Talk:2006–07 Biathlon World Cup

More informative and practical results table format

Hi, I have given some thought to the table format we should use on the Biathlon World Cup (BWC) season pages. IMO, the main raison d'etre of WP's BWC pages should be to offer an easily readable overview of a BWC season complementary to the IBU's own pages, whose underlying database is filled with data. While the current format of the present article to some extent provides such a complementary overview---particularly by including a race-by-race WC score table---I think there is room for a little more information on each race, exemplified by the sample table shown below.

The alternative format which I propose, differs from the 'standard' winter sports World Cup season results table/article format; I argue that we will be better served by the alternative format, due to the following differences/advantages:

each WC meet has its own section, which makes for a better overview and also makes for easier editing (no huge all-season tables to navigate in when modifying, correction, and adding information)
within each WC meet section, no subsection division between Men and Women races; when you want to check the results during the race weekend (WC meet), you want a quick way into the weekend's results for both men and women, without having to navigate far down the page for the women's results, or what?
in addition to the top three performers of each race, the rest of the top 10 is also listed (w/o flags), as this gives a much better 'feel' for the development of the season --- this extra info is added at very little expence in the use of vertical space on the page
a comments field is included, meant for a two-liner synopsis of the race, such as special info on the top performers, or any other significant particularities of the event

WC 1, 29 Nov–3 Dec: Östersund, Sweden

Race results

Date	Event	Podium	Top 10
29 Nov	Women 15 km IN	1. Irina Malgina (RUS), 50:41.2 (2)	4. Andrea Henkel (GER); 5. Ekaterina Iourieva (RUS); =6. Tora Berger (NOR); =6. Sabrina Buchholz (GER); 8. Yingchao Kong (CHN); 9. Anna Boulygina (RUS); 10. Xianying Liu (CHN)
		2. Liv Kjersti Eikeland (NOR), +3.6 (1)
		3. Zina Kocher (CAN), +23.3 (1)
		First time on the WC podium for surprise winner Malgina and runners-up Eikeland and Kocher. Malgina's best Individual result before today's victory was a 14th place in Antholz in the 2001-02 season.
30 Nov	Men 20 km IN	1. Ole Einar Bjørndalen (NOR), 51:38.6 (2)	4. Michal Slesingr (CZE); 5. Halvard Hanevold (NOR); 6. Ivan Tcherezov (RUS); 7. Raphaël Poirée (FRA); 8. Björn Ferry (SWE); 9. Michael Rösch (GER); 10. Friedrich Pinter (AUT)
		2. Andreas Birnbacher (GER), +14.3 (0)
		3. Michael Greis (GER), +32.7 (1)
		Bjørndalen follows up his Cross-country skiing World Cup victory at Gällivare last week with the fastest course time on each of today's five laps. Birnbacher scores his best result to date.

···

Date	Event	Podium	Top 10
Date	Event	1. Winner (25x17px), Total time (Misses)	4. Fourth, NAT; 5. Fifth, NAT; 6. Sixth, NAT; 7. Seventh, NAT; 8. Eight, NAT; 9. Ninth, NAT; 10. Tenth, NAT
		2. Second (25x17px), Time difference (Misses)
		3. Third (25x17px), Time difference (Misses)
		Concise comments

Below the WC meet's results table, I suggest we place a simple list of the top 10 ranking biathletes, with scores, at the end of the WC meet (and, during the weekend, the ranks after the most recent race, in the case someone should feel inspired to add this after each race). It is important that such a list is kept for each WC meet, so that one will be able to get a feel for the development of the season.

Overall WC standings at the end of WC 1

Men			Women
1.	Ole Einar Bjørndalen (NOR)	150	1.	Andrea Henkel (GER)	104
2.	Michael Greis (GER)	114	2.	Magdalena Gwizdon (POL)	103
3	Dmitri Iarochenko (RUS)	112	3	Linda Grubben (NOR)	102
4	Raphaël Poirée (FRA)	101	4	Tora Berger (NOR)	96
5.	Ivan Tcherezov (RUS)	84	5.	Kati Wilhelm (GER)	94
6.	Maxim Tchoudov (RUS)	78	6.	Anna Carin Olofsson (SWE)	81
7.	Sergei Rozhkov (RUS)	77	7.	Martina Glagow (GER)	80
8.	Halvard Hanevold (NOR)	70	8.	Sandrine Bailly (FRA)	79
9.	Björn Ferry (SWE)	70	9.	Sabrina Buchholz (GER)	68
10.	Sven Fischer (GER)	69	10.	Tatiana Moiseeva (RUS)	60

