Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Olympics

Creating a list of Olympic competitors

I notice that many Olympian AfDs are being closed as delete rather than redirect recently because there is no clear redirect target, e.g. for a two-time Olympian like Heri Ndinga, it wasn't clear whether to redirect to his first or second Olympic participation.

Regardless of your opinion on the AfD verdicts, I've resolved this issue by creating Wikidata items for each modern Olympian and accompanying alphabetic lists with anchors on each row. This means that every Olympian will have a 'home' anchor as a preferred redirect target.

The first page is here: List of Olympic competitors (A). There are plenty of other alphabetic lists on Wikipedia (see example 1, example 2, example 3) and note that WP:NLIST allows for them because they fulfill a navigational need (and compiling a list doesn't usually meet the threshold of WP:OR). I am working on compiling pages for the other letters doing as little duplicated work as possible. Because sorting conventions with various types of names (e.g. Eastern-style order names) can be complicated, I have deferred to the {{DEFAULTSORT}} order used in articles. I anticipate some will favor breaking it up by sport or country, but that would result in hundreds of articles while this will only require 26 articles that will be much easier to maintain in the long run. Those other methods would also result in duplicates (e.g. for multi-sport athletes) which would defeat the purpose of a central flat list.

Because a similar proposal was opposed above, I am pinging all who commented in that discussion. The proposals aren't really the same because this isn't proposing full wiki-format biographies but merely rows in a list adhering to WP:DUE, which should address most of the problems above. Looking forward to your feedback. --Habst (talk) 18:49, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

Pinging all those who participated in the previous discussion indiscriminately (FOARP—Sportsfan 1234—Reade—Ooouah—Kingsif—Trackinfo—Reywas92—Kante4—Lejman—Bambam1729) (Topcardi—LibStar—Let'srun—JoelleJay—BeanieFan11—Davey2010) – Would really appreciate your thoughts. --Habst (talk) 18:54, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

Habst, thanks for the ping. Personally, if lists are to be created, I would rather have them be by sport, seeing as we already have List of athletes who competed in both the Summer and Winter Olympics, List of athletes who competed in multiple sports at the Summer Olympic games, and List of athletes who competed in multiple sports at the Winter Olympic games which already cover athletes that participated in multiple sports. I also think that it will be more useful for readers as it is much more likely that they will be looking for athletes by sport, and not alphabetically. In any event, let's see how other editors feel about this before making any wholesale changes. Let'srun (talk) 02:08, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

I agree with this. Massive lists broken up by letter are not particularly beneficial or useful. Even if it ends up being more total articles, an organization by sport seems more natural and informative and better for navigation. This A list is absurdly long. — Reywas92^Talk 03:21, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

@Let'srun and @Reywas92, I am very open to this idea but the issue is that multi-sport Olympic athletes would have their info duplicated across each sport list, so it wouldn't solve the initial problem we are trying to fix of having a single unambiguous redirect anchor for each Olympian. Aside from the duplication, it would also require hundreds of new articles as opposed to just a few alphabetically.

The number of Olympians is in a weird spot where it's an uncomfortable amount, but it's not so large to be uncountable so a complete list would be helpful. I suspect that it will continue to be countable in the future because our computer tools for digesting large amounts of data will outpace the growth of new Olympians every two years.

Given this, are you willing to accept a flat list as a compromise? --Habst (talk) 03:55, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

What do you mean by a flat list? Let'srun (talk) 14:14, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

Couldn't multisport athletes be redirected to their respective multisport article? That seems to be what Let'srun implied. Looks like there are about 70 sports, not hundreds. I agree with them about redirecting to respective country at year articles though since those also often show specific events and results as well. Anyway, few of the people who'd be redirected even competed at more than one Olympics or sport, so that's a pretty small issue. — Reywas92^Talk 14:32, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

There are 82 Olympic sports on , and because the distribution of Olympians to certain sports is highly skewed many of them would require being broken up into several articles anyways, so I do think the final article count would be in the hundreds.

The issue with redirecting to "country at year" articles is that it hasn't been accepted by the community especially for multiple-time Olympians, e.g. at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Henri Ndinga where it wasn't clear which year to redirect to. These cases are becoming pretty common because there are multiple Olympian AfDs per day coming in now (it was only a few per month last year, for example).

@Let'srun, by "flat list" I just mean that only one piece of information (a name) is required to find an athlete article in an alphabetical list; it's one-dimensional, as opposed to listing by sport where now at least two pieces of information (sport and name) would be required to locate a subject so it becomes two-dimensional. --Habst (talk) 17:44, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

I don't think people are finding athlete articles (whether they exist or not) though massive multi-part alphabetical lists. If you know a name, that's what the search function is for, which would return either a redirect to a single country or event page or results for multiple pages that mention them. These would be too big to be navigable or useful. — Reywas92^Talk 17:58, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

The issue with the search function is that many Olympians have namesakes so without a designated redirect you might see a lot of irrelevant results of other people with the same name. We could use disambiguation pages to help with this, but MOS:DABRED still requires either a redirect or a blue link to a single target page to exist. You might think that this isn't so common of a case, but with a sample size of over 100,000 athletes this becomes a serious issue. --Habst (talk) 18:06, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

Keep in mind that some of those listed sports on Olympedia have only been demonstration sports, so the actual number is a bit less, no? In addition, if there are multiple surnames that the subject was known under, how would it be determined which list they would be listed under? There was an AfD on a non-notable Olympian recently where there were six listed names, and that is only scratching the surface considering that the LUGSTUBS were built completely off of Olympedia and Sports Reference which have been shown to have numerous errors in them. If we were to list participants by sport, splits could be made for the high participation sports as needed such as swimming and track and field, but I'm in agreement with Reywas92 that people aren't finding these subjects through massive multi-part alphabetical lists which will likely number in the hundreds regardless of how they are split. Let'srun (talk) 21:29, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

I was only counting Olympic sports, not demonstration ones (with demonstration sports, there are 132). So far, I am using the DEFAULTSORT of each athlete's Wikipedia page to decide where they should be sorted under for people with multiple surnames; that way we can treat this as a content issue and defer to the editors of each page understanding that name sorting can be complex in various parts of the world. If any names are incorrect, they need to be fixed on the respective pages first and then they can be fixed on the list.

If we are splitting sport lists by letter alphabetically, then we run into the same issues that a flat alphabetic list has w.r.t. multiple surnames and incorrect names.

The way I see it, this list will technically only require 26 pages (each safely under the 2MB max article size) but for readability we can split each letter in two for a maximum of 52 pages at most. --Habst (talk) 00:09, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

Even splitting each letter in two may result in the several of the alphabetical lists being too bloated. I'm guessing there aren't too many Olympians with the last name "X", and a split may not be needed for that letter and maybe one or two others, but other letters may require more than two spilts in order to be of a digestible size (and I'm not referring to the hard mac article size, rather something much smaller). I am also skeptical that other editors or readers not participating in WikiProject Olympics will understand how that choice was made regarding the surname and be able to find what they are looking for. Let'srun (talk) 17:34, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

We'll see. According to studies I can find online S, B, H, M, and C are the most common surname starting letters, and though I haven't compiled them all yet at least my "B" list is complete and not that much larger than "A".

