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Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3

Adding in newer techinques

Hey, i went and put some things in on this article a few days ago. Now i want to make sure that it really has everything that is up to date with techinques. Like block starts and running in the races. Even the history on the two would be great to add into this article with. So Please if you have any information tell me. contact me at www.finelinecat@yahoo.com --Interestedstudent (talk) 05:19, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

i"ve went to [1] for information on the topic. The web site seem very usefull, If anyone has stuff like that, it would be much accepted.--Interestedstudent (talk) 05:28, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

History

While we may debate about what information should go where, for most of the sections we typically have all the information available to us (events, rules, etc). However, one section for which we seem to be lacking a good amount of information is the History section. Right now it is in a rather sad state of affairs. The history of athletics itself could take up quite a bit of space in the article, if written to meet A-class or FA quality. Does anybody know of any good resources from which we could draft up a history section? Mipchunk (talk) 09:01, 26 March 2010 (UTC)

Coinage Section

What is the purpose of this section? While it asserts that athletics have been appeared in several coins, it only gives one solid example. It seems like it falls under the category of WP: TRIVIA. What are your thoughts? Mipchunk (talk) 06:42, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree that it seems a little trivial. However, it could be condensed and form part of a new "culture" section. In terms of athletics, there are a number of films (e.g. Chariots of Fire), plenty of video games (that track and field game from the 80's was very popular) and artistic representations (e.g. pottery, Discobolus statue etc) worth mentioning. Perhaps the quote from Aristotle's Rhetoric that a found for the Ancient Olympic pentathlon article could be another nice touch too. You're right however, on its own it's a little too prominent. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits)Join WikiProject Athletics! 22:07, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
Ah, yes, a culture section does sound like a good idea. By the way, how is the T&F article coming along? Mipchunk (talk) 08:55, 5 April 2010 (UTC)
The track and field article is going pretty well. Almost everything of the basics is done but I still need to do some basic summarised sections for the events themselves then move it into the main space. It's a bit sketchy at the moment in some parts and improvements will almost certainly be made. I'd appreciate others holding off editing it until it's moved into mainspace which should happen within the next couple of weeks (I hope!). Cheers. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits)Join WikiProject Athletics! 12:45, 7 April 2010 (UTC)

Lanes???

Insert non-formatted text here</nowiki></nowiki> . . . Not all track and field races require you to run in lanes . . . From the 800M run and upwards, runners converge to the inner lanes.

ANarayan (talk) 22:28, 24 January 2010 (UTC)

Thats right and when you are running in lanes that requre you to say within your lane; you can take ONE STEP AND ONE STEP only out of your lane, and it CANNOT be repeative.--Interestedstudent (talk) 05:30, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

The big overhaul

OK. I'm all finished writing the separate article for track and field and I am moving it to that article location. The article currently located here doesn't actually deal with "track and field athletics" (actually a synonym of both the terms "track and field" and "track and field sports") but rather with broader idea of "the sport of athletics".

While there is still some discussion to be had on the final location of the "sport of athletics" article, it is clear that "track and field athletics" should redirect to the track and field article. The title of track and field athletics does not reflect the content and the previous title of "Athletics (track and field)" fails to distinguish that "athletics" and "track and field" are in fact separate ideas. Thus, I am moving this topic to Athletics (sport). I admit this title is also a little flawed, but it makes far more sense than the current or previous title – it should be recognisably different from the idea of "athletic sports" as I imagine North American editors would imagine that idea to have a title of "Athletics (sports)" (in the plural).

I think the latter idea could, in fact, have its own article at "Athletic sports". I admit my own prior thinking on that topic was flawed as I didn't think that "athletic sports" was significantly different from "sports". I now concede that this is incorrect, as athletic sports concerns only sports which are primarily competed through human physical competition – for example, things like Formula 1, horse racing, etc aren't athletic sports. The 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica had an article on Athletic sports, so I don't see why Wikipedia shouldn't have one too. If anything, it will resolve the ongoing confusion over which meaning is signified.

Hopefully this move will be of immense benefit to the two knowledge areas as we have neither a dedicated article for the mainly European idea of "athletics", and nor do we have one for the mainly North American idea of "athletics" – I think Athletics (sport) and Athletic sports (respectively) should be viable venues to develop these topics. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits)Join WikiProject Athletics! 11:28, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Also, on the "in-wiki" side of things, this will affect the category structure. I suggest that Category:Athletics (track and field) be separated into the new parent category of Category:Athletics (sport) and the new sub-category of Category:Track and field. In terms of athletes it may be better to create categories for each sport as follows: Category:Track and field athletes, Category:Cross country runners, and Category:Road running athletes (maybe the last one needs some work). Furthermore, in my mind, the additional categories regarding long/middle distance runners should complement these sport specific categories, not replace them.Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits)Join WikiProject Athletics! 12:12, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
I have no view as to whether the page move was a good idea or not. I should point out, however, that several thousand article pages link to one of the previous page titles and that it is the responsibility of those moving pages to ensure that pages do not redirect through due to a page move. Perhaps a bot could sort it out. Daicaregos (talk) 20:01, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
User:R'n'B has already been extremely helpful on this front – around 12,000 obvious cases were identified, and their target fixed. About 1500 incoming links still remain and must be resolved manually by users as their intended targets are not clear. I'll keep pushing ahead with gradual work towards fixing the links. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits)Join WikiProject Athletics! 21:03, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
Glad to hear you're on the case :) Just a suggestion (feel free to disregard it if you don't feel it would help): Currently the incoming links redirect here. If you had a bot to correct the redirects here, it would not make matters any worse. If, however, the edit summary mentioned that there is now an alternative page and asked editors to check that it now links to the correct article, it would seriously reduce the number of links to the wrong article. Cheers, Daicaregos (talk) 08:09, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
In fact, I'm going to redirect Athletics (track and field) to this article now because Russ has already changed all the targets to track and field when incoming links such as [[Athletics (track and field)|Track]] and [[Athletics (track and field)|Track and field]] were used. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits)Join WikiProject Athletics! 18:38, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
I'm getting to dislike this split, double article approach less and less. Its hard to even find one place to post the complaint. This confusion leads us to having to write de-confusing headers as in Sprint (race) in order to universalize all our sub-subjects under both lead articles. All this to solve the problem of US semantics vs the more global or UK view. We will never solve US ignorance or arrogance, not in spelling, phraseology or units of measurement. WP decided to use UK english. IAAF and the IOC uses the UK version. The only way I can see to solve confusion is by having a single master article (as we once did). Have all the permutations of naming redirect to that one article. WP is about learning--explain the semantic issue in the first paragraph.Trackinfo (talk) 18:22, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
The split is as much about the fact that the meanings of "Athletics" and "track and field" are different, as it is about US semantics. Track and field is a term which has the same meaning to both US and UK speakers, so why not have an article on that topic in addition to an athletics one? Having the two topics within one article means that we only have an athletics article and we do not have a track and field one – that's to say, it will be as much the "track and field" article as it would be the "road running" article. In terms of event articles, I think it would be best to say that things like the 100 m are "track and field events". That meaning is not only more precise, but it is understandable to all readers.
By the way, I think Sprint (race) should be moved to Sprint (athletics) or similar as "race" does nothing as a semantic disambiguator when considering other forms such as sprint (cycling), sprint (swimming) (yet to be created), or even Sprint car racing. I also think that we should have an athletics sub-article for Relay race (Relay race (athletics)) and sort out the main article as a general hub for the various types of relay races within sport. The whole main article set in athletics needs an immense amount of work... Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits)Join WikiProject Athletics! 12:36, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

