I've said.
Thanks for all your work on the article! Hopefully it doesn't take long before it can be promoted. :) OliveYouBean (talk) 05:52, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

@OliveYouBean: Thanks for picking this up! I believe I've covered most of the points you raised above, and in particular your urgent changes which required attention. A few explanatory points below which should hopefully alleviate the remaining points above. Happy to collaborate further to get this over the line if you have any further questions.
I believe I've fixed any ref inconsistencies you mention. For the BBC/British Broadcasting Corporation references, some references refer to the BBC as a whole as it's either referencing a production or contest background information, whereas other references that refer to the BBC link to BBC News or the BBC Genome Project, which are separate divisions under those titles, and so it wouldn't make sense to expand the BBC to its full title in these instances in my opinion.
I don't appear to be having the same issue with accessing the deadlinks you are referring to in 2a. I tried different browsers on my PC as well as on my mobile device, and through the Wikipedia app, and in each case the links are working with no problems for me.
I made a few tweaks to the lead as you asked, including some restructuring and additional information as you resquested. However I think the current paragraph structure works well because it gives a more chronological view of the contest, and also keeps in line with the structure of the article, covering production, participating countries, the winner and results in that order, as it appears in the article itself.
On a few of the other changes you requested, e.g. the 12 points table, the "other awards" section, the broadcasts tables, these are aspects that are included in every Eurovision by year article, and so they have been included here in this format to ensure consistency across all of these articles. Typically there are more awards presented that are now shown in the "other awards" section, however in 1998 there was only the Barbara Dex award, and other awards which are now presented each year weren't yet conceived. The 12 points table is a long-standing feature of these articles and while it does duplicate information in the voting table, it's also a good graphical summary of each country's favourite act that year, which I believe many readers find beneficical. Likewise for the broadcast tables I believe the split is still quite useful to reinforce which countries were participating in a given contest and then which countries broadcast it as an elective. Happy to continue to discuss these points if you have further questions.
For Diggiloo Thrush, as a WikiProject we consider this site as generally reliable for the purpose of outlining languages. The website has also been used in other published works which would be considered reliable (e.g. here) which I believe adds credence to its general reliability.
If there are any other points that I haven't covered, please let me know, otherwise hopefully this is enough to get this article passed. Thanks again for your effort in a great review! Sims2aholic8 (talk) 11:00, 7 November 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for getting back to this so quickly! I'm happy with all the refs stuff and keeping the lead in chronological order like that does make sense. Also happy with Diggiloo Thrush being a reliable source with that info.
With the Barbara Dex Award section I would personally prefer that to be a level 1 heading, but I do understand wanting to keep the same headings across all the contest articles and I can't find anything in the MOS that specifically forbids sections with just one sub-section like that, so I'm happy with that too.
Happy with the broadcast tables staying separate, but I'm not so convinced on the 12 points table. The fact that it's been used in the other Eurovision articles doesn't really sway me, and neither does the argument that it helps people see which songs were each country's favourite because the 12 points are already bold in the points table for emphasis. I don't 100% want the table gone, but like I said it's not something I've seen done in the sources used for the article here. I'm not going to fail the article on this being included, but I think it should at least have a reference in that table to verify that the 12 points are all correct (even if it's just the same as a reference used in the detailed points table). OliveYouBean (talk) 01:48, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
@OliveYouBean: Thanks for your flexibility with these points! I've now added references to that table as suggested. I certainly understand your perspective on this, however I am somewhat hesitant to change the format this significantly across all articles. I've tried this before with other aspects of these articles and have subsequently had to revert the changes back to the original way to assuage public opinion. However removing the 12 points tables going forward is definitely something I will raise at a WikiProject level to determine if there is consensus in removing, because as you say it is somewhat duplication of effort when the 12 points are already bold in the table above. Hopefully for the time being this compromise is suitable to get this article now passed as GA. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 08:43, 8 November 2022 (UTC)
I'm happy to promote this now. Thank again for all your work on the article! :) OliveYouBean (talk) 01:27, 9 November 2022 (UTC)