There is no problem in also having the BWC score table used at the end of the page in the current format, which gives a nice summary of the situation after each race during the season. Actually, I propose we present the data in this table graphically; I'll do this myself if no one else feels the call... :-) Minor layout details of the table format may be open for discussion, of course. Anything that makes for a clearer view of the results is most welcome! --Wernher 06:19, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Looks very good. Just one small suggestion (for every race except Östersund, really). One row to show the standings in each race format? Sam Vimes | Address me 09:49, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Date	Event	Podium	Top 10
30 Nov	Men 20 km IN	1. Ole Einar Bjørndalen (NOR), 51:38.6 (2)	4. Michal Šlesingr (CZE); 5. Halvard Hanevold (NOR); 6. Ivan Tcherezov (RUS); 7. Raphaël Poirée (FRA); 8. Björn Ferry (SWE); 9. Michael Rösch (GER); 10. Friedrich Pinter (AUT)
		2. Andreas Birnbacher (GER), +14.3 (0)
		3. Michael Greis (GER), +32.7 (1)
		Bjørndalen follows up his Cross-country skiing World Cup victory at Gällivare last week with the fastest course time on each of today's five laps. Birnbacher scores his best result to date.
		Individual Standings: 1. Bjørndalen 50, 2. Birnbacher 46, 3. Greis 43, 4. Slesingr 40, 5. Hanevold 37, 6. Tcherezov 34.

One part of me would like to have the feature you describe here, or the overall results after each race put in the same place. However, another part of me dislikes this, on the grounds that it clutters up the table somewhat, and, IMO, may make it too long (thus succumbing to the well-known "curse of scrolling"...). As you see, I don't completely agree with myself on this one; it's a typical battle of amount-of-info vs. neatness-of-tables, as I see it. --Wernher 17:11, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose an easier way of doing it is by prose. "Bjørndalen still heads the Individual standings despite finishing 12th today." (To take an extremely hypothetical situation.) Sam Vimes | Address me 17:20, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I am now working on a scheme to include last week's standing in every list (akin to music hitlists/'billboards', where last week's position of a record is indicated in parentheses besides the current position on the list. Also, up/down arrows could be used, to show whether a participant is rising or falling on the WC standings. --Wernher 23:07, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Looks good guys, the only thing I have in addition is that I'd like to see the full results tables like they are now at the bottom at least at the end of the competition. I think they are very useful, but a little bit annoying to update after each and every race, specially with three races per gender per weekend. SportsAddicted | discuss 10:24, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean the full WC standings lists, with the names, and scores, of (most/all) participants who have WC points (i.e. more than those in the Top 10)? For each discipline (IN, SP, PU, MS, RL)? Or do you refer to the matrices of WC points, which displays the development of the entire season in one table? (which we should absolutely have, at the end of the page, preferably). Please elaborate. --Wernher 17:11, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I was indeed talking about the development in the season, with the top 30 in overall and top 15 per discipline. SportsAddicted | discuss 18:36, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Looks very good in the article now, only the Hochfilzen table seems to miss some lines, I have no idea what to change, so I'll leave this note here. SportsAddicted | discuss 20:16, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Never mind about this, looks ok now. SportsAddicted | discuss 11:30, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Chinese name order

