Talk:All-time Olympic Games medal table/Archive 1

message: Please do not add medals from the 2006 Torino games until a final tally has been made. This will make it easier to add in later. Thanks! --Jared 20:37, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  NOTE 

message: The information on this page is NOT accurate; however, the information on both the Winter Olympics page and the Summer Olympics pages is accurate. It is important that the data be accurate as soon as possible! Someone, could you please total the data from the two above pages to get the real total medals for each country? Thanks --Jared 00:44, 17 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The information has been updated. It is now accurate. --Jared 20:36, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  This page is not factually accurate! 

message: I have started a spreadsheet for a table, but it is too cumbersome to do the whole thing by myself. If a few people could work on it to get it complete, that would be great. The xls spreadsheet is uploaded to wikipedia as:
Image:Olympic_Medals2.xls
Thanks for helping! Remember to resave any changes you make back onto wikipedia!--Jared 13:20, 30 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup 

message: ATTENTION: There seems to be a problem: this page, denoting all-time winter olympic medals, and the summer page, show more medals than the combined list of olympic medals. I would like to bring this to the attention of someone who is willing to find out where the problem is; redistribute the medals (based too on the current games) on this page, the all time summer page, and the total medals page; and possibly create three new pages with this data because these pages are important and the way they are now (dis-similar formatting), it is hard to follow. Thank you for your time! —Jared 14:06, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't understand why this page is up for deletion. I blatently stated in the talk section above that there is a problem with the accuracy of this and that it should be fixed. You shouldn't just go around and try to delete things if you havn't read the discussion page! —Jared 16:14, 12 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Math Problem 

message: Adding the figures from the Winter and Summer Olympics all-time medal charts, I was able to correct the country totals on the combined chart. Please feel free to double and triple check the totals as I did most of it earlier this morning. --Caponer 16:18, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Thank you very much. It was important that this was done! --Jared 17:26, 18 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Corrected Country Totals 

message: Since there are relatively few Winter Olympics medals, adding Summer and Winter medals yields a huge bias towards the Summer games. The whole thing looks like a US-patriotic stunt and should be deleted.
:Medalstats, no matter which way you slice it, the US is always going to fall within the top five of any all-time medals list. It is not a "US-patriotic stunt", the list is meant to show how many medals all nations have won since the conception of the Modern Olympic movement. Your statement lacks the acknowledgement of the fundamental fact that the Winter and Summer Games are one in the same, they are both Olympic Games administered by the IOC and many do not see them as separate entities. As I was correcting the total for each and every country represented on the list, I was improving the list so that readers could see the entirity of medals won by participating countries not usually thought of as having many medals. To disreguard this list because someone doesn't like the nation at the top isn't enough for it to be deleted. This talk page exists so that we can better organize this list, not simply throw it away. --Caponer 20:21, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Combining Summer and Winter Games Seems Ridiculous 

message: All Summer and Winter Olympics combined: 
USSR/GUS won the total medal count 15 times, USA 13 times, Germany (East+West) 10 times
The USA won the gold count 16 times, USSR/GUS 15 times, Germany (East+West) 8 times
In case this page doesn't get deleted, I'd suggest something like this:
Medal count victories: Considering all Winter and Summer Olympics, the USSR/GUS won the total medal count 15 times (despite relatively few participations), the USA 13 times, Germany (East+West) 10 times, Norway 6 times. Greece, France, the UK, and Sweden won once each.
:I wanted to take this opportunity to make a point that I and other contributors to this list have also been accused of Cold War bias against the former states of the Soviet bloc (USSR, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, etc). I wanted to stress that medal counts are based on the recognized participating individual Olympic Committees at the time of each Olympic Games (Winter and Summer). To carve up the Soviet Union like it never existed and give the medals to its descendant republics to better represent them would be unfair and uncalled for since they did not compete under their own recognized Olympic Committees during the time of the Soviet Union. West and East Germany each won medals under own individual Olympic Committees, so it would, again, be wrong to just add their numbers together like West and East Germany never competed separately. --Caponer 20:38, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I totally agree with this. Even though these entites are currently either separated or combined as one, the medals should still be counted toward the nation that won them, whether it be a one shot municipality or not. Now I see where you're coming from when you say that since they are not active anymore, then they will move further and further down the list. Obviously this is true, and I don't know how to provide a solution to this. Maybe we could do a "medals per person" thing where  you find a percentage based on the number of medals a country has and the population of that country. or something similar to that. Regardless, each nation that participated should be separate. Just think: If you were a West Germanian who participated in the olympics, would you want to be placed with the East Germanians just for sake of "it looks better on paper"? --Jared  [T]/[C]\[P:O]/[@]\[+] 21:30, 20 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I agree with that suggestion. You should make mention of your proposal on Wikipedia:Olympic conventions and join the conversation! --Caponer 00:50, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  But if You Insist, Combine Medal Count Wins Too 