I have been having a debate with Sillyfolkboy about the wisdom of this split on Talk:Track and field. As Trackinfo points out, one drawback of the split is that there are two places to debate it :) I suggest adjourning one debate and focussing on the other. I leave others to choose which to pick; perhaps a cut+paste of the deselected content would help. jnestorius(talk) 18:29, 27 May 2010 (UTC)

(following is cut'n'pasted from Talk:Track and field -jnestorius(talk) 13:18, 29 May 2010 (UTC))

There's rather a lot of overlap between this article and the "athletics" one; while it is certainly possible to draw a distinction between the broader term and the narrower one, it does not follow that they are best handled in separate articles. It's misleading to state that "It is under the banner of athletics that the two most prestigious international track field competitions are held"; the Olympics and Worlds also include the marathon and race walking. Perhaps it would be better to have separate "track" and "field" articles, and let "track and field" redirect to "athletics". Track running events have more in common with road racing than field events, apart from the minor detail of taking place in a stadium. While a minority of sprinters also long jump, it's less common than distance runners doubling up track and cross-country or marathon. And of course doping concerns are not specific to "track and field" either. jnestorius(talk) 22:07, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
They are rather similar because the athletics article remains in a pretty bad state – halfway pulled by US editors towards track and field article and halfway pulled by non-US editors towards a holistic view of the sport of athletics. That is why it remains so dissatisfying for all readers. My original plan was to completely write the two separate articles in userspace and then move them to mainspace, but other editors started to build the "track and field athletics" article in the meantime.
While there is much athlete crossover in long distance, the sports of road running, track and field, and cross country are very much independent. We should discuss them as sports as a whole and not just from an athlete perspective. Outside of the World Championships in Athletics and at the various multi-sport events, the three sports almost never coincide. The IAAF Diamond League is distinctly a track and field meeting series.
While I understand the concerns of overlapping, there are essentially two principal ways in which these two topics can be dealt with in a encyclopaedic manner:
  • Option 1: Have an in-depth article titled "athletics" which incorporates an extensive overview of track and field. No independent track and field article. (The "Britannica" or "French" solution).
  • Option 2: Have an athletics article which relies on sub-articles for more extensive information; giving overviews of the sports of track and field, cross country and road running, among others.
Having given this some six months worth of though and work, it becomes clear that the first option is somewhat impossible here due to the fact that we must cater for a nationally-plural audience. The move of the main topic to "track and field athletics" some two years ago strongly underlines the fact that American readers not only expect there to be a specific "track and field" article, but that they do not understand when it comes under the title "athletics". On top of that, it is illogical to have an athletics article using "track and field" as a disambiguator or qualifier as athletics is more than just track and field. A similar term would be "United Kingdom (England)"; the latter forms a significant aspect of the former but they are two distinct ideas. With so much widespread usage of "Athletics (track and field)", it is no surprise that many US editors and readers confused the terms, and often thought it meant the kind of "athletics" that is covered in college athletics.
Further to this, as the sport of athletics is not just track and field, how do you start an athletics article when many people expect it to cover track and field? The definitions are different. The former title of Track and field athletics was doubly incorrect in that the term is actually synonym of "track and field sports" and "track and field", but its content covered the sport of athletics. In the real world, track and field athletics is never an exact synonym of athletics – neither cross country or a 5K street race could be described as forms of track and field athletics.
While from a British, Australian, or European perspective it would make most sense to pursue to topics by the "Britannica solution", the combination of the fact that track and field is a very common term in the US and Americans are typically unfamiliar with what Athletics (sport) covers, makes this solution unworkable. Hence, my decision to build two separate articles in the manner of athletics (sport) and track and field.
I don't think its misleading to state that the foremost track and field competitions come under the athletics banner, the Olympics site itself shows both track and field under the title of Athletics, just as swimming and diving come under the title of Aquatics. The idea of splitting the "track and field" article into "track events" and "field events" would not only ignore the fact that the two almost always come together as the same competition when held at professional level, but also leaves us again with the problem of redirecting American users to an "athletics" article where they expect "track and field" (and we all go back to square one). On the basis of these issues and perspectives, I think it's best that we develop athletics (sport) as a hub for the various sports it contains, rather than as a holistic article. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits)Join WikiProject Athletics! 14:52, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
I don't understand some of your points. It seems as though you expect Americans to ignore a broader "athletics" article and just read a narrower "track and field" article; is this what you want to happen, or what you want to prevent happening? You ask "how do you start an athletics article when many people expect it to cover track and field?"; what is your own answer to this question? I'm also unclear what the difference is between a "hub" and a "holistic article". Maybe I should just wait till you've reworked athletics (sport) jnestorius(talk) 17:35, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
It's not that I want or expect American readers to ignore an athletics article to focus on a track and field one instead, but rather that it is a confusing affair for people to read about track and field through the athletics article (as has been attempted until I separated the two), especially when so many American readers are entirely unfamiliar with the term in that sense. My own answer to that question is that it is logistically impossible in Wikipedia - we must define the titled topic in the first sentence – athletics and track and field are not synonymous, thus they can't coexist in the same way that, say, Sidewalk and pavement do.
My primary intentions are (a) to provide a solution which is clear to all parties, and (b) one which clearly demonstrates that athletics and track and field aren't exactly the same thing. I know Wikipedia isn't the place to right great wrongs. Still, treating the two topics separately not only allows for clarity and a minimum of confusion for all English speakers and editors on Wikipedia, but it is also an excellent way of clearing up that the two terms are not interchangeable. Oddly, there aren't many clear online definitions of athletics that point out that it is in fact the parent sport of track and field, not a sister sport of synonym. Many people frequently call the IAAF World Championships in Athletics the "IAAF World Track and Field Championship"[2], and (while there is some clear overlap) this is not entirely correct – the same happens with the Athletics at the Olympics.
Hopefully, covering the two topics will help American readers understand what athletics actually is, rather than seeing it through the narrowed view of track and field. I'll put some work into the athletics article soon to demonstrate what I mean by a hub article. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits)Join WikiProject Athletics! 19:27, 24 May 2010 (UTC)
It would appear there is no all-encompassing word for "athletics" in American English. The governing body for "athletiss" in the US is called "USA Track & Field", after a few years as "The Athletics Congress". It says of itself "USA Track & Field (USATF) is the National Governing Body for track and field, long-distance running and race walking in the United States". So, Americans are always going to have a bit of a problem; the standard usage there is to use "track and field" in a broader sense than is strictly accurate. The Wikipedia article on USATF currently states "USA Track & Field (USATF) is the national governing body for the sport of track and field (or athletics) in the United States." The Wikilink is to track and field when it should be to athletics (sport). If you have two closely related articles, there is a strong danger that editors will Wikilink to the wrong one. Special:WhatLinksHere/Track and field tells me that several thousand pages link to "Track and Field". How many of those ought really to be linking to "athletics", and how will they be fixed? By having a single article, that problem goes away. I don't think two articles makes for clarity; I think it increases confusion. It would be clearer to have something like:
Merged introduction

Athletics is a collection of competitive sports events that involve running and walking races, jumping, and throwing. Types of athletics competitions include track and field, road running, cross country running, mountain running and race walking. The name "track and field" derives from the venue for the competitions: a stadium which features an oval running track surrounding a grassy area. The throwing and jumping events generally take place within the central enclosed area. In American English, "track and field" is often used loosely to include non-track races, while "athletics" denotes sports in general.

Athletics events are generally individual sports with athletes challenging each other to decide a single victor. The racing events are won by the athlete with the fastest time, while the jumping and throwing events are won by the athlete who has achieved the greatest distance or height in the contest. The simplicity of the competitions, and the lack of a need for expensive equipment, makes athletics one of the most commonly competed sports in the world.