In theory, we can add a search box to only search in "List of Olympic competitors (X)" pages similar to how is done on talk page archives. I should also note that I am trying not to make any decision about surnames, these decisions were already made in the DEFAULTSORT of articles and they can be changed if a better sort key is decided upon by each page's editors (even though in most cases the sort is simple by first letter of last name). As an aside there's something very old-school encyclopedic about creating large indexes of human names which I think is fitting for Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. --Habst (talk) 18:40, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

Do you have exact numbers organized by letter? Let'srun (talk) 18:51, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

Not yet because I need to do Wikidata matching for each letter first to get associated wiki pages and extract the DEFAULTSORT. Based on a rough estimate of last initials I think it should be a manageable amount of pages. --Habst (talk) 19:10, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

Before fully implementing lists, it would be ideal to see what the distribution is, along with the possible distribution if we did lists by sport. Let'srun (talk) 13:55, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

For now, I oppose alphabetical lists due to the concerns I've listed here, namely them becoming bloated and lacking clear direction as it pertains to surnames, which will only cause more confusion for readers. Writing should be about serving the readers, not WikiProject Olympics. If these issues can be adequately resolved, I would support. Let'srun (talk) 21:32, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

Unfortunately, most niche topics tend to be written on Wikipedia as if they were written on a encyclopedia of that exclusive topic and for experts of it, but not as a brother project that is mostly read by people that have few or no knowledge about that topic and want to know more, which is what Wikipedia is.

And also, if you insist on that, most editors will feel uncomfortable with you and fight, so that the format and terms that are not very accessible to a “layperson on that subject” continues to be used Haddad Maia fan (talk) 22:21, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

@Let'srun, I want to directly address these reasons.

Here is a complete list of distribution (subject to change slightly as I tag more of these to Wikidata items):

Aa–Am 3750
An–Az 3245
Ba–Bd 2999
Be–Bi 3188
Bj–Bo 2877
Bp–Bz 3007
Ca–Ce 2729
Cf–Cn 3123
Co–Cz 2833
Da-Dz 6363
Ea-Ez 2537
Fa-Fz 4719
Ga-Gz 7561
Ha-Hz 8141
Ia-Iz 1730
Ja-Jz 3797
Ka-Kz 10368
La-Lz 8045
Ma-Mz 12850
Na-Nz 4170
Oa-Oz 3194
Pa-Pz 8191
Qa-Qz 346
Ra-Rz 6792
Sa-Sz 15651
Ta-Tz 6061
Ua-Uz 770
Va-Vz 3779
Wa-Wz 4836
Xa-Xz 208
Ya-Yz 1735
Za-Zz 2247

Re: clear direction, the surnames will be sorted by the DEFAULTSORT of the target article, which I think is the only correct way to do something like this because it delegates the sort to those who know most about the target. There are many other large lists of names indexed by surnames; it's a common practice in encyclopedias in general.

If they are bloated, we can always re-segment the pages to have less per page still being well under the 100 page limit mentioned above. If you propose a specific maximum per page, I can restructure the pages to honor that immediately.

Lastly, I'll say that this does serve a purpose to readers foremost, as a navigation aid -- because without this list, there is no clear redirect target for thousands of Olympians, and viewing a list entry will be more friendly to readers than viewing Wikipedia-wide search results that yield many namesakes. --Habst (talk) 03:09, 16 July 2025 (UTC)

How many lists would be needed if the maximum was say, 2000? Let'srun (talk) 00:03, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

Not to say I would support even if that was the case, as I don't see this as being a navigational aid, but I'm wondering how many lists would be needed at that point versus sport-based lists (understanding that a few sports would need to be broken up)? Let'srun (talk) 00:50, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

151842/2000=75.921, so 76 pages. There's a mathematical certainty that will be less pages than splitting by sport (not only because there are 82 Olympic sports, but because some sports have highly skewed participation e.g. athletics has about 27,331 competitors and would need to be broken up into ~14 pages while others will be well under the 2,000 limit).

This is true even with a limit of 2 athletes per page because some sports will have odd numbers of competitors while we can segment alphabetic lists to always have even numbers (i.e. filling the bucket completely). --Habst (talk) 15:05, 17 July 2025 (UTC)

If it is that close, I'd just rather split them by sport, personally, although if the consensus is to split alphabetically that's fine. I think that the few extra sport specific pages needed is a more useful navigational benefit to readers outside this WikiProject. Let'srun (talk) 17:47, 18 July 2025 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I would nominate these articles for deletion as it stands since these are not navigational aids. I'm wondering if hatnotes could be used instead for multi-time Olympians, such as what was done by FrankAnchor for Kossi Akoto. Let'srun (talk) 15:40, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

@Let'srun, I respect your contributions and want to better understand your position. If I converted this list from an alphabetical list to one that was both alphabetical and by sport, would you support keeping it as your messages seem to indicate, or do you oppose any complete list of Olympians? I'm not opposed to also having a by-sport list though I think it would be nearly twice as large considering both irregular distribution of athletes by sport and number of duplicates, and it wouldn't fix the redirect issue as even with a hatnote, the decision of which page to target would still be arbitrary.

As someone who reads Wikipedia about as much as I edit, I have already found the list helpful a few times to look up Olympians that I know have common first and last names (so a text search is completely unhelpful because of all the namesakes), and disambiguation pages can't be created because of WP:ONEOTHER or because all other namesakes are also mentions without articles. --Habst (talk) 16:00, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

To be quite clear, I don't oppose complete lists in general, I simply have issues with how as it currently stands, there is not a clear navigational aid being provided here. I'm not doubting that as currently constructed they help you, but I'm skeptical that they are helpful to the general readership. I'd be open to having one that was both alphabetical and by sport, as a compromise, but I'd be curious to hear what others think. Let'srun (talk) 17:11, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the clarification. I want to be clear that the aid isn't just for me personally – I think having one complete list with no duplicates provides a navigational aid to all readers in the same way that name indexes in paper encyclopedias provide a navigational aid and have been used for centuries.