message: I was curious as to what all interested parties in this list thought about the inclusion of the Intercalated Games in this all-time medals tally. When correcting the numbers based on the Winter and Summer Olympic Games all-time lists, I didn't realize that I was including the Intercalated Games, and being that they are not counted as official by the IOC, they shouldn't be included. I feel we should make an official decision on the matter of whether or not these medals should be included and then hold individual audits of the list to make sure the numbers add up correctly once the Intercalated medals have been omitted. --Caponer 20:31, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  1906 Intercalated Games 

message: After viewing Medalstats' excellent idea of adding the number of both total medal and gold medal wins for each Olympic Games, I thought we could also find a consensus on how and where to list these results. After going through the various Olympic Games medal tallies, I found the following results so I am open to a discussion on how to resolve the differences between our two findings. The medal count wins should conform to the overall all-time medals list. In keeping with the participating nations on the medals list, this is how it would read: 
Total medal count victories in both the Winter and Summer Olympic Games are as follows: USSR with 14, USA with 13, Norway with 7, Germany with 4, Sweden with 2, and East Germany, France, Great Britain, Greece, Switzerland, and the 1992 United Team with 1. 
Gold medal count victories in both the Winter and Summer Olympic Games are as follows: USA with 16, USSR with 13, Norway with 7, Germany with 3, and East Germany, Finland, France, Great Britain, Russia, Sweden, and the 1992 United Team with 1.
Finland and Norway tied in gold medals with 4 each at the 1924 Winter Olympics. Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland tied for medal count victory with 10 medals each in the 1948 Winter Olympics and Norway and Sweden tied in gold medals with 4 each. The United Team cannot technically be added with the USSR because Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania competed independently in the 1992 Summer Olympics and the United Team only consisted of Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan at the 1992 Winter Olympics. --Caponer 22:11, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Go here to debate these conventions. --Jared  [T]/[C]\[P:O]/[@]\[+] 22:32, 20 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Medal Count Wins 

message: I would like to propose East/West/Germany be all combined in the tally. And it can have a * and in the buttom stating "Germany incudes East and West Germany medals as well" 
Now I saw this [] - but the USSR and Germany situation are 2 totally different things. Where in USSR, the country split, so it makes sence to for the medals not to be merged together. But Germany is different, since the country united, not split.  Chaldean 16:40, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Just thought I'd let you know, there is already a vote in progress on this subject here: Wikipedia:Olympic conventions#Medals of nations that have since split up (USSR) or united (West/East Germany)  should be redistributed.--Josilot 16:50, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  "Medals of nations that have since split up (USSR) or united (West/East Germany) should be redistributed." <--- as I stated earlier, this is not right. The USSR and Germany situation are totally two different situations, and they should have 2 different polls. One split, the other united. Chaldean 19:40, 21 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As Josilot previously stated, this topic is being discussed in Wikipedia:Olympic conventions. If you feel it deserves its own sub-section within the Olympic conventions discussion, please do so accordingly. The point of the discussion is to come up with standard concensus on all conventions relating to Olympic Gamed medal tallies. --Caponer 02:46, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  East Germany/West Germany/Germany 

message: A table ordered by total medals is needed
:No, not until the Wikipedia:Olympic conventions debate on table format has been resolved. Please help decide now! --Jared  [T]/[+] 00:26, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Second table needed 

message: *All previous conversations and discussion up to February 22, 2006 have been archived. Current issues dealing with Olympic conventions and medal charts should be taken to Wikipedia:Olympic conventions. Until users and contributors reach a concensus on Olympic conventions, Wikipedia:Olympic conventions will serve as the appropriate venue for debates and discussions. I repeat, please post there until these matters are resolved. --Caponer 02:51, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[Wikipedia:Olympic conventions]] 

message: Apparently a bunch of US patriots is determined to make the US look much better than it deserves. In fact, a
recent total medal count makes the US look twice as good as the USSR and other rarely participating nations, exploiting the fact that the US has been a single political entity since the first Olympics in 1896, while the USSR never participated before 1952 and does not even exist any more. However, the USSR beat the US almost every time both nations participated (Winter total medal count victories: USSR vs USA 9:0, Summer: 6:2, Total: 15:2).
Actually: Summer games would be 7:2 If you include the Unified Team which is basically USSR under a different name.
 