The running events are categorised as sprints, middle and long-distance events, relays, and hurdling. Regular jumping events include long jump, triple jump, high jump and pole vault, while the most common throwing events are shot put, javelin, discus and hammer. There are also combined events, such as heptathlon and decathlon, in which athletes compete in a number of the above events.

The International Association of Athletics Federations is the international governing body for athletics, and organises it two most prestigious competitions: the Athletics competition at the Olympic Games and the IAAF World Championships in Athletics. Records are kept of the best performances in specific events, at world and national levels, right down to a personal level. However, if an athlete is deemed to have violated the event's rules or regulations, they are disqualified from the competition and their marks are erased.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by Jnestorius (talk • contribs) 10:31, 25 May 2010 (UTC)
The USATF article is wrong because of the confusion between the two terms (as you say, Americans have no true exact word for athletics in this sense). Dealing with the two different topics within one article actually makes links more problematic in that when someone wants to link to track and field, it links to an article that does not deal with that topic alone, hence we continue to have the problem where people think track and field is athletics and vice versa.
If we were to link that track and field in the USATF article, which then redirected to athletics, then we would only compound that confusion. I've corrected the USATF article to better reflect the reality – we can see that a number of different sporting concepts feature and we should have the links leading to those articles. We have separate articles for cross country, racewalking and road running – just because there is an American linguistic gap for "athletics" doesn't mean that we shouldn't have a separate articles for athletics and track and field too. Track and field is not just an American term either – it is also used in British English and corresponds to the same meaning.
If there are problems with the links within other articles then that is a problem to fix. Not a reason to sit back and think a division is hopeless. A vast number of those links to track and field were recently created by R'n'B and I. If you're familiar with sport at US educational institutions and track and field in the US at the professional level then you will know that a link to track and field is much more accurate and precise than a general athletics one. These are the direct links which have recently been added.
I also disagree that "track and field" is used loosely in any sense approximating athletics: I've never heard an American claim that things like cross country or the Boston Marathon are forms of track and field. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits)Join WikiProject Athletics! 22:26, 26 May 2010 (UTC)
I have significantly revised this article from the version which was present on 20 May. Are people beginning to see how track and field is a different concept from the sport of athletics? Although track and field forms a big part of the major championships, there are numerous aspects of athletics which track and field has nothing to do with. The hundreds of thousands of people at road races or cross country races at school are just as important a part of athletics as the track and field athletes at the elite level. There's still much to do (it's very much a work in progress), but I hope that my work so far helps clarify why I believe the two topics can be treated as distinct articles. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits)Join WikiProject Athletics! 11:18, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
  • I do not agree that a link to "track and field" is ever "much more accurate and precise"; often it's slightly more accurate and precise. My concern is that the slight increase in precision is not worth the price of duplication or division of material between two separate articles. The duplication is things like individual vs relay vs team events; governing bodies; regulations; doping; history. You have a lot about those at track and field that really appertains to the parent article, or to a common child article like history of athletics.
  • We can break athletics down in numerous ways: track-and-field—road—cross-country—hill; running—walking—throwing—jumping; flat—hurdles—barriers; single-event—multi-event; individual—team; club—school—college—international; amateur—pro. We need to discuss each of these, but we don't need articles for every possible permutation and combination.
  • Just because two words have different meanings does not mean they must have separate articles. WP:NAD and all that. For example, Manhattan covers both the island and the borough, even though the two are not coterminous.
  • I am unclear when one would want to link to track-and-field specifically, as opposed to either "athletics" more broadly, or a narrower term like "distance runner" or "hammer throw". Take for example your edit to Javier Sotomayor to say "former track and field athlete who specialized in the high jump". Is it really important that the "track and field" links to an article that excludes cross-country running rather than one that includes it? The important link is to high jump. The other link could probably be removed altogether. It might help this discussion if you gave some counter-examples to illustrate where the difference is more significant.
  • When someone (who isn't you or R'n'B) edits or creates an article, and adds a wikilink to "track and field" which ought to go to "athletics", how are you going to notice to fix it? It will be hard to spot among the thousands of correct links. I think your time would be better spent adding substantive content than maintaining a tedious patrol for incorrect inlinks.
  • It appears that the U.S. is quite clear to distinguish "cross country" from "track and field"; e.g. the "United States Track and Field/Cross Country Coaches' Association". But the media often covers road racing stories under the tagline "Track and Field"; e.g. New York Times [3] [4] LA Times [5] Boston Globe [6]
  • The hundred of thousands of road racing and cross country runners can be detailed in those sub-articles, without needing separate "athletics" and "track and field" articles.
  • You say below "we shouldn't be pandering to people who can't read the first seven words of an article." That will apply equally if both "athletics" and "track and field" are defined and distinguished in the first sentences of a merged article. If an American unfamiliar with the term types "track and field", or clicks on a link "track and field", and arrives at page where —whoah!— "track and field" is in bold in the second sentence rather than the first one, any confusion can be eliminated by reading those first two sentences. jnestorius(talk) 13:18, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree that it is only slightly more precise, but still it remains more precise. I don't think there will be that much duplication, for example: the athletics article discusses all major athletics competitions while the track and field article just discusses track and field competitions. In fact, this same "duplicated" material about related governing bodies and competitions etc should actually be added to the cross country and road running articles. Its called summary style and is used all over Wikipedia when one article covers a number of topics that can be explored in further detail on daughter articles – the track and field article already does this because we can't practically discus each specific event at length in the same article (only give a brief summary). I'm suggesting that it is logical to do the same on the athletics article in regards to the four main sports in athletics.
I never argued that we need to break down every aspect of athletics and have an article on every permutation: distinctions such as" flat—hurdles—barriers; single-event—multi-event; individual—team; club—school—college—international; amateur—pro" can be discussed in a few sentences in relevant articles (as I have already done). Ironically, for the specific sports in athletics you mentioned ("track-and-field—road—cross-country—hill") we have an article for all of them but track and field. Are you arguing that those other three articles should be merged and redirected here?
Linking to Wikipedia is not a dictionary is entirely irrelevant. The nutshell description says as much: "In Wikipedia, things are grouped into articles based on what they are, not what they are called by. In a dictionary things are grouped by what they are called by, not what they are." Track and field is not a dictionary definition; it is an encyclopaedic article. Do I really have to explain again that athletics is not synonymous with track and field? Track and field is an actual different thing to athletics in general – that's why we have cross country races, road races, and track and field competitions held entirely separately at every level but the major championships. Sanya Richards won't go near an athletics championship this year – she will focus entirely on separate track and field meetings. Manhattan can cover the borough and the city because the islands have virtually no significant history unconnected with the city of Manhattan, and are demographically much the same. Track and field, cross country and racewalking, for example, each have their very own distinct and unconnected histories. Some parts are shared, yes, but in much the same way that all such less-popular sports that came under the Amateur Athletic Union do.
I have reduced the links between what is specifically meant to link to either "athletics" or "track and field" and I can do so on a long term basis. Much of that work is already done. I have been adding much substantive content in addition to this. Besides which, I will spend my time doing what I like here. That is not your concern – in fact it would be nice if you actually contributed to athletics articles in the slightest way, other than arguing about this issue (which seems to be the only athletics-related stuff you've done since 2006).
In terms of the paper links, The New York Times has now added a running category which such articles now come under ("track and field" is merely used as a category and is never used in such a way in the actual articles).
What do you even mean by this? : "The hundred of thousands of road racing and cross country runners can be detailed in those sub-articles, without needing separate "athletics" and "track and field" articles." Thousands of American footballers could be discussed without separating "Ball Games" from "Soccer". That doesn't mean that such a separation would not be desired. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits)Join WikiProject Athletics! 20:41, 30 May 2010 (UTC)
OK, I get the feeling we're not going to reach any meeting of minds soon, so I'll try to work with the two-article approach for now. I will take issue with your characterisation of Summary Style; it involves summarising each of the child articles within the parent, not summarising the parent within each of the children. In that spirit I think most of the lede, history, and doping sections of "Track and Field" belong in the parent article and not in the child. jnestorius(talk) 19:57, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
It was my main mistake to move the track and field article to mainspace before starting to write a complete athletics article. Perhaps some of the history information should be moved to the main athletics article and a more track specific version written for that article instead, similar to what I've done for the "organisation" section. The athletics article is far from done and will include doping etc, but perhaps some less relevant info could be stripped out of the daughter article and into the parent one. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits)Join WikiProject Athletics! 21:40, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