Just to clarify my view on this issue: I have used the 'standard European' order which seems to be used by the IBU as well. Thus, I'm not sure whether we should reverse the order, even if the IBU might be 'linguistically wrong' --- perhaps WP and IBU (and other sports listings?) should be 'synchronised' regarding Asian name formats? That's the easy way out, of course ... --Wernher 22:56, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Well. I'm aware that the European order is most commonly used, but I think that's just because the IBU don't bother to employ a computer system which can display family names first (Kong Y. instead of Y. Kong). Just like they have "Bjoerndalen" on the screen. We spell it Bjørndalen, though, because that's what it is in Norwegian. The Asian case is analogous; the correct order is family name, first name, and that's what's mostly used when talking about Chinese people (which is why Wikipedia:Naming conventions (Chinese)#Names says Personal names in Chinese, unlike Western names, present the family/clan name first. Unlike other instances where this occurs, it is standard practice in English to also present the family name first (for example, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping). Sam Vimes | Address me 23:25, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with Sam, Chinese names should be with family name first, it's the wikipedia consensus and it's the standard in China itself. Check out all the subpages for the 2006 Asian Games for instance ;) SportsAddicted | discuss 11:30, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

No problemo, guys! :-) --Wernher 16:01, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Race summary size creep

It seems that the race writeups have been expanding line by line lately. While it is certainly nice with relatively comprehensive summaries, I originally thought we should leave that to biathlonworld.com's quite good (and paid, even) reporters from ZDF, who are doing an OK job at this already. As for WP, I had intended that we keep to a couple of lines (say, 2--3), and put in a link to said IBU/ZDF report for each race. How about that? It will also hopefully ensure that our BWC season pages won't be a hell to load and scroll through. --Wernher 04:16, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There, I have trimmed down the summaries for the Oberhof RLs, and added IBU report links for those who want more extensive race writeups. I'm not 100% sure the IBU links should be placed where I put them in this first attempt, but I couldn't think of a better place right now (06:20 CET in the morning; and, no, I didn't get UP early, so go figure ...). --Wernher 05:20, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

*feels reprimanded* ;) The reason why I wrote a four-line report for the women's relay was because it was special. You don't get too many last shootings with 5 misses. It seems okay now tho. (And I think we need to link to IBU reports, if nothing else as citations.) Sam Vimes | Address me 10:35, 9 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Kocher's podium finish

Hmm, just started wondering: might Zina Kocher's 3rd place in the 15 km IN of WC 1 in Östersund 29 Nov, be the first Canadian BWC podium appearance since Myriam Bédard's 2nd place in Hochfilzen in 1996? If so, this should certainly be noted in the summary! :) --Wernher 03:35, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

[For small research stunts like this, I would really, really, like to have SQL access to biathlonworld's events/results/athlete database... Argh. I have actually been considering an attempt at concocting a Python script to suck out all that data and feed it into a PostgreSQL database of my own, just to be able to do such queries. Until then, we'll have to rely on tedious and unreliable eyeball searches, which just isn't the right thing to do in WP. :( ]

Source! You're right, by the way. Sam Vimes | Address me 23:36, 12 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

When I tried accessing the source today, nothing came up on the page, so I searched around a little and found this --- but I think the Canadians haven't got their dates right, as Bédard actually placed 2nd as noted by me above (via biathlonworld.com's athlete data). Also, seems BiathlonCanada thinks a podium place in a single WC gives a medal ... Oh well. --Wernher 13:59, 26 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yellow/red bib indication

I thought it might be nice to indicate the current wearers of the yellow and red bibs when listing the results of a race. The example table below assumes that Eikeland is the current Overall WC leader, and Iourieva the Individual Cup leader. An example of pink color is included in connection with the following discussion.

Date	Event	Podium	Top 10
29 Nov	Women 15 km IN	1. Irina Malgina (RUS), 50:41.2 (2)	4. Andrea Henkel (GER); 5. Ekaterina Iourieva (RUS); =6. Tora Berger (NOR); =6. Sabrina Buchholz (GER); 8. Kong Yingchao (CHN); 9. Anna Boulygina (RUS); 10. Liu Xianying (CHN)
		2. Liv Kjersti Eikeland (NOR), +3.6 (1)
		3. Zina Kocher (CAN), +23.3 (1)
		First time on the WC podium for surprise winner Malgina and runners-up Eikeland and Kocher. Malgina's best Individual result before today's victory was a 14th place in Antholz in the 2001-02 season.