This ridiculous US bias overturns conventional wisdom about the athletic prowess of nations. One preliminary way of improving this would be to insert an extra column listing how often the various political entities really took part in the games, to make clear that such tables are really comparing apples and oranges. In addition, there should be a separate table stating the number of medal count victories per nation in relation to how often they participated. Medalstats 10:32, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The paragraph on "US bias" is way too combative, and the overuse of bold makes it look like plain ranting.  It doesn't even fit Wikipedia style since the "Criticism of misleading US bias" should be a subject heading but instead it's just a sentence fragment in bold.  Then the "Don't delete this" in parentheses is jarring.  You could tone the paragraph way down, but, even if you did that, this page isn't about documenting which nations are "better" than others: it's just about tallying the total medal count.  That's it.  And it's doing that.  Anything comparisons you make between two nations is your own busineess.  I don't see any reason to include a "Don't let the numbers fool you: the USSR totally rules the US" section.  You could make another article where you compare those medal counts, and your ideas of making newer tables that take smaller, more related windows of data is of merit, but I'd suggest putting those on new articles and linking to them from here, but keep the "Total Olympics medal count" article to just that: the total Olympics medal count.  These is just plain, raw data: no US bias went into compiling it. Paulb42 12:41, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Another small issue of bias that Australian's are a little bit sensitive about when it comes to total tallies is the amount of population in each country. The reason for this is a country like ours never stands a chance at topping even an individual Olympics medal tally let alone the grand total despite participating in a large number of games. Yet for example at the Sydney Olympics we won roughly 1 medal per 300,000 inhabitants while the USA, who topped the tally won a medal per 3,000,000 inhabitants. I am not suggesting including the population of each country but perhaps a list of the population to medal ratios over time ... if someone actually has enough time to collate such a table.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Senor Freebie (talk • contribs) 16:18, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Total Medal Count Turns Reality Upside Down: US Bias Makes US Look Better Than USSR etc. 

message: The ideal, much more informative and interesting solution would be a table with all nations listed on both dimensions, for each pair of nations providing the score: how often did one beat the other in the total medal count when both participated? For example, the score for USSR vs USA would be 15:2. The score for USA vs East
Germany would be 4:7. But the table would also provide many other interesting scores such as France vs UK etc. Former fragments of nations that split up or united should be listed separately, but their combined scores
should also be given, since many are interested in this type of information. Similar tables should be created for pure gold counts and for scores restricted to Summer and Winter Games. Anybody feeling up to the challenge? Medalstats 10:32, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Let's Create a Table Providing the Medal Count Scores For All Pairs of Nations 

message: Under the 1904 games a Mixed Team (ZZX) is listed as having a gold and silver, but they aren't on this chart, where should they go Mbisanz 06:37, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Currently, the Summer, Winter, and total Olympics medal count pages show the actual teams who won the mixed medals, rather than crediting them to ZZX.  They don't give them to those countries' individual ranks, but rather to new entities which represent the various mixed teams, and lists which countries were involved in each.  That is why there are things in the table such as "Australia/New Zealand" and "Ireland/United States."  There is currently a propostion to use NOCs (National Olympic Committees) as the only criteria for medal tables.  By doing this, Mixed Team (ZZX) would show up on the tables instead of things such as "Ireland/U.S."  Olympic conventions/topics is the page where that propostion is located, so please check it out if you would like to comment. King nothing 2 05:27, 6 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  ZZX 

message: └ UkPaolo/talk┐ 15:12, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletion 

message: Would anyone else be interested in assisting me with recounting each and every one of these totals, I corrected them using the all-time medal counts for the Winter and Summer Olympic Games, but they still do not seem to add up. With a couple of people we could have this done in no time! It needs a good audit. --Caponer 15:53, 24 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number Tallies Audit 

message: Should Ceylon and Sri Lanka not be considered one and the same? Only the name and form of government of the country changed, for all other intents and purposes it is one, continuously existing, entity.--Kalsermar 18:48, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ceylon/Sri Lanka 