Name of article

I still think that the title of the article should simply be Athletics. The title Athletics (sport) is awkward for English speakers who know what athletics means, and confusing for Americans who equate the word athletics and sports already. Mipchunk (talk) 07:57, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

I'd appreciate it if we didn't conflate the "athletics" naming issue with the discussion on whether we should have an article on track and field.
I believe I've drawn the distinction between athletics (sport) and athletic sports. Few people should confuse the two concepts now as each has its own separate article. The hatnote here should be enough – we shouldn't be pandering to people who can't read the first seven words of an article. Feel free to suggest any better ideas for a concise, bracketed disambiguator – I believe I've made enough of a case against this article's two former titles. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits)Join WikiProject Athletics! 11:58, 28 May 2010 (UTC)
I agree that "athletics" is unacceptable as a name, for the simple reason that it will attract too many misplaced inlinks that ought to go to athletic sports. jnestorius(talk) 13:18, 29 May 2010 (UTC)
I disagree. When you see [[Athletics]], in 99% percent of the cases it is meant to point to what is now Athletics (sport). Same like Voltaire - in 99% of the cases it's the French guy, and for everything else we have Voltaire (disambiguation). That's the standard way to handle ambiguity when one of the meanings is clearly primary. From WP:PRECISION:
If the topic of the article is the primary topic (or only topic) for a desired title, then the article can take that title without modification.
So, let's use Athletics and set apart Athletics (disambiguation) for disambiguation purposes. GregorB (talk) 14:47, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
As I've mentioned in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Athletics, I'm on board with GregorB's suggestion to merge Athletics (sport) into Athletics. Use Athletics (disambiguation) and hatnotes where necessary. Are there reasons not to do this? Location (talk) 16:35, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
The point is that "athletics" does not overwhelmingly mean "Leichtathletik"; in US English it means "all athletic sports". I concede that probably a fair majority of actual use is in the non-US sense, since most Americans would usually say "sport" rather than using a more highfalutin synonym. However, the majority is nowhere near 99%. At any given time there are a few pages erroneously pointing to the DAB page, some of which should be changed to point to athletics (sport) and others to Athletic sports. (I accept that the two names are confusingly similar; maybe one/both should be changed, but that's a separate issue.) "Athletics" should continue to DAB the two main senses (whatever the names of those two articles happen to be) so that fixing those DAB links is a minor housekeeping task. If you shift the names then all the links to "Leichtathletik" will swamp an initially small number of erroneous links meant for Athletic sports that will be continually added by Americans; over time the number of erroneous links becomes significant. Linking to a DAB page is much less serious an error than linking to the wrong article; the latter would in this case also be harder to fix. jnestorius(talk) 19:41, 31 May 2010 (UTC)
Are you saying that number of incoming links to Athletics (sport) is less than 100x the number of incoming links to Athletic sports? (Actually the latter has less than 50 incoming links; as for the former, I got bored at 10k. Even if some are erroneous, that is an overwhelming majority.) You're essentially right about linking to the wrong article, but this argument might be applied to all cases: e.g. I could write "Voltaire" referring to a horse and be wrong, but that's simply the price to pay for the normally titled primary topic article, as suggested by WP:PRECISION. GregorB (talk) 07:06, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
While I might find fault with your Voltaire analogy, I can't fault your statistics. Given how seldom "athletic sports" is in practice used, I withdraw my opposition. jnestorius(talk) 12:16, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
Looking at incoming links is a highly flawed method of analysing the usage of the word athletics – we should see web/journal/book usage instead. As you may know, the vast majority of users here only link to things when the target article exists. While an article has existed on the sport of athletics since 2002 (in one form or another), the athletic sports one has been created this month. A similar argument could be given that, until recently, very little linked directly to "track and field" (people frequently used [[Athletics (track and field)|Track and field]]). That doesn't mean that no one wanted to (or needed to) link to that topic, but rather that without an obvious article to link to (beyond the plain disambiguation) people have either not linked athletics/athletic sports at all or have written [[Sport|athletics]] or something similar – following in line with the options present at the athletics disambiguation since 2006. Pretty much every article documenting a US educational institution could provide a perfectly relevant link to athletic sports. However, many current editors prefer to avoid red links for some reason, so they just substituted the "athletics" target for either "sport" or "athletics (track and field)", hence the dearth of links for both "athletic sports" and "track and field".
The incoming links to Track and field stadium or Athletics stadium are yet more proof of this behaviour. That has not happened because there are three notable track and field stadiums in the world...but rather because of this "no article exists = no red link" behaviour. Similarly, the Florence Marathon had no links until I wrote the article. At this stage of the project, many people seem to think red links are a bad thing... Incoming links only reflects Wikipedian behaviour and not actual usage. Saying that, I'm not arguing for or against a move to plain athletics, but rather we should put this kind of usage into perspective. Sillyfolkboy (talk) (edits)Join WikiProject Athletics! 12:26, 1 June 2010 (UTC)
You have a point. Still, I don't expect that athletics/athletic sports ratio will be lower than e.g. 100-1 in the long run, simply because my hunch is that roughly the same ratio applies "in the real world". However, this is hard to either prove or disprove, and that's why I'd suggest status quo for the time being. We'll see how these figures add up in the future and hopefully we'll act accordingly.
The "Voltaire" example is quite random, there are hundreds or perhaps thousands of such cases - in fact, if an article named "Foobar (disambiguation)" exists, then "Foobar" is the primary topic. Other such examples may (or may not) illustrate the point better. GregorB (talk) 13:39, 1 June 2010 (UTC)2, 8 September 2010 (UTC)

An Idea

I sincerely apologize for the poo-poo, but I believe it is a clear sign of failure that a Google search for "Athletics" returns a Wikipedia disambiguation page. The National Collegiate Athletic Association contains a large body of sports and games. I am barely familiar with the use of the word "athletics" to mean only "track & field." And I take "Sportsperson" to mean "Sportsman" or hunter/trapper/angler. I have been reading the discussion, and thought to suggest this. Lambaste me if I'm out of line.