In the early days of Wikipedia, such an index wasn't as necessary because we could use the search function instead (not possible in paper books). But 7 million articles later (plus many million more redlinks polluting search results), the namesake problem becomes a real issue necessitating lists and disambiguated redirects that can be tracked with WhatLinksHere. --Habst (talk) 19:51, 21 July 2025 (UTC)

There are already duplicates with those listed at other Olympic lists, such as the ones for subjects who participated in multiple sports. Let'srun (talk) 01:56, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

I wouldn't call those "duplicates" because they are different types of lists. When I say "duplicate" I mean e.g. Henri Ndinga being listed on both Republic of the Congo at the 1984 Summer Olympics and Republic of the Congo at the 1988 Summer Olympics -- both the same type of list conveying essentially the same amount of information. --Habst (talk) 02:19, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

Looking at those lists, do we have a list of people who have represented multiple nations at the Olympics? Might be useful where sorting otherwise only allows for one. Kingsif (talk) 11:09, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

That list is pretty long. Perhaps you should further divide it, such as how its done for some letters for NFL player lists. BeanieFan11 (talk) 02:50, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for this feedback. OK, I will follow the example of List of NFL players and split it up by two-letter prefixes instead, so that it's no longer the longest enwiki article -- I've now done this at List of Olympic competitors (Aa–Am) and List of Olympic competitors (An–Az). --Habst (talk) 03:46, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

It looks like there’s small and rough consensus some form of list is a good idea, and I would agree. To contribute to the question of how to organise it, I know from experience that by year is a bad idea. I think for similar reasons (potential for duplication or confusion, appropriate location not necessarily obvious), doing it by sport also wouldn’t be the best idea. It sounds like a good idea when creating the list, but to users coming to edit the list blind, it can cause problems. A simple alphabetical list is probably the easiest to do, as it is hard to mess up (except when athletes have multiple surnames). Sortability beyond the default, for sport and year, will then resolve the issue for readers looking for athletes within those categories. Kingsif (talk) 11:05, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

I agree that doing it by year is a bad idea, but disagree that doing it alphabetically is the best idea. As I noted earlier, we already have lists for subjects who participated in more than one sport, which completely invalidates the duplication issue since anyone who played more than one sport has those articles as possible targets (and I'm not sure what you mean by location issue). A footnote could also be made to tell readers what other sport(s) the participant did if we organized by sport. In addition to the surnames issue you raised, which I do think is important, the length of the alphabetical lists also concerns me, as these lists may need to be broken up just as much as if we were to organize them by sport, which invalidates the number of articles argument. While we could break them up like is done for the NFL players, there isn't any reason why that couldn't be done if we were to organize them by sport and the lists did get too large.

In addition. creating these lists in general needs to carry the benefit of being more useful to the reader than if we were to not have a redirect target for the subject at all. A hard delete of any article still allows for readers to type in the name and find all of the articles where the name is currently mentioned, which a redirect does not do. The reason it usually makes the most sense to redirect non-notable Olympians who only played in one game to the "country at the xxx Olympics" articles in the first place is because that is the only article that contains any tangible information on the subject, and it would still be my preferred redirect target for those cases no matter how these lists are organized. Let'srun (talk) 14:11, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

@Let'srun, thanks for pointing out List of athletes who competed in both the Summer and Winter Olympics, List of athletes who competed in multiple sports at the Summer Olympic games, and List of athletes who competed in multiple sports at the Winter Olympic games.

Definitionally, creating a flat list is guaranteed to create fewer pages than sorting by sport. This is because we can split the flat list by max article size to guarantee we're packing the most possible athletes in each article with no duplicates; as compared to sorting by sport, some sports are tiny and were only contested once so we would need to use a whole page for less than a dozen athletes in many cases, and there would be over 2,000 duplicates by my count.

Re: hard delete, I spoke about this at Wikipedia Day last year but having redirect targets is essential because as the size of Wikipedia out-paces new human names being created, the percentage chance of name collisions for every article approaches 100%. So leaving readers to do a text search isn't an acceptable solution because it would find many namesakes while redirects can include parenthetical disambiguations that are guaranteed to be unique via Special:WhatLinksHere (and, more importantly, tied to a Wikidata item to get inter-language links and aliases).

If you prefer using "Country at the YYYY Olympics" articles as redirect targets, then how would you propose handling cases like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Henri Ndinga where the subject competed in multiple games?

Also, by "location" I think Kingsif means "redirect target" not being obvious. --Habst (talk) 17:56, 13 July 2025 (UTC)

I don't think lists for sports that were only contested once would be needed, since the event page would serve as a de facto list and possible redirect target. Let'srun (talk) 13:58, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

The same principle would apply to sports that were contested only twice or three times, etc. which would still only have a few dozen athletes. It seems there is already community consensus that result listings are generally not suitable redirect targets when multiple links exist, because all of the recently-deleted Olympian articles were already mentioned in result pages. --Habst (talk) 14:14, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

I'd prefer to see them all redirected to List of CountryName Olympic competitors, not just a single giant list by letter. Anyone who represented multiple countries is more likely to be independently notable, except for when the country changed (former Soviet, Yugoslavia etc). They then would be listed in all relevant lists, and we could have a standard practice to redirect to one (most recent?), and add a note to that list that they are also in another list. The-Pope (talk) 00:53, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks The-Pope. Note the duplicates problem is bigger for nations than it would be for sports; according to my count there are 9,354 Olympians who have represented more than one country, so that would require over 9,000 duplicate rows in lists separated by nation. It would also still require splitting into multiple pages alphabetically (there are 10,711 who have represented the United States for example) so we would run into the same alphabetic problem.

I also think that creating "List of (country) Olympians" articles would be contested by other editors because technically Wikipedia already has this info for each country split by year at e.g. Category:United States at the Summer Olympics by year and Category:United States at the Winter Olympics by year. I agree these other options are tempting, but because of the significant nuance in enumerating over 100,000 people where completeness is required, I think that one list is the best option available even if it isn't ideal. --Habst (talk) 01:39, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

I don’t know if this are the types of lists you all are referring to and I got into this discussion in the middle of it, so I am a little lost, but there are already some lists on specific countries on specific sports at the Olympics, like these three ones I created:

List of Canadian tennis players at the Summer Olympics

List of New Zealand tennis players at the Summer Olympics

List of South African tennis players at the Summer Olympics

Hope this can help a bit Haddad Maia fan (talk) 01:51, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. I'm not sure if it's the best solution, but the flat list idea looks straightforward enough for me, if the purpose is simply to have a linkable list of all athletes to link to their individual pages or redirect to another page. I slightly prefer the alphabetical lists over the sport-specific lists, and I don't particularly like the idea of the country-specific lists.