message: It looks like to me that section has just as much of a POV as is claimed for the list. Maybe it'd be best to add a column that has the number of Olympics each country has participated in. That way you don't have the "this country dominates this other county" type of text but you'd still get a sense of the levels of participation. Rx StrangeLove 19:00, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, as long as this survived AFD, it's here for now so let's not edit war over it. It seems like a pretty basic type list to me, a list of total medals. If there are concerns about some countries being lower on the list because of a lower level participation it won't be fixed by singling only a few of them. To be fair we should be able to judge the effect this has on all countries. So I think a separate column listing the number of appearances each has will allow readers to judge for themselves. Rx StrangeLove 03:03, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Agree with RxStrangeLove.  Any presentation of statistical data has an inherent framework bias, this one is no exception.  Providing data to help understand that bias is far more helpful than providing no information whatsoever.  --Joe Decker 17:08, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

text: I was going to copy this over to the talk page (from the article) but I see it's here already. Comments about the editing process don't belong on the main article page. Rx StrangeLove 22:55, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Also, this article as survived a deletion debate (there's a AFD notice up the page a little)...so the only debate is if another column should be added. To me it makes sense for another one to be added but if there isn't consensus for it then there's not much to be done I guess. An alternative wold be another list with the totals displayed another way. Whether that would get past a AFD nomination is anyones guess. Rx StrangeLove 23:10, 26 February 2006 (UTC)

text: Actually, if you count valid contributor's votes it is about 9/9 but the quality of the arguments (I say, but then again I may be biased) is heavily against the proposal. I'll state again, there is nothing biased about a simple addition of numbers. The years in brackets you did for the USSR would be fine and by looking at the years (1952-1988 in this case) readers can already see how often the country participated. Are you going to add these to all countries? --Kalsermar 20:50, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Unlike total medal count pages for SO/WO, this one has not direct links to any country's "participations page" at Olympics, which still makes me feel, that the column would be appropriate here, while probably would not in SO/WO pages. As for years for other countries, I am not going to add them, because I don't have enough information. However, for me, USSR's case is the most irritating the eyes, mostly due to its high rank, late Olympic entry and defunct nature. Perhaps they should also be necessary for other defunct states. So, I think, that either years would stay there and be added for other defunct states, or appropriate note(s) added. Cmapm 22:07, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Well, I went and added years for W/E Germany's, I took them from IOC's medal page for Munich Olympics, please, correct me if I'm not right. Two more defunct teams - United Team of Germany and Unified Team have direct links to their "participations pages". Cmapm 22:18, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism of bias section 

message: I would like to inform any person willing to do this that the 1906 intercalated games medals should be removed from this page and the summer medals page, per the consensus of the Wikipedia community, which can be viewed here. This shouldn't be a big project, and I would appreciate any person willing to do this. If you really feel helpful, mayber make sure that all of the numbers on these pages are correct. Thanks for your help! --Jared  [T]/[+] 21:14, 1 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Re: 1906 Intercalated games 

message: These is obviously something wrong with the data on the 3 totals pages, as I was just checking the US totals to see if they add up and they don't: 218+2190=2408, not 2539. And the issue of whether or not someone has taken out the 1906 intercalated games is still a factor. I don't want to list this as unfactual information, but I might eventually have to so that someone will take up the job of retallying the medals. Its a big job, so I would appreciate anyone who would do it, or atleast part of it. Thanks. --J@red [T]/[+] 19:52, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Adding up the toals for the USA on the individual medalcount pages for each olympics minus the 1906 games yields 2437 total medals. InformationPlease.com agrees with this.--Kalsermar 20:23, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ok, so maybe just the total counts need to be re-adjusted. If all of the smaller tables are right, then the problem is probably that there are adding mistakes, inclusion of the 1906 games, etc. I don't know... --J@red [T]/[+] 21:27, 12 March 2006 (UTC)

text: Hmm, well I just added them up myself, using a pretty foolproof method, and got different totals for the USA Summer medals.  I'm pretty sure mine are right because I copy and pasted the entire table for each year (using the IOC site's tables), and then used a spreadsheet function to add all of the USA numbers.  I got 896 golds, 692 silvers, and 603 bronzes (Summer Olympics).  King nothing 2 01:04, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: That's exactly the process I used, so one of us must have cut&pasted wrong! :)  I've updated United States at the Summer Olympics to show all the medal totals from my spreadsheet, so please let me know if you see the discrepancies.  I did see a couple of mismatches in Wikipedia when I was re-checking the US totals.  The top 10 table at 1900 Summer Olympics did not match the full table at 1900 Summer Olympics medal count, and ditto for 2004 Summer Olympics and 2004 Summer Olympics medal count.  They all match the IOC totals now -- as far as I can tell!  Andrwsc 04:48, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Your 1904 numbers seem to be wrong (as do Wikipedia's).  King nothing 2 05:02, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, so they are!  I wonder if the table at the IOC website was updated recently, because that's where I got the data for my spreadsheet a few weeks ago.  I shall update the appropriate Wikipedia pages (including the 1904 pages).  Thanks!  Andrwsc 05:32, 29 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Incorrect data 