What if we change Athletic sports to just "Athletics?" And change Athletics (sport) to "Athletics (games)?" (as mentioned here in reference to The Olympic Games) And change Sportsperson to "Athlete?" TommyKirchhoff (talk) 17:53, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

This state of affairs is a result of differences in the meaning of the word "athletics" dependent upon one's culture. Athletics, as in the American term synonymous with athletic sports, is not used or readily understood by the vast majority of English speakers outside of North America. Athletics, as in the subject of this article (a sport which encompasses track and field, cross country running, racewalking etc), is a term understood in the United Kingdom, Australia and other parts of the Commonwealth, but which is not readily understood by the vast majority of American speakers.
Thus we have one word which means two entirely different things to two sets of people. Finding a disambiguation first in Google is not a failure, but rather a direct result of the ambiguity of this term when considering an international audience.
Similarly, "athlete" can also take on a more specific meaning in English – a person who competes in the sport of athletics. The current title of "Sportsperson" was chosen because it is a term which is less ambiguous when considering all English speakers (links are also given at the top of the page for those seeking information on hunters etc).
While the current title of Athletics (sport) has its imperfections, it is a progression from "Athletics (track and field)" – which may confuse the reader into thinking Athletics means simply track and field, although it is a more expansive term encompassing cross country running and other forms of footracing. "Athletics (track and field)" is as misleading as "Athletics (cross country)" would be. Your suggestion of "Athletics (games)" is unclear in that it suggests that the sport is some form of game, or genre of games. Perhaps Athletics (Olympic sport) would be a more clear refinement of this idea? SFB 21:31, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
The Athletics (sport) introduction discusses how they come from the original Olympic games, which included pugilism and horse-racing. My 1971 Oxford English Dictionary defines athlete as "a competitor in the physical exercises--such as running, leaping, boxing, wrestling--that formed part of the public games in ancient Greece and Rome." My OED defines athletics as "The practice of physical exercises by which muscular strength is called into play and increased." I understand that UK English uses "athletics" to describe "foot racing," but don't see how English usage outside the U.S. excludes all sports and games other than foot-racing. I believe Athletics, in an international sense, connotes running, leaping, boxing, wrestling, futbol, etc. A Google search should yield a link to a content-rich page, not a question (what do you mean by athletics ?); in that case, Google should realize that we've failed and drop the Wikipedia link way down the page. As a group of encyclopedic terms, Athletics, Athletics (games) and Athlete (which all come from the Ancient Greek word Athlos) makes the most international sense. TommyKirchhoff (talk) 22:48, 31 March 2011 (UTC)
http://www.uka.org.uk/competitions/rules/ United Kingdom Athletics is a governing body for track and field, not exclusive to just foot racing. The UK foot-racing connotation of Athletics seems to be very limited. TommyKirchhoff (talk) 14:30, 1 April 2011 (UTC)
The idea you are describing is that which is covered in athletic sports. This article deals with the concept of an umbrella term for the sports of track and field, road running, cross country running, and race walking etc. This concept does not include fighting, wrestling, or horse riding and it never has done. As for an international perspective, you should consider that this latter definition of athletics has been prominent internationally with over 100 hundred years of Athletics at the Summer Olympics, almost 100 years of international governance of the sport as the International Association of Athletics Federations, and direct foreign word equivalents in Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, and Russian to name a few. This is not an obscure concept known only to a handful of people in England.
I agree that the idea of athletics meaning athletic sports is also understood in the UK. This is the same way in which it is understood that the word football can mean football or football (in that a British person will assume you mean the latter concept, unless you have specifically signposted that you meant the former). I think its also justifiable to say that no one should rely on a dictionary which is forty years out of date to assess modern usage. The OED now lists athletics (inc. track and field) as its first definition, as does Collins Dictionary, while the Encyclopaedia Britannica has the athletic sports concept at Athletic clubs and sports and an article covering Athletics/track and field listed at plain Athletics.
What is the benefit of Athletics (games) over the much more clear Athletics (Olympic sport)? Also, do you have trouble understanding the term athletic sports? If not, how would it be a benefit to readers to move a topic to a name which is ambiguous to some, instead of a term which is ambiguous to none? SFB 11:52, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
If the U.S. usage of "Athletics" is the lesser-known meaning, then a Google search should yield a link to the content-rich Athletics (sport) page, whatever the title (Yankees do not understand the current title). From there, a hatnote could link to Athletic sports ("Athletic sports" seems redundant; it doesn't cover coaching, training or psychological; the page is basically a stub, so why not call it Athletics (U.S.) ? Athletic sports needs a lot of development).TommyKirchhoff (talk) 16:01, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
http://www.google.com/trends?q=athletics TommyKirchhoff (talk) 16:07, 2 April 2011 (UTC)
http://news.theage.com.au/breaking-news-sport/australia-opens-athletic-base-in-italy-20110303-1bglr.html TommyKirchhoff (talk) 15:02, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/tigers-limp-out-against-breakers/story-e6frfglf-1226032636656 TommyKirchhoff (talk) 15:02, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
http://www.gaa.ie/ (Ireland) TommyKirchhoff (talk) 15:06, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
http://english.cis-sic.ca/information/members_directory/canada_west TommyKirchhoff (talk) 15:09, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
http://www.cafctv.co.uk/page/Home (u.K.) TommyKirchhoff (talk) 15:11, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
http://www.kicker.de/news/fussball/2bundesliga/startseite/546978/artikel_radjabali-fardi_konkurrenz-belebt-das-geschaeft.html#omsearchresult (Germany) TommyKirchhoff (talk) 15:25, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
Mohun Bagan AC India Athletic Club TommyKirchhoff (talk) 16:12, 4 April 2011 (UTC)
SFB-- the link you posted above to Encyclopaedia Britannica's "Athletic clubs and sports" has a section called "Women and athletics;" it discusses swimming, bicycling, gymnastics, etc. And a search for "athlete" at EB makes it patently clear that the term includes all sports, not just the specific sport of athletics http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1570391/Vancouver-2010-Olympic-Games/285672/Notable-Athletes-Competing-at-the-Vancouver-Winter-Olympics In short, someone has gone too far by naming the WP athlete page "sportsperson." The English-speaking world uses the terms "athletics" and "athlete" to mean much more than just track & field and foot racing. While this article is fine, I believe the title is misunderstood still. Perhaps Athletics (sport of) or Athletics, the sport of, something... TommyKirchhoff (talk) 12:38, 5 April 2011 (UTC)
The meaning of "athletic" is the same in all variants of English (as far as I know). The term "athletic" is prominently featured in various sports team, associations and clubs in the UK/Ireland/Australia etc, but (perhaps strangely) it is not seen as having the same meaning as the common usage of athletics in those countries. SFB 10:56, 9 April 2011 (UTC)
Major translations from Asia like Chin Woo Athletic Association show the usage of "athletics" to mimic the way it's used in the U.S. The argument on Talk: Sportsperson to change that page's name to Athlete comes from a Brit. Here's [Title IX]TommyKirchhoff (talk) 01:06, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Mixed gender?

An IP editor has just changed the Infobox entry of "Mixed gender" from "No" to "Yes". I'm not sure if that's a sensible change, or even a sensible Infobox item at all.

Yes, both males and females participate in athletics, often at the same place and the same time, but they rarely compete directly against one another.

The question in my mind really is, what does the Infobox entry mean? What does it achieve being there? If I can't be sure of its intention, am I the odd one out, or is it unclear to others as well?