One minor observation, and my confusion is probably due to my lack of deep understanding of Wikipedia standards, but I notice that last names starting with "van" or "Van" are being sorted under the first letter of the next name, but when going to the individual articles they are mentioned as "Van XXX" as their surname even though their DEFAULTSORT is with the "van". For example, Philipine van Aanholt is sorted under "Aanholt, Philipine van" but everywhere in her article she's referred to as "van Aanholt" and not "Aanholt", which seems contradictory to me. Maybe in Dutch it makes sense to sort under A, but I think most English speakers would expect to see her listed under V. Similarly for names like "de Abreu" I would expect to find them under D not A. Reade (talk) 05:35, 14 July 2025 (UTC)

I dislike the deletion of content. I regard Wikipedia as a global repository of known information. If we have any information about a notable subject, we should be able to post it under the subject, so it can be improved upon by subsequent editors and generations. Obviously there is a destructive class of editor that likes to slash and burn. If an article is too small, they misrepresent it as not notable and kill it. There is enough of an ill informed echo chamber that these things get railroaded through. So this is an inferior compromise to at least give the information a home, a holding pattern until or if the information can ever be improved upon, so it is not lost to the destructive bulldozer that can happen at AfD. I fear by offering this option 1) it will be executed poorly by careless destructionists, losing the content or the essence of the content possibly forever, or 2) it will be used as an excuse to wholesale delete or redirect content (done poorly, as I said in 1)) possibly en masse against groups or classes of content. So where will they stop? One sentence articles? One source articles? One paragraph articles? One section articles? I have little faith in the class of editor who proposes content for deletion because they usually do not lift a finger to do anything to preserve it WP:BEFORE making the nomination and won't follow through on the back end after getting their brownie points for a successful deletion vote. When the content is suddenly missing, it is much harder to go back to find it and preserve it. Trackinfo (talk) 08:44, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

It’s a difficult one, though, while I am against Deletionism, I also do not support creating non-notable biographies to ‘complete a set’ and think those warrant redirection to lists - principally because of the editors who can’t judge size/amount of content against notability/quality of content. As you say, such editors generally arbitrarily see stubs as non-notable; the issue is when they decide they want to keep a truly non-notable stub and, with the same mindset, try to pad such biographies with non-notable personal information. Asking for more content can be like inviting that, which we don’t want, and is why (as hard as it is) we must assess these bios on a per-article basis. If listifying gives us more time to do that, it is surely preferable to trying to juggle excessive AfDs on a deadline. Kingsif (talk) 12:29, 15 July 2025 (UTC)

@Habst: Just a comment to say that I approve of a list approach, which is the most sensible outcome following the sports notability changes. "List of Fooian Olympic [sport]ers" seems a reasonable way to gather this information. Smaller countries could just have a single list with all sports - there are very few in Category:Summer Olympics competitors for Mauritania for example so List of Mauritanian Olympians could work well. I think we could also expand non-Olympic lists to maintain some level of coverage too. I created List of Lebanese sprinters a couple of years back as an example of how key information can be aggregated into a readable format. SFB 00:36, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

Thanks @Sillyfolkboy. If someone else has the knowledge of how to create and maintain these lists I would certainly support it. With the current alphabetic list, I have tooling to re-generate the list from Wikidata in a few minutes maintaining the "notes" column (e.g. if any DEFAULTSORTs change or to add the 2026 Winter Olympians); this is feasible over 65 pages with a consistent format but seems impossible for me to maintain when we start introducing sport-specific complexity over hundreds of pages.

Also for country and/or sport-specific lists: There would be guaranteed to be a few thousand duplicate names (people who competed in more than one sport or for more than one nation). While I would argue for redirecting to the earliest participation, it seems like the community consensus right now is to just delete when there is any ambiguity in redirect target. --Habst (talk) 00:52, 23 July 2025 (UTC)

I would rather redirect to the earliest Olympics and use a hatnote as @Frank Anchor has proposed at various AfD's recently, but would like some further input. Let'srun (talk) 01:58, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

I have no objection to this. I have noticed when this was proposed this on other AfDs it was not accepted by some editors, though. --Habst (talk) 02:16, 28 July 2025 (UTC)

• The way the lists exist at present makes it almost impossible to edit them. It also makes it hard to go through them. They are literally about 2000 names where to edit any one point you have to click edit at the top, then scroll to the point in the list where the name is, and then do an edit. It would be much better if each list had sub-sections. If someone is using the list to search for a name, it would be much easier if they can click at the top of the list to go to the point in the list where the name is. The length of the list is too long to be actually useful for searching. Also, it appears that the "lists" at present are just one huge table. I am not sure having tables this long is reasonable. It is already split into seperate articles alphabetically, so the only way the data makes any sense is alphabetically, since for any other purposes the set in an article is just arbitrary. So I think it would be better to convert the whole thing from a set of tables to individual alphabetical listings not in table format.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:21, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
• Also, should the Olympic Arts Competitors be on this list at all? Are they actually considered olympics competitors. I would think that they are so different than sport competitors, that they should be on an entirely separate list.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:21, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
• These lists are also being owned by Habst, who is reverting reasonable edits at least by me. He insists on keeping in place redlinks, even though multiple times Olympic competitors have been determined to be non-notable. He also insists on keeping in place links to redirects, which gives the false impression that we have articles on almost every Olympian. I have also found at least one flase link on the list that went to an article that did not mention Olympic participantion at all. These lists seem to be currently functioning to give a false idea that Wikipedia has much greated coverage of Olympic competitors than it really does. Editors should be allowed to remove redlinks and links to non-bios without another editor coming along and stopping this.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:43, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
  • The lists as they currently exist are also so long that whenever I try to view an edit that has been made to them my computer crashes.John Pack Lambert (talk) 19:55, 4 August 2025 (UTC)
• I also think the structure and searchability of these lists would be greatly improved if we created hard stops at the end of each letter. It would make some much shorter lists, but I think would greatly improve the ability of people to be found on the list.John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:13, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

  Hi @Johnpacklambert, responding to the points above:

  1. Yes, do you have any suggestions for how to do this in a scalable way? I've found using Ctrl+F to find the row you want is helpful with the editing window open. You might want to look at Wikipedia:User scripts/List#In-place editing, if I recall correctly there are some user scripts that allow you to edit table rows in-place.

  2. Per art competitions at the Summer Olympics, "at least sine June 2021, the art competitions medals are again taken into account by the IOC in the medal tables for the relevant Olympics." I just don't see a rationale to exclude art competitors while including e.g. alpinism or any other strange medal events over the years. The commonly accepted definition of an Olympian is someone who competed in a medal event, which is stated in the list intro.

  3. Please see User talk:Johnpacklambert/Archives/2025/August#Removing redlinks for Olympic competitors -- I was not the first person to revert your edits, and you have made several mistakes like removing valid blue links or removing a correct link because you couldn't verify it was the same person. Part of the reason for having lists like this is to provide a valid redirect target for every Olympian, so that Wikidata items can be linked (along with categories and other structured data). I am not trying to give any impression that Wikipedia has articles for every Olympian.