message: The Saarland participated 1952 in Helsinki under the code of "SAA", it won no medals tho. Should it be added?
Saar_at_the_1952_Summer_Olympics —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.169.173.166 (talk • contribs) 
:None of the nations who have never won any medals appear on this list.  Why should Saarland be the lone exception? Andrwsc 14:35, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: How about Olympic spirit? In German, its "Dabeisein ist alles" (participation is everything). Of course it not only applies to Saarland, but to all members of the Olympic family. Eddie the Eagle, Jamaica bobsleigh etc. won no medal but sympathies. There are about 200 countries in the world, so the list with 130 entries would not grow that much, as I doubt Vatican will ever take part. There is a :Category:Nations at the Olympics, but no list it seems. -- Matthead discuß!     O       20:30, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, we already have a couple of articles that list all nations at the Olympics - List of countries first participation in the Summer Olympic Games and even List of IOC country codes.  This article is about medal counts, so it seems pointless to duplicate the list of all nations again.  There are 230 unique NOCs that have competed in the Games (current and past), so this list would almost double in size, with a 98-way tie for 133rd.  That seems rather useless and redundant to me.  Andrwsc 20:41, 10 July 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Saarland 1952? 

message: Totals 	4207 	4170 	4422 	12799 	782 	781 	772 	2335 	15134
How come the numbers of Gold/Silver/Bronze are unequal? Of course there were some medals shared for two athletes/teams now and then, and maybe some were not handed out after DQ, but so often? Compared to 4207 Gold, 37 Silver less, and 215 Bronze more? -- Matthead discuß!     O       02:30, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, that really did happen quite a bit.  For example, check out Sailing at the 1920 Summer Olympics, or almost every gymnastics page (lots of ties).  It happened a lot in athletics jumping events somewhat regularly too.  As for the extra bronzes, many combat sports (esp. boxing) handed out two bronze to the semi-final losers, rather than scheduling a bronze medal match between two recently defeated fighters.   Andrwsc 02:43, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, that should become a footnote. Okay, high jumps can end in ties, and making people fight for a bronze and "wood" is not very noble either. With such "contests", where several Gold medals were handed out to "friends" just for showing up and parading their yachts without competition, we should really be less anal about adding total counts or compiling "proper" rankings. The selection of contests was very "odd" sometimes, with some "home field advantage", like the single gymnastic event in 1900.-- Matthead discuß!     O       03:18, 24 August 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Numbers not adding up 

message: The footnote on Chinese Taipei's medal count says it includes the medals won by the Republic of China, yet there's another entry for Republic of China at 108. Another thing, what should the medals won by the ROC in the 1930s be accounted to? Should it be China or Taiwan (i.e. Chinese Taipei)? Chanheigeorge 03:27, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, that's a mistake and I'll fix that (prob. tomorrow).  There were no medals won by ROC in the 30s (they won one in 1960 and another in 1968 before TPE was used), so that point is moot.  Andrwsc 04:37, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Right, I should have known that. On another note, please vote here for renaming the following category: Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2007_October_5#Category:Olympic_medalists_for_Great_Britain_and_Northern_Ireland. Chanheigeorge 06:01, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chinese Taipei and Republic of China 

message: If we're going to sort by combined gold, then combined silver, then combined bronze, we certainly should display those three columns. Chanheigeorge 20:14, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I tried that, but it doesn't work well for 1024x768 displays, which is the minimum screen size we ought to design Wiki tables for.  I will try some other ways to do this.  Andrwsc 20:28, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: If the table becomes too wide, maybe it's worth considering splitting into three tables, combined, summer and winter. This way we can also get the individual ranks of the countries in the Summer and Winter Games. For example, to know how many nations have won a medal in the Winter Games, now I have to do a sort and then manually count. Another thing, I know somebody has mentioned this, but "Total Olympics medal count" just sounds awkward. "All-time Olympics medal count" sounds much better. Chanheigeorge 04:11, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, we used to have three big tables (albeit in three different articles), but that was not as useful and more difficult to maintain.  I'm working on an XGA computer now, so I might try to fit the three extra columns in and see how it might look.  Andrwsc 04:30, 6 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmmm, having three tables in three different articles is difficult to maintain, but having them in the same article, with all the footnotes at one place, should be okay. I don't see what having summer and winter numbers side-by-side in a table brings to the table (excuse the pun), it's not as if we're often comparing a country's summer and winter medals total. Right now, aesthetically the table still doesn't look good, you definitely need some sort of visual aid to distinguish where the summer numbers end and the winter numbers begin. And as for changing the table numbers, we have to do that, what, once every two years? Chanheigeorge 04:43, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