I think this is a classic case of a simplistic Infobox entry being too simplistic. I would prefer that it wasn't used, and details of male and female involvement be explained fully in the article. HiLo48 (talk) 17:27, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

The template Infobox sport states under mgender that: in this case a special note can be provided: Yes, but usually in separate leagues/divisions. I wonder if that would solve anything? But it's a good point, perhaps you should bring it up on the infobox too? That Ole' Cheesy Dude (Talk to the hand!) 17:45, 29 May 2011 (UTC)
I think this item should be removed on this article. Mixed gender competitions do happen (especially in road running events) but the infobox is not the ideal place to explain the exceptions and the typical gender divides across the sport. Infoboxes are for clarity and brevity. SFB 23:30, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Rename

It seems to me that the current name is to ambiguous. In the United States "athletics" is used as essentially a synonym for sports. I guess the way the article is named seems to try to mean this covers a specific sport, but I am not sure it really helps. I just wonder if there is a better way to name the article. I am wondering if it would be better to name the article Athletics (track and field). I guess some people would say that that is really a sub-set, but my guess is most people would see them as essentially the same.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:45, 29 December 2012 (UTC)

Oh dear. There are times when I think we need two English Wikipedias, one for Americans and one for the rest of the world's English speakers. The obvious problem with your suggestion is that, as you say yourself, track and field is only a subset of athletics, and itself is mostly a term used only in the USA. The lead of the article goes to a lot of trouble to explain in greater detail what the subject is. You don't think that's enough to enable Americans to understand? (You seem to manage.)
(PS: Elsewhere on Wikipedia I'm currently in a discussion with an editor who changed "Outside the USA" to "Outside of the USA" "to make it more correct". To explain this problem to Americans, the latter form is just plain incorrect where I live. I don't know the solution.) HiLo48 (talk) 22:45, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
Consider also that "officially" is (also for the Americans) IAAF World Championships in Athletics and not IAAF Track and Field World Championships. --Kasper2006 (talk) 05:21, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
We've been down this road before. As an American, I presented our difficulty with conforming with the rest of the (english speaking?) world. Broader minds have prevailed and the resultant distribution of articles and names came through consensus. We need to recognize that there is a sizable, jingoistic faction of Americans that consider it unpatriotic and un-american to capitulate to worldwide norms. Beyond the titles, Americans are stuck in the imperial measurement system, so (discussed above) we have to convert all marks, sometimes in the opposite direction (and not back again) if the mark originated in the USA. We converted our rulebooks to metric 30 years ago, but only a small fraction of the non-immigrant population knows what those numbers mean. And they will resist learning to their dying breath. 09:03, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
Canadian here, have always used it the apparently "American" way. Hadn't even realized there was a "British" way till today. If we need two English Wikipedias, I demand a third. InedibleHulk (talk) 21:32, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Athletes

Athletes salaries are too high for a reason. Their salaries come in because the way they train, play the games, and entertain their fans. Athletes are very smart about making money too, this is why they are a billion-dollar company. These athletic people bribe fans to come to their games so they can make monay. no wonder why games are expensive. They are expensive because, if you look at it the right way you'll see that, there are 1,000 seatswith 1,000 people sitting in each seat, and the game cost 200 dollars just to get in. They will make 2000,000 dollars for that game and once they keep that uptheuy could be making 800,000 dollars. Now, someone can finally understand why Professional Athletes the high amount of salaries that they do. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.60.20.114 (talk) 02:45, 8 March 2013 (UTC)

Stadia

The word "Stadia" has been used to describe events that take place inside stadiums, in order to distinguish them from road racing, road race walking, cross country and mountain running, which fall under the jurisdiction of the sports world governing bodies. That concept was question in a couple of edits. Here are some sources to the point. World Masters Athletics makes the clearest distinction, their 2 Vice Presidents being divided between Stadia and Non-Stadia. The IAAF Technical Committee also makes the same distinction in multiple places [7] [8] [9]. This is my justification for reverting the latest edit on this subject. Trackinfo (talk) 23:03, 27 April 2014 (UTC)

That's persuasive. Thanks. It's significantly different from the usage I'm familiar with in Australia, starting way back with the Melbourne Olympic Games, and the Sydney Games too. (Yes, I'm old.) But I'm always happy to learn. I don't think I've ever seen or heard the word "stadia" used in Australia. HiLo48 (talk) 02:24, 28 April 2014 (UTC)

Sources for article expansion

(well, the history section anyway)

Undiscussed name change

I object to the name change. I'm not in full agreement with the existing situation, but the argument is this group of sports under the IAAF is known globally (outside of the USA and Canada) by the term Athletics. It has never been presented that this is limited just to Europe. Trackinfo (talk) 05:47, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

The OED is the gold standard for definitions. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 05:52, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
Edit: I should probably clarify: I linked to the OED entry in the edit summary for the move. They indicate this region. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 05:53, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
The linked source does not contain any reference limiting or attributing this usage to Europe.Trackinfo (talk) 05:57, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
The OED states "chiefly N. Amer" for general sporting competitions as the definition and "spec. (orig. Brit.)." for the more specific definition. Given that I pruned the "North" from the former for brevity (expanding the scope), I felt it reasonable to expand the scope from British to European in the latter since it's still correct for a regional distinction. Nonetheless, I did simultaneously create redirects at Athletics (North American) and Athletics (British) when I moved these pages. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 06:23, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
You are unilaterally trying to solve the same problem the version previous to your change had addressed. But your undiscussed solution, in using cryptic brevity introduces facts not in evidence, making it factually incorrect as a bonus. In short, there have been discussions before. You are not the only person to recognize there is a problem of multiple usages of the word. But your solution is not the answer. Trackinfo (talk) 06:34, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
Cryptic brevity? IDK what that means. Last I checked, the countries in North and South America that have English as their official language are all confined to North America. Same for Europe and Britain (at the time the term was defined). Even so, if you actually care THAT MUCH, we can move the articles to Athletics (North American) and Athletics (British) instead. I explained the reason for the original move (inadequate article disambiguation) on your project page. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 06:48, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
I'm not going to start a renaming war. I suspect other people will chime in when they notice the primary article about our sport has been renamed. As I prefaced, I don't think the status quo is perfect, but its decidedly better than the inaccurate version just created. Trackinfo (talk) 07:17, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

I'll rename the articles to the redirect terms then, though I'll need to wait for the talk pages to be deleted before those can move. Are you satisfied now? Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 07:32, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

As an aside, I'm less opposed to the move of Athletics (North American), though it does pose issues for those in North America for whom athletics means Athletics (sport), which is actually the entirety of North America minus the US and some parts of English-speaking Canada (see Athletics Canada). I also still of the opinion that the other term would be better discussed Athleticism – which is broader (but mostly overlapping) and linguistically neutral. SFB 18:06, 9 March 2015 (UTC)


I figured my explanation at WT:Athletics made this clear, but I guess not; I came across this page from a piped link to athletics (sport) on the term athletics. The link was incorrectly directed to this article when the more general term was intended (the context was performance-enhancing drugs). When I arrived at this page, I was confused since it wasn't what I expected given the article's parenthetical disambiguation and that I'm familiar with American English (I expected an article on competitive sports in general). It wasn't readily apparent to me after looking at the athletics disambiguation page that athletics (U.S.) was the more general article that I was looking for while athletics (sport) was the more specific article reflecting a more British English usage. The reason why this was confusing to me should be readily apparent:
  • Athletics is defined in the context of sporting events regardless of the variant of English, so I expected athletics (U.S.) to be an article on athletics in the US as opposed to Athletics (American), i.e., the more common meaning of the term "Athletics" in American English.
  • If one or the other didn't exist as an article, "Athletics (sport)" would be an appropriate and precise disambiguation title for either Athletics (North American) or Athletics (British) article. Because both of those articles are in the context of sports, this is an ambiguous parenthetical disambiguation.
In a nutshell, regardless of whether or not anyone likes the new titles, the old titles literally can not be used as the alternative because "(U.S.)" and "(sports)" do not conform to MOS:PRECISION–MOS:DAB for being ambiguous parenthetical disambiguations for these two articles.
I'm perfectly open to an alternative solution to disambiguate these articles (e.g., merge them into 1 general topic article or use a new parenthetical disambiguation scheme). I chose the parenthetical language variant for disambiguation because the pages literally reflect different definitions of the term "Athletics" which happen to have distinct geographic localization (per OED); doing this is actually in accordance with the WP:TITLE#National varieties of English convention for page titles when using parenthetical disambiguation. Just for the record, I did read some of the former move discussions looked at the move logs for these pages beforehand; none of this is relevant to this discussion because this disambiguation convention wasn't considered, so I don't know why it's worth bringing up. It also doesn't concern me that some people take issue with me being WP:BOLD and moving these articles to less ambiguous titles; it was broken and needed to be fixed. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 19:41, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 9 March 2015