  Re: length and segmentation, I have tried to segment them so they don't appear on Special:LongPages and are well under the 2MB max article size. Sometimes they end neatly on letter boundaries but sometimes a different end point is used so that the lists are consistent size. If your computer is crashing, you could try asking for help at the computing reference desk or WP:VPT (whichever is most appropriate). That being said, I'm open to segmenting the list further. Thanks, --Habst (talk) 20:15, 4 August 2025 (UTC)

• I think in the lists instead of linking to the general Olympics page for their country, we should link to the Olympics page for the specific year or years in which the person competed. This would actually give us more context on the person competing and give more relevant information to that person's competition, which in most cases will not be mentioned at all on the higher level olympic competition page.John Pack Lambert (talk) 12:11, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

  Hi @Johnpacklambert, I think it's best to group your comments together or indent if you're replying to someone in the same thread. I agree that this change would be an improvement, I think it would need to be done via script because there are too many changes to make manually. It would also increase the number of links per page / page size in some cases (e.g. for three-time Olympians, we would need three year links per row instead of only one right now). --Habst (talk) 18:22, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

  • I think the lists already should be split up more. I think this is a change that will make them more useful.John Pack Lambert (talk) 18:25, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

    OK, how many pages do you think we should split it to? Currently we have 65 pages plus the intro. --Habst (talk) 20:22, 5 August 2025 (UTC)

    I think we should have at least 150 pages. There are over 150,000 people who have competed in the Olympics, not counting the competitors whose names are not even known. There were over 10,000 competitors just at the 2024 Olympics.John Pack Lambert (talk) 15:03, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

@Habst: The tables mention multiple nations/NOCs of athletes. I think it would be beneficial to add an additional column with the "Number of nations represented by Athlete" next to this, so that interested users can also sort by it. The name could be abbreviated to No.Nat. (to avoid increasing the width of the table too much).Miria~01 (talk) 17:13, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

Hi @Miria~01, thanks for the suggestion. If you want to sort the tables by number of sports or number of nations per row, I wrote this quick script that will do it for you:

[...document.querySelectorAll('td')].filter(td => td.querySelector('a[href$="at_the_Olympics"]')).forEach(td => td.innerHTML = `${td.innerHTML.split(',').length}, ${td.innerHTML}`)

That should work if you copy/paste it in your browser's JavaScript console (Ctrl-Shift-I or Cmd-Option-I while on the list page you want). --Habst (talk) 18:07, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

I still don't see how this is an improvement. 150,000 entries even across 65 pages is still messy and unmanageable, and they don't even link to the "[nation] at [year] [Olympics]" pages where the actual information on them is. Not to mention being incompatible with NOTDIRECTORY... JoelleJay (talk) 23:04, 7 August 2025 (UTC)

@JoelleJay, thanks. It's an improvement because it's the first on-wiki complete list of Olympians and provides a jumping-off point for coverage (e.g. via WhatLinksHere or interlanguage links) -- Wikipedia (and indeed encyclopedias in general) often have very long alphabetic lists and this is just one of them. Adding backlinks would be helpful, though I'll add this pretty clearly doesn't fall under WP:NOTDIRECTORY at all because it isn't any one of its prongs (not a simple list, not loosely associated, not a WP:CROSSCAT, not genealogy, not a program guide, not for conducting business). --Habst (talk) 00:05, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

We don't need an "on-wiki complete list", especially one that serves no navigational purpose. The examples under NOTDIRECTORY are explicitly not exhaustive, but even so, the list criteria linked in #1 clearly state Short, complete lists of every item that is verifiably a member of the group. These should only be created if a complete list is reasonably short (less than 32 KB) and could be useful (e.g., for navigation) or interesting to readers. ... However, if a complete list would include hundreds or thousands of entries, then you should use the notability standard to provide focus to the list. JoelleJay (talk) 00:16, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

@JoelleJay, thanks for the feedback. Every row is linked to several related pages so there is a clear navigational benefit that has already manifested for anyone wanting to look up an Olympian. All that NOTDIRECTORY #1 says is (complete quote), "Simple lists (such as a list of phone numbers) that do not include contextual information showing encyclopedic merit. See WP:LISTCRITERIA for more information. Given that context (sport, nation, era, intro paragraph) is provided for each row, this clearly doesn't fall into the "simple list" category described; LISTCRITERIA is only linked to provide context as to what a 'simple list' is in this context and creating lists of Olympians is already something that's been done in hundreds of Wikipedia articles even before this alphabetic list. --Habst (talk) 00:37, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

LISTCRITERIA is linked to expand on which types of lists are considered improper, which clearly includes lengthy, indiscriminate lists of non-notable subjects. The "contextual information" does not show encyclopedic merit.
The rows are linked to uninformative pages that in the cases of the non-notable subjects often don't even mention them. But even if they did, the list is gigantic and not useful for navigation at all. The sole reason a reader would ever end up there is by following a redirect from the page that already discusses that subject in context, obviating the need for a redirect at all. JoelleJay (talk) 03:09, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for your concerns. LISTCRITERIA is only linked from NOTDIRECTORY to elaborate on "simple list" (it's only used in the above sentence), but regardless the main point of LISTCRITERIA "Selection criteria (also known as inclusion criteria or membership criteria) should be unambiguous, objective, and supported by reliable sources" is well-met in this case. Subjects should always be at least mentioned in linked row targets or their subpages (i.e. by year), and there's a navigation benefit especially when redirects would not exist at all if not for the list existing per the first comment on this thread. Redirects are reached in a number of ways including interlanguage links, direct lookups, categories, Wikidata, etc. To keep this thread on topic, I'm continuing on your talk page here, can you please respond there? --Habst (talk) 13:02, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

You're seriously just going to quote the first section of the list selection criteria and nothing else?? Not even As Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a directory, repository of links, or means of promotion, and should not contain indiscriminate lists, only certain types of lists should be exhaustive. which the CSC subsection directly expands on with unambiguous statements like 1. Every entry meets the notability criteria ... This standard prevents Wikipedia from becoming a collection of indiscriminate lists; prevents individual list articles from becoming targets for spam and promotion; and keeps individual lists to a size that is manageable for readers. 3. Short, complete lists of every item that is verifiably a member of the group. These should only be created if a complete list is reasonably short (less than 32 KB) and could be useful (e.g., for navigation) or interesting to readers. and However, if a complete list would include hundreds or thousands of entries, then you should use the notability standard to provide focus to the list. There is no navigation benefit whatsoever to an entry that doesn't link directly to whichever page the subject is mention on. JoelleJay (talk) 17:12, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

@JoelleJay, I appreciate your concerns but these just aren't well-founded by P&G nor the consensus in this thread. The WP:LSC text you're referencing is met by the Olympian list -- it was never intended to server as a directory or repository, it's not even exhaustive as not all Olympians are known, and it certainly doesn't serve to promote anything. The "common selection criteria" you're quoting is just that -- common criteria -- and was never intended to represent all possible lists (of course, there are many Wikipedia lists that include both notable and non-notable entries). I'm also curious why you omitted the #2 common criteria prong -- "Every entry in the list fails the notability criteria" -- would you accept a list that included exclusively all of those Olympians?