text: Another thing, shouldn't the link of Germany (EUN) direct to the United Team of Germany? Seems like a better choice than directing to Germany at the Olympics. Chanheigeorge 20:20, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: That's probably a good idea for this page, but the standard template will still produce just "Germany" as per discussion on WP:OLY.  Andrwsc 20:28, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  The table needs three more columns 

message: Why in the medal of the Art competitions do not you count?--Soregashi 08:08, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: They are not included in any of the medal tables that the IOC maintains.  Andrwsc 16:52, 23 October 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Art competitions 

message: This list is fantastic, but it seems incomplete. Would it be possible to add an extra column for the number of games that a country attended? It seems inadequate comparing all the countries of the world without some kind of contrast. Regards, Bogdan що? 00:02, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: There is already a parallel article for that, at List of countries' first participation in the Summer Olympic Games.  I've been thinking of expanding that list significantly to better show all appearances, not just the first ones.  It would also be the right place to show the changes as certain nations changed over the years (URS, YUG, etc.).  I'm reluctant to add more columns to this table as it is already stretching the limits for XGA-sized displays. Andrwsc (talk) 00:36, 19 December 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Attendance 

message: I think that we could at least put an unranked placeholder on this list for "Germany" (Germany+East Germany+West Germany+United Germany), and possibly one for Former USSR, and any other similar cases. Without these the list is somewhat misleading. This would be similar to what we do on economic/population lists for supranational entities like the EU. Savidan 22:15, 8 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Perhaps we should omit the rank column altogether?  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 21:48, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text:  About a year ago, I had suggested removing the first column, as there is no benefit in assigning a misleading rank. For quick overview, related teams (eg. TCH, CZE, BOH) should appear next to each other in the default view, under an additional placeholder (e.g. Czechs (TCH+CZE+BOH)) with accumulated numbers even though some TCH medals surely had been won by Slovaks (which sooner or later will be sorted out in hindsight even for team medals, I guess). That would put the "alltime" Russians (URS+RUS) ahead of Germans again, too, as in most lists in the media (incl. German ones). A single click then can sort the list according to the preferred criterion. -- Matthead  Discuß   23:19, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I reaffirm my strong objection to any "double counting" by placing additional rows in the table.  You simply cannot combine URS+RUS, TCH+CZE, etc. and remain NPOV and free of original research.  The most we should do along those lines is document how other organizations have created similar combined total tables in this article (with references etc.), as a good encyclopedia should do.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 23:58, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: A good encyclopaedia doesn't produce false data. Germany united and this is a fact of life. Opposite cases are disollutions like USSR, TCH, YUG, etc. In these cases we cannot add-up the numbers to a single nation (NOC). In best case we can form a separate list which would combine all results of all the previous soviet socialist republics and thus calculate the USSR strength today (but not Russian strength). This could be a small list added on the bottom of this article which poits to an imaginary rank in the main table (where would USSR be if still in existance, where would TCH, YUG and others be). Germany should be on both of those lists (on the first list as a unranked placeholder and on the second list with the rank it has as a combined East, West, United Germany and current GER. -- Imbris (talk) 00:49, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: This article has always been problematic.  The fact is there are no reliable sources that agree on the totals, as they all seem to add up differently.  The data here is the best attempt to create an accurate list that is actively maintained when totals change (like the medals from 2000 recently stripped).  As such, it might stray into original research territory.  We can choose to delete the article for OR reasons, or we can try to consolidate all the mis-matched medal totals into our best effort for accuracry.  And has been pointed out countless times, you cannot add together RUS and URS (for example), without offending the Latvians, Ukrainians, etc. whose countrymen won individual medals for URS.  Also, you cannot combine FRG and GDR as those were two independent teams at the same Games, and therefore, had twice as many entries as other NOCs on many occasions.  I really wish the IOC had decided to retroactively use GER for all of GER, FRG, and EUA, as (in my opinion), they should all be combined.  But my opinion doesn't count, and we can't make up different "rules" on a NOC-by-NOC basis.  I am convinced that the most NPOV method of combination is by NOC (and code).  There is a table in the Germany at the Summer Olympics article, for example, that shows the four individual totals (GER, FRG, GDR, EUA) and a combined total, and I think that article (alone) is the best place to keep the combined totals.  It can convey, in prose text, an explanation of the situation so much better than a row in this table, no matter how well it is footnoted, can ever do.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 01:42, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: We can add East and West Germany and other GER and EUA because all of those athletes made through qualifications. There are plenty of proofs for that fact, like when in table tennis CHN plays against the other CHN. -- Imbris (talk) 01:51, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: When a Chinese athlete competes against another Chinese athlete, they are serving under the same flag, for the same country.  When East and West Germany competed, they were rival countries.  I don't know how you could see things otherwise. I have no objection to considering pre-war Germany, West Germany and post-1990 Germany to be the same country, but East Germany must be kept separate.  The fact that it is now a part of the Federal Republic of Germany in no way erases the fact that it was a separate country from 1949-1990 (and from 1968 onward, sent its own Olympic teams). To claim otherwise is akin to saying that the Republic of Texas never existed because Texas is now a U.S. state.Funnyhat (talk) 04:02, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nations that split and recombined etc. 