The following is a closed discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the proposal was no consensus. Perhaps an unsatisfying conclusion for a good discussion, but two things seem clear here: (1) the current title is awkward, with an unusual disambiguator; and (2) the proposed title is weighted with significant problems of its own. Fortunately, there are two main ways forward here: (1) move to something else; or (2) cut the Gordian Knot and merge the articles. Neither of these should be done without consensus, of course, but I'm optimistic at the prospects of finding a consensus solution. --BDD (talk) 01:47, 9 May 2015 (UTC)

Athletics (British) → Athletics (sport) – My request to move the article back to the title that was previously agreed by consensus was reverted by the person who moved it. If you look at the archives, we can see a variation of the current title (that was moved without discussion) was already rejected on the basis that I explained above. I'm happy to discuss other possibilities apart from the previous title, but I think the British one is inherently problematic on several fronts, most notably that it effectively excludes non-British varieties of English that use the term (which, population-wise, actually outnumber the British ones). SFB 20:39, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

It's also worth noting that Seppi's source for the change (OED) does not even support his interpretation:
"spec. (orig. Brit.). Track and field events, including running races and various contests in jumping and throwing; the practice or sport of competing in these. " (emphasis mine). SFB 20:42, 9 March 2015 (UTC)
It would be a bit more constructive if we discuss how to address the disambiguation issue and your concerns rather than just ignore that there's a problem. In any event, I obviously oppose this per #my reply above. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 21:36, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

I second SFB's request for a move back to Athletics (sport). It is the best compromise proposed so far, as decided in previous discussions. Perhaps as an additional suggestion, the "North American" disambiguation might be better solved without the localization. Perhaps it could be named Athletics (generalization). Trackinfo (talk) 22:16, 9 March 2015 (UTC)

@Trackinfo and Seppi333: I don't think that's a very helpful disambiguator when out of the article context. Maybe Athletics (physical culture) would be more helpful? Certainly that's useful in that it covers the whole training/playing/competing complex of the topic. I agree that localisation isn't the best choice, not least because something like Athletics (North America) is so easily misconstrued as "Athletics in North America" or as something specifically North American. The more international we can make that article the better. For example, the ideas covered in physical culture are completely missing from it. This is really crucial information as it shows the development of Western sports culture in the industrial age – certainly the decision to focus so much on competition over demonstration (like in the Turnverein) has profoundly affected the way sport is understood globally. SFB 00:26, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Weak Oppose all sports are "athletics", so "athletics (sport)" has some ambiguity, as it could refer to any sport with athletes (sportspeople). Indeed university athletics departments cover all sports, such as football, baseball, basketball, hockey. Suggest instead Athletics (track and field) or Track and field (athletics) since this is just what is referred to colloquially as "track and field" -- 70.51.200.101 (talk) 02:54, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
    • While the "(track and field)" parenthetical has the upside of making the subject more obvious to North American readers, it has the obvious drawback in that we are defining a larger concept by only one of its parts (e.g. North America (United States). The previous use of this title+handle led to frequent move requests and content edit wars about including non-track and field topics on an article that some (wrongly) assumed should have been covering just track and field. The difference now is that we have a fully-fledged track and field article, but inevitably this is confusing for North American readers who—now assuming that athletics (track and field)=track and field—periodically start merge discussions. We've been at this point before and it wasted a lot of time. It is not coincidental at all that the division of these articles happened at the same time as the great increase in the quality of their coverage. SFB 23:39, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment is there a way to work article content to facilitate the moves:
Athletics (British) → Athletics and optionally
Athletics (North American) → Athletics in North America
Team GB are just one of the groups that partake in events such as the Summer Olympics and the current disambiguation seems very problematic and even partisan to me. For example www.britishathletics.org.uk/ is "the official homepage of Athletics in the UK."
A simple article on "Athletics" could be made which would be able to summarise local variants in usage in NA. GregKaye 06:55, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Oppose, given that parts, if not most, of the North American term can be considered sports. Ambiguous disambiguators in article titles are not helpful to readers. Steel1943 (talk) 07:33, 10 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment: If we shall have Athletics (British) and Athletics (North American) we should maybe have Athletics (British English) and Athletics (US English) to emphasize that we have variations in language and meaning, not that Athletics is differently performed in US and UK, or that the UK is the main country for track and field.--BIL (talk) 08:41, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

For clarification: The sports revolving around what Americans call track and field, but also including road running, cross country running, race walking and mountain trail running are referred to globally as the sport of Athletics. This group of sports is governed by the International Association of Athletics Federations. In the official literature of the Olympics, the sport is referred to as Athletics, not track and field. And if you watch American TV coverage of the sport, you might also be very surprised that all of the measurements are done metric, so the reports you see in feet and inches have been sanitized for your protection. If you approach this discussion with all of your previous experience coming from a a limited American perspective, your experience will tell you Athletics is a generalized term covering all sports or activities. Schools in the United States have Departments of Athletics, and Athletic Directors supervising an entire program of sports. This is our dilemma to disambiguate. Wikipedia is a worldwide source of information. 300 plus million Americans might dominate the English speaking world, but are easily a minority vs the other 6 billion plus people around the world. While the governing body is United States Track and Field (USATF), in France it is Fédération française d'athlétisme, in Spain Real Federación Española de Atletismo, in Russia it is translated to All-Russia Athletic Federation, India is Athletics Federation of India and China's 中国田径协会 translates to the Chinese Athletic Association as some examples. This goes well beyond British english. Trackinfo (talk) 10:32, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

  • Strong support - the current title is ridiculous! Athletics is a sport--yes, it's a British name, but come on! We never ever ever ever disambiguate this way! Red Slash 01:49, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
Bullshit. There's no policy anywhere on WP that supports what you just said. Pages can/should be disambiguated in any way that disambiguates all articles with the same title, with greater precision being preferential. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 04:49, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
That's not even remotely true. See WP:NCDAB, which is policy. Red Slash 22:53, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

information Note: Given that there doesn't seem to be any agreement on how to disambiguate these articles parenthetically in an unambiguous and uncontroversial manner, article naming policy indicates the use of a WP:Broad concept article in this case. Football is actually a good example of such an article. This solution would entail merging athletics (North American), athletics (British), college athletics, and Track and field (the latter two are entries at athletics) into a single article at the athletics page, where the current athletics page would be moved to athletics (disambiguation) – the remaining disambiguation entries would just be athletics organizations. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 04:49, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