I agree there are issues with the list, and having a link on every row (without exception) to a page where the subject is at least mentioned, as is currently the case, does provide a significant navigational benefit especially in cases where before there was no information. In order to not take this thread further with line-by-line interpretations of Wikipedia P&G, can you please respond on the thread I've made on your talk page instead of here? --Habst (talk) 17:40, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

Are you seriously claiming these lists of 150,000 items are compliant with LSC #CSC because "we don't know the full names of all Olympians, so it can't be exhaustive"???

CSC covers 1. lists where all entries are notable; 2. lists where no entries are notable; 3. lists that have a mixture of notable and non-notable entries because they are intended to be exhaustive. This last list type explicitly states that if the list will be "hundreds or thousands" of entries it should default to using notability as an inclusion criterion. And while intent is ultimately irrelevant, the lists clearly are intended to operate as a directory since they are not useful for other purposes.

A list of all non-notable Olympians would unambiguously fail the requirement for lists to have been covered significantly as a grouping.

Discussion over P&G compliance of these lists is obviously relevant to this thread and belongs here. JoelleJay (talk) 22:11, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

@JoelleJay, I'm sorry for the misunderstanding. There is no such thing as being "compliant" with the CSC -- CSC stands for "common selection criteria" and it is just a list of three common, non-exclusive ways to organize a list intended as a suggestion for those creating new lists. It would be like saying that a particular AfD close isn't "compliant" with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes because it wasn't closed in one of those ways.

The lists are useful and were intended to be useful for non-directory purposes as well as for other reasons (e.g. technical or structural need) -- for example, to read about Olympic athletes who competed for different sports representing different countries in different eras. --Habst (talk) 23:38, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

WP:STAND is a guideline, unlike common outcomes, and given its invocation in policy directly with respect to how exhaustive lists can be, the guidance stating As Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a directory, repository of links, or means of promotion, and should not contain indiscriminate lists, only certain types of lists should be exhaustive and if a complete list would include hundreds or thousands of entries, then you should use the notability standard to provide focus to the list is obviously relevant. And we already have a solution to the non-notable multi-year/sport athletes. JoelleJay (talk) 02:18, 9 August 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for clarifying. That quote about complete lists, again, is from "common selection criteria", which as stated earlier is only a list of three common outcomes to organize a list and was not intended to be exclusive. As these pedantic P&G discussions can get repetitive I thought moving it to a user talk page would be best. If we had a solution for non-notable multi-year/sport athletes I might not have created the list -- before this list existed, Wikidata links, categories, and disambiguated WhatLinksHere data for these athletes would sometimes get deleted because a suitable redirect target couldn't be decided. --Habst (talk) 23:03, 9 August 2025 (UTC)

It doesn't matter what specific section the guidance is in, although "only certain types of lists should be exhaustive" is part of LSC. Instructions like if a complete list would include hundreds or thousands of entries, then you should use the notability standard to provide focus to the list are not examples of "common criteria options", they are specific restrictions on all applicable lists. Editors wanting to create an exhaustive list that includes non-notable members are instructed that they can only do this if the list is not more than "hundreds or thousands" of items. JoelleJay (talk) 02:28, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

Thanks -- this isn't about the section name, it's about the meaning in context. The "if a complete list..." quoted above isn't a notability guideline nor a restriction per se, it's only one of three provided examples (out of many others) of a common way to write a list. Saying that all lists have to fall into one of those three buckets is like saying that all AfD outcomes must match one of WP:Articles for deletion/Common outcomes (linked from WP:Deletion process#Common outcomes). Of course, we can have lists that are both non-exhaustive (whether we consider the Olympian list exhaustive or not) and include both notable and non-notable members, even though that scenario isn't listed in the common criteria examples. --Habst (talk) 16:02, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

A "non-exhaustive list containing notable and non-notable members" is either flouting LSC by arbitrarily removing items; or the removals are actually non-arbitrary because the remaining members meet some other objective criterion, thus making the list actually exhaustive. All lists therefore fall under CSC #1 or #3. CSC is not just a simple description of some example criteria, as it includes policy-based restrictions on when a type of list can be created. JoelleJay (talk) 19:42, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

Thanks for the example. The issue is now we're in a game of semantics because you're saying every list can be exhaustive as long as you define the "exhaustive" criteria in a contrived-enough way. I'm talking about "non-exhaustive" as in, not requiring non-encyclopedic cross-categorizations or any other contrived criteria that would define them as exhaustive. These lists are of course allowed, but they aren't enumerated in the common examples. --Habst (talk) 12:51, 13 August 2025 (UTC)

• So am I right in thinking this huge grouping of lists might be a policy compliant list if we removed from the list those who have been deemed to be non-notable and no longer have an article, and made it only a list with people on it who have articles in Wikipedia?John Pack Lambert (talk) 20:14, 8 August 2025 (UTC)
  • That wouldn't make sense unless it was titled "List of Olympians with Wikipedia articles". BeanieFan11 (talk) 20:16, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

  I think that would only create more confusion. Plus, numerous Olympians are at AfD currently and are being deleted or redirected often. Let'srun (talk) 21:44, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

  I am also trying to understand the above argument. According to the above interpretation of P&G treating the common selection criteria as an exclusive list, it would be equally valid to restructure the list to name only Olympians who don't have Wikipedia articles (CSC #2), and remove those that do have articles. I actually wouldn't object to that per se because it would still solve the redirect issue, but I don't think that would achieve community consensus and I think it's a fundamental misunderstanding of P&G to say that non-exhaustive lists must either have only notable or only non-notable subjects, with no in-between. For that reason I agree with Let'srun that it would be better to just list them all. --Habst (talk) 23:44, 8 August 2025 (UTC)

  As explained above, a list of only non-notable Olympians would also fail P&Gs, due to not being notable as a group.

  CSC does not have the dichotomy that you claim. If the primary inclusion criterion for a list inherently corresponds to page notability (e.g. Nobel Laureates), the list can be exhaustive and falls under CSC 1. If the primary inclusion criterion is inherently broader than notability, but the list is then further restricted to only notable items, it is non-exhaustive but still falls under CSC 1. If the primary inclusion criterion is specifically "most or all of the listed items do not warrant independent articles", that can be either exhaustive (if it satisfies CSC 3) or non-exhaustive if it uses an additional inclusion criterion (CSC 2) that satisfies CSC 3. If the primary inclusion criterion is broader than notability, and it is not secondarily notability-restricted, it can only be exhaustive if it satisfies CSC 3. JoelleJay (talk) 02:58, 9 August 2025 (UTC)