However, as you can probably see if you use redlinks to indicate empty articles, Iourieva's name is all but invisible (red on red...). One could use pink, of course, but I would really prefer the standard red of the actual bib. Anyone know a fix (workaround?) for this? I'm afraid, though, that as long as redlinks is a common indication of empty WP articles, there may be no other choice than using pink here. --Wernher 05:49, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The red sure looks horrible. Punkmorten 09:31, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The solution, of course, is to write articles on everyone. Problem solved. ;) No, I can't come up with a workaround either, except not to link. Sam Vimes | Address me 10:52, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

After some ruminations, I think we have two alternatives unless a possible workaround is found:

If we color the rank number only; standard red may be used
If we color the biathlete's name as well, pink must probably be used, to let the link show through

I guess I'll just go ahead and implement one of these soon; changing to the alternative format won't be very much work, I hope. --Wernher 16:43, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Now I've made a couple of templates to ease the bib marking of Top 10 athletes from place 4 downward: template:yel bib athl and template:red bib athl. See the example below. I also changed the yellow bib color to a {{yel bib athl|lighter variant}} (#FFFF66), to have it harmonise better with the pink. If we want to change the colors, it's no problem to fix it in the templates.

Date	Event	Podium	Top 10
29 Nov	Women 15 km IN	1. Irina Malgina (RUS), 50:41.2 (2)	4. Andrea Henkel (GER); 5. Ekaterina Iourieva (RUS); =6. Tora Berger (NOR); =6. Sabrina Buchholz (GER); 8. Kong Yingchao (CHN); 9. Anna Boulygina (RUS); 10. Liu Xianying (CHN)
		2. Liv Kjersti Eikeland (NOR), +3.6 (1)
		3. Zina Kocher (CAN), +23.3 (1)
		First time on the WC podium for surprise winner Malgina and runners-up Eikeland and Kocher. Malgina's best Individual result before today's victory was a 14th place in Antholz in the 2001-02 season.

As may currently be seen in the WC 1 results table of the article itself, there's a little overlap between the bib markings when both bib holders are in the Top 10 4th-10th place. The padding (3px) was originally chosen in order to get the same height as the bib markings of the podium table. We may reduce the padding to 2px if we want to avoid the overlap issue, but then the height will be less than in the podium markings. Decisions, decisions ...

BTW, does anyone know whether relay team members wear yellow/red bibs? --Wernher 19:23, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I distinctly remember Russia not wearing any kind of bib today. Except one saying 14, as the others. (Presumably the organisers trust that start number 1 is enough to identify them.) Sam Vimes | Address me 20:09, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Great, that's it, then. I, too, wasn't able to notice any red/yel colored bibs on the team members.

Bib marker update: I just had a look at the full IBU rules, and noticed that unlike e.g. Tour de France, there is even a combined yellow+red bib used on contestant who are at the same time the overall leader and specific format leader (say, Sprint Cup leader) at the point of a race. For this reason, and for aesthetic reasons (to avoid cluttering up the tables with too much color), I propose the following scheme for bib markers in the results listings, using template:yel bib, template:red bib, and template:yel n red bib:

Date	Event	Podium	Top 10
29 Nov	Women 15 km IN	1. Irina Malgina (RUS), 50:41.2 (2)	4. Andrea Henkel (GER); 5.{{yel n red bib}} Ekaterina Iourieva (RUS); =6. Tora Berger (NOR); =6. Sabrina Buchholz (GER); 8. Kong Yingchao (CHN); 9.{{yel bib}} Anna Boulygina (RUS); 10. Liu Xianying (CHN)
		2. Liv Kjersti Eikeland (NOR), {{red bib}} +3.6 (1)
		3. Zina Kocher (CAN), +23.3 (1)
		Note: "impossible" number/combination of markers used for demonstration purposes.

The reason I didn't put layer the markers onto the rank numbers was that I was unable to make them the same width, and this cluttered up the Podium listing (flags becoming unaligned). If/when I (or you, for that matter) can make this work, we might as well go with that. For the combined yellow/red bib marker, we may just color the number yellow and the point/full stop/period red. --Wernher 05:45, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Overall results

Could we extend the overall results table from top 15 to top 30? 30 is the "magical number" in biathlon; as we all know the World Cup points in a given race are awarded to the top 30 finishers. Punkmorten 09:31, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And the top 30 in the World Cup standings get to start in the mass start. Fair enough, the data are all there in comments after all. Sam Vimes | Address me 10:31, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