message: The current table is very confusing (and possibly biased).  Many weak Olympics nations are artificially made to appear strong in this table (either knowingly or unknowingly).
You can fix this easily by adding a column to show the Relative Strength of the nation (possibly next to the 'Rank' column).
The relative strength of nations can be calculated easily by dividing the total number of medals for that nation by the number of games participated by that nation.
That is :
:Relative Strength = Medal Total / Game Participation
Would someone like to fix this?
Wild Panda888 (talk) 08:31, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think it's a bad idea to introduce a new "statistic" like this, per WP:No original research, but I think a column that simply totals the number of appearances would be uncontroversial and useful. There would be room for this if we remove the rank column. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 04:12, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Although the formula is clearly commonsense, I do take your point that it would still technically speaking be classified as 'original research'.  In any case, would you please add in that column you suggested above so as to minimize confusion. Wild Panda888 (talk) 13:25, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I'd like to add that the equation isn't quite so common sense as it seems. The total numbers of medals awarded per games has changed over time, so simply dividing medals by number of games participated in (as suggested above) devalues or penalizes participation in earlier games with fewer competitions or awarded medals.  The best such strength ranking, for instance, might be an average of a team's percentage of total medals won in each Olympic games in which it has participated, but such a thing would clearly be WP:No original research.CrazyPaco (talk) 21:39, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

text: I can try to work on an alternate version that we can discuss before the end of the 2008 Games when this page will be next updated.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:41, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Should Minimise Confusion (and Bias) -  by Ranking the Relative Strength of Countries 

message: The article says: "Default rank by combined Gold medals won, then combined Silver medals, then combined Bronze medals", but this is not how they are ranked in the article, they are just ranked by total number of medals. Isn't this wrong? MookieZ (talk) 15:25, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Never mind, it is fixed now. MookieZ (talk) 18:15, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ranking 

message: why is Britain 6th when a all time medal count makes them 4thFW07 (talk) 16:46, 11 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  rank 

message: I see someone has went ahead and combined Germany's totals, including West and East Germany despite the fact that these were two different countries competing against each other. But I'm not going to get into that because it has been debated over and over and over again. If this is going to stand with Germany, then we ought to combine the totals for all of the former Communist countries. Someone suggested we combine the table the way they did it in the Spanish article. I went and looked and it does seem like a solution that might calm everybody down. --71.112.145.102 (talk) 03:26, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Germany and combined medals 

message: I have reverted back to the pre-2008 Games version, as the common convention on this Wikipedia is to update all-time sports statistics pages at the end of the season in progress, and this is a similar situation.  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 04:06, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Updates during 2008 Games 

message: As much as this will hurt the US sacrosanct national pride, the ranking on medal count only makes sense if it is scaled by the population of the country. Indeed, the bigger the nation, the bigger the pool from which to find champions, and thus the greater the number of medals. For example, if we were to create a very large country called "Earth" comprising 100% of the world population, then the medal count would be the largest. But this data would be meaningless unless it were scaled. Example : France has about 4 times less medals than the US but a population 5 times smaller. Thus is has a higher rank. In other words, if you sample 100 random US citizens and a 100 random French citizens, you're more likely to find an olympic champion in the 2nd batch. That's a statistical fact. It should be mentioned. I will soon undertake the task of doing so.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.45.216.5 (talk) 08:17, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: There have been previous articles with this kind of WP:Original research, but all have been deleted. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 08:19, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: next point is that the relation of population changed over time - so such a list would be nonesense anyway. Then you could do a list of the relation of medals to richness, average feeding or even education - all facts which are at least as influential as the number of population. (Well and thats my opinion - very interesting to know would be the standard of chemistry in a Country) -  Well - thats nonesense. The only question could be - need we such a list at all. Yes - because many people want this information. But if you are from a country which has not won as many medals you could take comfort in the fact that of course the Americans etc. are not superhumans - medal succes is a function of development of a state, national sport support (includes promotion of sport but of course also "perfect" doping, which is not detectable) ... 195.243.51.34 (talk) 11:33, 12 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Scaling 