  @JoelleJay, thank you for correcting. Olympians as a whole are certainly notable as a group. If the claim is that specifically "non-Wikipedia-notable Olympians" need to be notable as a group -- is there any example of a group that's notable specifically not having Wikipedia pages (maybe Battle for Dream Island)? This entire argument about "common selection criteria" to me feels a little moot because it's only a list of three common, non-exclusive ways to create a list intended as guidance for new list creators -- it's not a notability guideline and of course it is not exhaustive as there are lists not similar to (not really "falling under" as these are examples rather than categories) any of the three CSC examples listed on that page. --Habst (talk) 23:17, 9 August 2025 (UTC)

  Plenty of topics have been covered as a group without any individual members receiving enough coverage for standalones. Non-notable Olympians are not such a group. List selection criteria are directly invoked by NOT, thus guidance on them, specifically relating to exhaustiveness, are relevant to consider. JoelleJay (talk) 02:17, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

  I meant to say, "is there any example of a group that's notable specifically for not having Wikipedia pages" above. As I said at User talk:JoelleJay#WP:NOTDIRECTORY, I don't think this is a productive line of inquiry because the common selection criteria weren't intended to be treated exclusively like this, but even if we do, it wouldn't allow for any non-exhaustive list of anything that includes both notable and non-notable items (yes, all-non-notables are covered 'under' CSC #2, and all-notables are 'under' CSC #1, but there's no point for a mix that is exhaustive as CSC #3 only describes exhaustive groups). I put 'under' in quotes because again, these are just examples of three helpful ways to start a list -- they aren't notability guidelines nor categories. --Habst (talk) 21:07, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

  Explained above. JoelleJay (talk) 19:43, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks for the explanation -- I see "All lists therefore fall under CSC #1 or #3." If that was the case, then why even have a CSC #2? Not that these are intended to be all-encompassing which they aren't, but just from the perspective of, if you're going to list an example, that example should be at least theoretically possible. Tell me if I'm misunderstanding. --Habst (talk) 12:54, 13 August 2025 (UTC)

  CSC #2 naturally falls under #3. JoelleJay (talk) 16:48, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

  Thanks, then why even have a separate point for it as it's certainly not presented that way? (Feel free to respond to me in User talk:JoelleJay#WP:NOTDIRECTORY to not go too off-topic on the thread here.) --Habst (talk) 17:12, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

  It includes additional guidance on when such lists shouldn't be made (BLPs). JoelleJay (talk) 17:46, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

  That can't be true, because when CSC #2 was created it didn't have that final sentence "Note that this criterion is never used for living people" (see e.g. Special:Diff/478396324). That sentence was only added later, so there must have been a justification for creating CSC #2 that wasn't relying on having that one sentence present. --Habst (talk) 19:45, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

Why are there "edit on Wikidata" icons on e.g. List of Olympic competitors (Aa–Ak)? These are normally reserved for things that get automatically extracted from Wikidata and may need correcting there, not for listing people (or places or whatever). Something like {{wdrloly|Q57058966}}<!-- Sarah van Aalen --> makes no sense, why not just have Sarah van Aalen or Sarah van Aalen as the entry? There is no good reason that those redlinks on enwiki would need editing on Wikidata. The "anchor" entries are also superfluous for most entries (I guess they are used for those ones that get redirected there, but that will be a minority). Removing both things would somewhat reduce the 290K size this page has now. Further remark, the Olympedia link on many Wikidata pages doesn't work, e.g. this has no working reference at the moment.

Another major problem though is that the list is at the moment not correct, as it includes competitors of the YOUTH Olympics as well!!! E.g. Just van Aanholt only competed at those, as far as I can see. For other athletes it lists their participation at the youth Olympics as their start date (hint: there were no Summer Olympics in e.g. 2018, so the entry for Youssef Abdel-Aziz and the like is wrong). Fram (talk) 16:37, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

@Fram, thank you for the feedback. I updated the layout to be clear that the Wikidata link is just a standard usage of {{Wikidata red link}}, which was specifically intended for redlinks and is different from {{EditAtWikidata}} which you're referencing. It's used in other lists and pages as well, see Special:WhatLinksHere/Template:Wikidata_fallback_link.

Also re: Wikidata, the link is helpful to see interlanguage links and other structured data. The majority should have a valid reference. If there isn't one, you can always look up the subject on https://www.olympics.com/athletes and add one as I just did for Abbas. Even in the Abbas case, there was an interwiki sitelink with other references.

The list does not include anyone who only competed at the Youth Olympics. Just van Aanholt competed at the 2024 Olympics where he finished 33rd in sailing, see (he also competed at the 2010 Youth Olympics). Yes, the start and end dates include any Olympic participation, as indicated in {{List of Olympic competitors intro}}. I agree we should probably make that distinction more clear though and in a future revision I plan on only listing Summer / Winter Olympic participation. --Habst (talk) 17:16, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, but please remove: youth Olympics, which are not real Olympics; participation in another capacity than an athlete (e.g. ciach, referee) as these are also normally not counted as Olympic participations; the Wikidata links, as they really serve no good purpose here at all (and why would we have them for redlinks, and not for e.g redirects). Fram (talk) 18:01, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

The table also doesn't even link to the specific events the subject competed in, which makes it useless for navigation for non-notable entries even though the whole reason the list was created was to serve as a redirect target for non-notable Olympians who competed in multiple years/events. Instead of a gigantic alphabetic list that takes 30 s to load fully and has no further information on the subject beyond sport and years of first/last appearance, readers searching for non-notable multi-Olympians should just be redirected to the page where their participation is first discussed and a hat link provided to their other appearances, as has been done at AfD lately. JoelleJay (talk) 20:20, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

I agree with most of this, although it's not "useless" for navigation because each row is linked to a Wikidata item and many have associated categories and WhatLinksHere data, and as the person who created the list I can say that the "whole reason" was not to have redirect targets (there were other reasons such as serving as a navigation aid and providing contextualized info on Olympians).

On my computer the List of Olympic competitors (Aa–Ak) page takes 0.723 seconds (not "30 s") to load fully according to Chrome devtools, and that's including all my gadgets and user scripts. The list also includes country data as well as sport and era, which are generally considered the most basic details of Olympic participation.