A typical example of the conflicting points of conciseness and completeness... The case for the former lies in the need to avoid a very long article, while the latter goes without saying. However, the full results are available via the IBU report links. But then again, it's nice to have immediate access to the top 30 placings in the present article. Argh... --Wernher 16:49, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

We could also leave it as it is for now and expand to top 30 at the end of the competitions. SportsAddicted | discuss 21:20, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

If we want to avoid a long article, it's the "Total WC standings at the end of WC 1", "Total WC standings at the end of WC 2" etc that need to go. Punkmorten 21:46, 10 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

After thinking a little about it, I say we keep both for the time being, no problem. It's nice to have both, to be able to a) follow the results and standings weekend by weekend, and b) get the 'grand view' by checking out the thorough statistics at the second part of the article. I'm also working on a little more detailed format of the "Total WC standings at the end of WC <n>". --Wernher 05:20, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, I think the article is quite informative now --- we're on the way of making it the best page on the net for getting a quick overview of the current BWC season. That has not been made anytime/anywhere before, as existing sites/pages are either of the "end-of-season top-three (or at the most, top-10) highest-ranked biathletes", or, as in the case of biathlonworld.com, "each and every race in detail, and full results listings, on separate pages", which is extremely tedious to leaf through (click through...) when you want an overview of the season and its progression. --Wernher 05:20, 15 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Possible page split?

In connection with the previous thread, I wonder if one acceptable solution might be to split off the detailed table part into a subpage called, say, /Progression statistics? That way, we could cultivate the statistics view, with even more detailed tables than we have today; we would also I obtain faster loading of both pages, parent and subpage.

As for the tables, I for one, would very much like them to provide, in each cell, the contestant's placement in that particular race, his/her accumulated score at that point, and the accumulated WC ranking (with bib markers overall and format wise). The present tables doesn't give me a clear feel of the progression of the season with regard to each biathlete's movement up and down the WC table. --Wernher 12:10, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Statistics for football leagues have recently been mass deleted. So I believe that may not be the way to go. By the way see http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:WikiResults. Punkmorten 13:11, 17 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, I'll have to take a look at that discussion, in order to check if the situation for football leagues is analogous with our case. If not, we should give it a try. The raison d'être of our tables might be the uniqueness of the tables, in that no other site, not even biathlonworld.com, gives such a clear and logical overview of the season's development. --Wernher 14:11, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

OK, I had a look at the WikiResults talk. Based on what I read, I'd argue that we should develop our season stats subpage here on WP for the time being, and later on, if/when the WikiResults project 'gets airborne', we can move the stats over there. How about that? --Wernher 13:07, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So like...

Pos	Biathlete	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	Pts
1	Michael Greis	43 43 (3)	43 86 (2)	28 114 (2)	46 160 (2)	20 180 (3)	50 230 (2)	28 258 (1)	46 304 (1)	16 320 (1)	1 321 (2)	28 349 (2)	22 371 (2)	16 387 (2)	11 398 (1)														398

Looks like it might run out of space, so a 3-row thing would be needed...plus a lot of research. Sam Vimes | Address me 22:37, 21 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Or, we might split the table vertically into two parts, with, say, race 1--14 at the top, and the rest below. BTW, I'm working on a spreadsheet with all the required data, with the intent of avoiding mental breakdown during the 'research' effort. :-) --Wernher 14:11, 22 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No. of credited races

Could the one who listed the number of races counted in each format (given as the number of races to be struck from the total, e.g., 3 in the case of the total WC score) please give the source on the net providing this information? I have searched for this, but didn't find any internet source to cite from; the only thing I found was references to the annual IBU Calendar, which I haven't found on the net other than as advertisements to buy in paper form. --Wernher 13:32, 26 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

My source is Kjell Kristian Rike (interesting redlink there...) on a live broadcast on NRK. Can't remember which one at present. Anyway, he said that "one race doesn't count in any of the individual cups, and three races are struck from the total."