message: The "United Team of Germany" (EUA) is/was not a nation. So I would suggest to either remove this entry or change "nation" to "IOC code" in the table. This would be less ambiguous. 
Another example: The Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) is written in italics, which is wrong, since the Federal Republic of Germany still exists. The territory of the former German Democratic Republic was incorporated into the Federal Republic of Germany after reunification. So, the word "nation" in the title of the table is again misleading,  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.53.87.178 (talk) 15:03, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Change “medal winning nations″ to ”medal winning IOC Codes“ 

message: I don't see El Salvador listed here... can someone give me a reason why? 72.199.182.210 (talk) 21:23, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: See El Salvador at the Olympics.  It has never won any medal at the Olympics.  Reywas92Talk 22:41, 13 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Missing Countries 

message: I just created the All-time Paralympic Games medal table. Its pretty obvious that I got my inspiration from the All-time Olympic Games medal table and seeing that the Paralympics were missing a similar article I took action; and it took forever to do it by myself. In the end all I could finish was a list showing the summer paralympics. Now I am knackered and wouldn't mind some help with the winter paralympics being added and a grand total for both events. If someone would be willing to check my counts that would be great also. I'm going to take a bit of a break from this due to real life, but any assistance would be greatly appreciated :-) -- Phoenix (talk) 09:16, 14 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  [[All-time Paralympic Games medal table]] 

message: Merely just an article request for List of Countries with no Olympic medals. Posted here too. --Ichabod (talk) 17:57, 16 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Instead of a new article, why not add a separate table of 0 medal NOCs, past and present? --Kvasir (talk) 21:51, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I wrote a section for that in a previous edit, but deleted it after I wrote the List of participating nations at the Summer Olympic Games article.  It is trivial to re-add the list of "no medals" NOCs, so I will do so shortly. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 22:09, 21 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Well i think a separate table for 0 medal is beneficial. Most of the time people ask which NOC won the most medals, which ones have never medalled, or how many did ABC win (which could happen to be 0). Seldom do you have people ask which one won exactly 56 medals? This will eliminate questions like we have above with El Salvador. I have started a one-entry table to be expanded after the 2008 Olympics. I also think it's useful to include number of Games these NOCs have participated in as reference. --Kvasir (talk) 22:25, 21 August 2008 (UTC)

text: Good job on the table. I see Tuvalu is missing, I also suspect there maybe old NOCs that should be in this list. After the 2008 Games are done the table can be updated and split into 2 or 3 columns to save space. --Kvasir (talk) 06:54, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: If it's split into multiple columns, the sortability is useless. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:16, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: True. We can always resort to the hide option then. --Kvasir (talk) 17:26, 22 August 2008 (UTC)

text: Old NOCs to be added: YAR, YMD, MAL, BOR. --Kvasir (talk) 07:22, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: There are several more than that, but I purposefully left them off, focusing only on the list of current NOCs (but missing Tuvalu, sorry).  If we have consensus to add them, they should probably be split into a different table, because it is misleading to suggest they could ever win anything in the future, and it might cause more confusion than it helps. — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 16:16, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh yeah there were more but I believe they were simple name/code change so I don't think they deserve separate listing under the current convention. Yeah let's have some consensus on these old NOCs. I don't think they would present a problem because the same italic system can be used to indicate obsolete NOCs. --Kvasir (talk) 17:26, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: You are still missing Saar in 1952.  And perhaps IOA in 2000 (but it's not really a NOC).  — Andrwsc (talk · contribs) 18:42, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  List of Countries with no Olympic medals 

message: The US is recorded as having won 9001 medals at all Olympics in history. Scanning the other numbers on the page I find it hard to believe, especially considering that the next highest total appears to be the Soviet Union at more than 8000 less (I know it excludes the Unified Team, Russia etc., but still). Is this a math SNAFU or did I miss something? Was this perhaps vandalism? Wally (talk) 03:07, 17 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, it was vandalism, and was corrected.  David Biddulph (talk) 08:52, 24 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Error in the US count?