That is not the solution found at football, as association football, American football, rugby football etc all still exist – they haven't been merged to football. Moreover, football describes a broad range of ball games; athletics can mean either a specific sport governed by the IAAF or an overarching concept of human athletic activity. One can compare, contrast and analyse common roots of distinct codes of football. This kind of relationship doesn't exist between the two athletics concepts (one of which incorporates the other) so they are unreconcilable. Trying to do so was actually the primary reason why the two athletics topics (plus track and field!) had only confusing and poor coverage as a grouped topic until 2010, and this was the primary driver for the division of the distinct concepts. A broad concept article does not suit Athletics as it emphatically does not have (to quote the guideline) "an unambiguous meaning that can be discerned from the relationship between the listed topics".
Perhaps we could build an article covering the meaning of athletics as a word (like Football (word)), as that is probably helpful and warranted. Still, that is yet another article for the disambiguation page. I endorse having separate articles for the concepts – and track and field as well, given the further potential confusion around treatment of many non-track and field topics on a track and field article (another problem of the 2010 arrangement). SFB 23:13, 11 March 2015 (UTC)
That's a fair point about the child articles. Per WP:SUMMARYSTYLE, the subarticles should still exist and be linked from the main article. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢ | Maintained) 03:27, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
  • What a horrible mess. But oppose the proposed move.. As far as I can gather, the term "Athletics" in the UK and maybe elsewhere means the same thing as "Track and field" in North America. I.e. including marathons, road races, and maybe cross country. Whereas "track and field" isn't really a much used term in the UK. Hence this article and Track and field should be merged really. As for where they reside, I think it should probably be at plain vanilla Athletics. This is a precise term and the most commonly used for this. It is also the term used by the IOC: [10]. Athletics (physical culture) is a more oblique term, and probably that content should be merged into a more general article about sports, which woudl allow a simple hatnote from Athletics to wherever that would be. I don't want to turn this into an WP:ENGVAR dispute though, I just don't know the level of attachment North American readers have to an article about "athletics" to know if this is the primary topic. Anyway, as others have pointed out, "Athletics (sports)" is clearly not a good disambiguator, so if this isn't moved to Athletics, then an alternative needs to be found.  — Amakuru (talk) 12:38, 17 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Change it: The present title of this article, "Athletics (British)", is ridiculous and must be changed. The title of the sister article, "Athletics (physical culture)" (which is actually referred to as "Athletics (North American)" at the top of this article) is also quite poor. 109.153.236.250 (talk) 14:53, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
(Addition) Yikes. I see now that there is a separate article "Track and Field". This is bonkers. "Track and Field" is just the American term for what the rest of the world calls "Athletics" (or near equivalent in local language). I agree with the poster above that this is all a horrible mess. There should be one article called "Athletics" for the sport that is internationally referred to by that name, with a note at the start "known as Track and Field in ths US" or whatever wording is agreed. 109.153.236.250 (talk) 15:06, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
Track and field is just one aspect of athletics. Having an article on specifically track and field is only as bonkers as having separate articles for cross country running, racewalking or road running. They are all parts of athletics, a much broader concept of footracing and measured jumping and throwing sports of all varieties. Simply reading the two articles makes this clear enough. SFB 15:58, 28 March 2015 (UTC)
Yes, you do have a point. I'm afraid that my comment on that point was written without due consideration. However I still stand by my opinion that "Athletics (British)" is a ridiculous name for this article. 109.153.245.28 (talk) 02:48, 1 April 2015 (UTC)

Alternatives to Athletics (sport)

I think the prime limitation of the "(sport)" handle is that is doesn't delineate it from the Athletics (physical culture) concept. I think it is a good idea to stick with a disambiguation handle that describes the concept, rather than one which describes the word that describes the concept (i.e. "British English"). Here's some alternatives (old and new):

The more I think about it, the more the first option seems like it has the fewest potential issues both in terms of disambiguation (no North American would define Athletics (physical culture) as a sport in itself) and in limitations of defined scope (all the other parentheticals exclude something, be it walking/non-IAAF or Olympic forms/all non-track-and-field forms, etc.). SFB 23:58, 11 March 2015 (UTC)

  • Question In American English are the words "sport" and "athletics" perfect and complete synonyms? If there is any clear difference between them that is what we must use to disambiguate. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:09, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
@Dodger67: Sport implies competition, an agreed ruleset etc. Athletics covers sports of an athletic nature, but also includes their physical practice, methods of training, and systems of athletic movement (exercise); its focus on the athletic means some sports fall outside of the definition, particularly things like cue sports, animal sports, motorsports and especially electronic sports. Our difficulty is in encapsulating both these distinctions into two words or fewer :p SFB 20:00, 12 March 2015 (UTC)
  • Comment: The title of this article should simply be "Athletics" since that word, and very similar cognate words in other languages, is the one used internationally for the sports described here. It is the anomalous domestic US usage that needs qualification/explanation. 109.153.236.250 (talk) 14:56, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
    • Support this, and the comment above that it's currently a mess. I note that athletics (olympic sport) currently [11] redirects here, while athletics undisambiguated is currently [12] a disambiguation page. This article should become a broad concept article at athletics, largely but not exclusively on the sport that is the more specific meaning of athletics in English in all other countries, both English-speaking and other. There should be a hatnote to athletics (disambiguation), and a section on the olympic sport with a main link to a separate article at athletics (olympic sport), and another on the US usage, and I'm not quite sure what to call that other section and article, but US-based contributors should advise on that. Andrewa (talk) 15:45, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
@Andrewa: How do you propose we write a broad concept article on athletics? Surely this can only end up the same as Athletics (physical culture) but with a token segment on etymology around the sport of athletics? What purpose would this article serve and in what context would one choose to link to it and not one of the two articles we currently have? SFB 21:54, 22 March 2015 (UTC)
No, it needs to be far shorter than the current [13] Athletics (physical culture) article, and not US-centric but dealing with both meanings, if anything biased towards the more usual meaning worldwide. One would link to it whenever creating any naive, unqualified link to athletics, that's one good reason for having it at the undisambiguated name (the other being to facilitate similarly naive searches). It would serve to give people doing these searches and following these links the information they want, many of them in the article itself, all the rest by giving them the information they need to then quickly decide which detailed article they need. Now answering your first question last, I propose that the article should be written to achieve this. Andrewa (talk) 19:09, 23 March 2015 (UTC)
@Andrewa: So something more like athletics (word), similar to how I suggested above (like football (word))? SFB 20:12, 23 March 2015 (UTC)
I don't think so... the meanings are consistent enough to have an article covering all forms of athletics at a high level, in my opinion. There may be enough material for an article on the word too, but barely, and that's not the issue here. Andrewa (talk) 03:05, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
OK. I'm happy to provide assistance on that idea should you want to make a start on it after this move has been settled. SFB 20:06, 24 March 2015 (UTC)
Support decision for editors to merge the contents which I think will greatly beneficial. Britannica only has one article on Atheletics. GregKaye 12:13, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
@GregKaye: FYI This is a vastly different solution to Britannica's. That encyclopaedia's athletics article is in the sport of athletics, and the physical culture idea is simply not covered at all. Andrewa is advocating having a general article covering topics that the word "athletics" describes in different cultures as well as separate articles for both the sport of athletics and athletics (physical culture). SFB 17:54, 23 April 2015 (UTC)
Sillyfolkboy I certainly think that a a main Athletics (sport) article would be an advantage if possible. Is there a way sub articles could be named? GregKaye 04:01, 24 April 2015 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The close is wrong. There is no consensus for the move away from Athletics (sport) that started this whole controversy. It should be returned to the title where it was for years without complaint. Athletics (British) is wrong on so many levels (as shown by the discussion) that it is simply unacceptable to leave it at this title, it must go back to the way it was before the initial undiscussed controversial move. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 23:01, 11 May 2015 (UTC)

@Dodger67: Naturally, I'm tempted to agree. There is literally no support for the current title. I do think there is some support in the discussion of an outcome where we have athletics as a broad concept article leading into sport of athletics, athletics (physical culture) and college athletics, though as the nominator states that may be a tricky solution to balance (and one which requires considerate article work and diligent article link monitoring. SFB 00:30, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
Also in agreement. Trackinfo (talk) 05:11, 12 May 2015 (UTC)
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