This fits with last year too, btw. See [1] [2] [3] [4] (all PDF with cup results) Sam Vimes | Address me 13:46, 26 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Right. I, too, have sometimes tried to get reliable net citations of misc information from Rike, Carlsen & Co (Co = Lunde). Later tonight or tomorrow, I'll add some "pre-season updates" to the article, and some of that is also of the same quality (stuff I heard before and during the race on live broadcasts on NRK)... As for last years rules, we should make sure there hasn't been any rule changes affecting e.g. the number of credited races.

BTW, Rike might actually be worthy of a WP article, as he was once quite a capable rifle shooter on the national level (skytterprins) --- in addition to his several decades as a prominent sports presenter. --Wernher 14:47, 26 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

General info on scores etc, added

I put in some general info in a new section, Scores and leader bibs, to enlighten the masses. While such explanations might also be places in the general Biathlon article, I thought it would be nice to place it just above the tables for the time being. Maybe we should move it later on, I don't know. --Wernher 14:51, 26 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Stubs about this season's breakthrough biathletes

I guess we should write stubs (→articles) about redlinked biathletes who have visited the overall top ten list during the season:

Austria's Sumann (#9 in the men's end Total, #2 in the Mass start Cup)
~~Belarus's Sokolova~~ √ Thanks, guys!
China's Dong, Kong, and Liu
Germany's Hitzer (#10 in the women's end Total) and Birnbacher
Poland's Gwizdoń
Russia's Guseva (BWCH bronze medalist), Iourieva, Malgina, Moiseeva, and Tchoudov
Sweden's Ferry (#7 in the men's end Total)

With a little effort here, the amount of redlinks in the WC listings will be reduced to "almost nothing"! :-) --Wernher 14:37, 12 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Humongously long article

Are you aware that this is the 9th largest article in the whole of Wikipedia? It's very unweildy and off-putting to the reader, which is the exact opposite of what an encyclopedia article should be. If you can find ways to significantly reduce its length, it would greatly improve it. --Dweller 17:05, 14 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The article is hopelessly long, yes, and it has been discussed above, in the threads Overall results and Possible page split?. A split as suggested in the latter thread would reduce the article's length by approx 1/3, for what it's worth. --Wernher 23:08, 17 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Update: As a beginning, I did the split.

The article is still 111 kilobytes long. I thought of splitting off each individual meet (or "block of meets" - i.e. pre-Christmas, January, and the three March events), and shortening the main article as outlined in User:Sam Vimes/Sandbox, so that at least some of the final standings could be taken back into the article. Sam Vimes | Address me 22:21, 18 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Your short-format alternative seems quite good, with comments and all. :) As for the WC meet blocks, IMO, the BWCH should be there somewhere in the second or third block, to "keep the flow" (i.e., the same information format as the WC meets). This might be tricky, however, as there is already a(n uncommented) separate BWCH article. --Wernher 22:58, 18 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Update: we're now "only" the 285th largest article, down from 9th largest ten days ago. I'm not really sure we need to do a lot more about this, as I don't see that the article is so "off-putting" to the reader as it was claimed to be above; quite the contrary, I'd say a one-article-per-season scheme is the most sensible as long as it isn't extremely large and unwieldy. It's more practical to navigate within a single article. --Wernher 00:14, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Erroneous behaviour of otherwise working templates

When I took a look at the article today (long time no see...), I discovered, much to my chagrin, that the Post-season brief on participants section was riddled with template errors: none of the {{flagathlete}} templates seemed to work anymore. However, they worked fine as usual in the Pre-season section, which uses them in exactly the same way! And look at this: {{flagathlete|[[Sven Fischer]]|GER}} produces Sven Fischer (GER), it works here too. The erroneous behaviour of templates starts in the middle of the Final WC standings list above the Post-season section.

Then later I noticed that when I loaded the Post-season section for editing, and clicked the Show preview button, everything looked just right again. Based on this, and the Pre-season section observation, I suspect there must be a "buffer problem" here, i.e. some new buffer system implemented on WP (after I visited the article last time this spring), which restricts the use of templates in *cough* very long articles(?). Or am I barking up the wrong tree here? Anyone know more about this? --Wernher 01:17, 5 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Update: today it all worked fine again. Could it have been a hiccup on behalf of my browser? Or, more likely, a WP database hiccup. Oh well. --Wernher 11:57, 9 October 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Dead link

--JeffGBot (talk) 22:59, 14 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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