What I can say is that I will add links to "(nation) at (year) Olympics" pages to each row once I have the programming time to implement it because I agree that would be a great improvement. Including Wikidata links for redirects as well might be a good idea also. --Habst (talk) 13:05, 13 August 2025 (UTC)

The average user has zero reason to know or care about wikidata links. It simply isn't something they have any reason to be concerned about, and quite frankly it isn't a adequate reason to keep these lists as is. The concern should be about the accessibility, navigation, and readability of these lists, not anything else which both removes key information regarding their Olympic performances and, as Fram noted here, misleads readers regarding their participation. Let'srun (talk) 03:28, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

I agree with you re: Wikidata, which is why I also included the basic details you would expect in any list of Olympians (namely, nation and sport). The start and end columns have always been clearly described in {{List of Olympic competitors intro}} to not mislead anyone, but in the near future I will update them to only encompass senior Olympic participation anyways -- it's just a matter of writing a script to do it en masse. --Habst (talk) 12:02, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

The "nation" column also contains a lot of bad entries (two countries for one participation). Please don't put such unchecked or poorly checked script creations in the mainspace. Fram (talk) 12:14, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

Can you give an example? I checked the output and didn't find any such entries. And @Fram, please take the list to AfD instead of draftifying without consensus. There are many redirects which link to the list which would be automatically deleted if they are all draftified. --Habst (talk) 12:24, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

"Draftifying withjout consensus" is standard draftifying, and the articles were created without consensus and with serious issues. No idea which output you checked, I am now at List of Olympic competitors (Ja–Jn) and see e.g. Jüri Jaanson Estonia, Soviet Union; or Josef Jabor Czech Republic, Czechoslovakia; and many others. Fram (talk) 12:30, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

@Fram, Jüri Jaanson represented the Soviet Union at the 1988 Summer Olympics and Estonia at the 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008 Olympics. The row is completely correct, please double-check your work before mass draftifying articles. If there are any incorrect cases we can fix them. --Habst (talk) 12:46, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

Josef Jabor is incorrect though, just like many, many others. Please double-check your work before creating it, and vcertainly double-check your work after errors have been pointed out and you move it back into the mainspace anyway. Dagmar Bílková competed for Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic. Why does your list state that she competed for Slovakia as well? List of Olympic competitors (Bg–Bn). Fram (talk) 12:50, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

@Fram, thank you for flagging this. I have reformatted all lists so they don't list nationality and nation represented any more; they just list the nation represented at the Olympics, so the Jabor and Bílková issues are fixed. I've also fixed some other issues you pointed out. Let me know if you have any other ideas for improvement. --Habst (talk) 05:36, 16 August 2025 (UTC)

Also, I understand what you meant but it's important to note that the list isn't 'mine' because nobody WP:OWNs articles on Wikipedia. I agree it is easy to lose sight of that sometimes. The articles are open to contributions from anyone. --Habst (talk) 23:38, 17 August 2025 (UTC)

I see you are blindly reverting these. Sad. You claimed at my talk page that "there are many redirects with substantial page history and categories that redirect to the list", but looking at the redirects to the first page, AA-AK , I see only a few redirects that you recently created, nothing substantial at all. Fram (talk) 12:36, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

That is one of 65 pages. I agree with many of your concerns and want to work together to fix them. Mass draftifying without consensus, even understanding that consensus isn't required for draftification, would delete those redirects and isn't a solution. --Habst (talk) 12:49, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

Yes, that is one of 65. What is that supposed to mean? Below I give another one. I'm now at List of Olympic competitors (Bg–Bn), and again not a single such redirect. "would delete those redirects", you mean those imaginary redirects? Fram (talk) 12:53, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

I mean that there may be others looking at the other lists, and the lists are important to have in mainspace for structural reasons anyways as there are many open Olympian AfDs where the list of Olympic competitors is the most suitable redirect target; if these pages are deleted, then when those AfDs are closed there will be no suitable target. --Habst (talk) 13:21, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

Your reply and arguments make no sense. I see you quietly abandoned the "historical redirects" angle you used in your edit summaries as the argument to put them back in the mainspace, and have now switched to a rather dubious argument to have these. What did we do with such AfDs before these lists existed? Why can't we do the same now? Fram (talk) 13:27, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

@Fram, please assume good faith as I have always done for you because I respect your contributions. I haven't "abandoned" any argument, it's just that there are multiple reasons why it's helpful to have a list in mainspace necessitating its creation. Before the list existed, many Olympian AfDs were simply deleted which most participants agreed was not a good solution. --Habst (talk) 13:31, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

I hoped that you had silently abandoned it, which was the better of the two options. Still believing in your claims despite the lack of actual evidence for it, including multiple counterexamples, is worse. That another solution was not good (for the sake of argument) is no argument that this one should be kept though. Fram (talk) 13:49, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

What counterexamples are you referencing? If there was even one redirect, and there are more than one, it would still be a factor to consider when draftifying whether deleting that would be an acceptable consequence. There's nothing wrong with asking for an article to be taken to AfD as I did so we can actually achieve consensus instead of draftifying. --Habst (talk) 15:23, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

The most recent you put back, List of Olympic competitors (Cf–Cn), not a single such redirect "with substantial page history". I presume one or two such may exist somewhere, but your "many" seems like deliberate hyperbole to get your way. Why do you insist that these must be and remain in the mainspace instead of first trying to create a good, accepted framework for them, and only then creating (and manually checking!) them? Fram (talk) 12:39, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

@Fram, "instead of first trying to create a good, accepted framework for them, and only then creating (and manually checking!) them?" -- That's exactly what I did in this topic. I created a single example page on 12 July and posted it here seeking feedback for several days -- I incorporated feedback, changed the format, and did not create the rest of the pages until 19 July, a full week later. Because this is Wikipedia, we can still improve them as new feedback comes in. --Habst (talk) 12:54, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

They are rubbish. You have received feedback from many people above, e.g. the most recent comments not from me or you have "useless for navigation for non-notable entries" (and other complaints), and "isn't a adequate reason to keep these lists as is." (with other complaints). I don't think you should be going on, and on, about "consensus" when there is hardly reason to believe that there is consensus to have these lists as is in the mainspace. Fram (talk) 12:57, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

@Fram, I agree with many of those comments but those aren't reasons for deletion or draftification and can be improved by editing. There was consensus to create a list even by people that would normally disagree on other editing issues because it would serve as a redirect target for the hundreds of Olympian AfDs that recently have been nominated for deletion. --Habst (talk) 13:25, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

We don't keep bad lists just because they may be used as redirect targets. And "useless for navigation" is not a reason for deletion or drafticification of lists intended for navigation? Strange. Fram (talk) 13:29, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

As I replied to that comment, it isn't useless for navigation although lists don't have to have a navigatory benefit to exist in mainspace (for example, there are many "lists" of non-notable subjects where there is no navigation benefit but it's helpful to have a complete listing for other reasons as in WP:CSC #2). --Habst (talk) 13:35, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

I know that we still have CSC #2 but I haven't been able when I loooked at this a while ago to find actual examples, never mind "many". And yes, they are useless for navigation for these redirects, as they are dead ends. Fram (talk) 13:47, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

There are two examples linked from CSC #2, List of Dilbert characters and List of paracetamol brand names; following that example there are many more at Category:Lists of brands. None of them are technically dead ends as every row without exception links to either an existing article, a redirect elsewhere, or a Wikidata item with interlanguage links. --Habst (talk) 15:11, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

CSC #2 is for "Every entry in the list fails the notability criteria". The Dilbert list has 2 notable entries with their own article. The paracetamol brand names list also contains two notable entries with their own article. Your "many more" from the lists of brands, I opened 10 in a row, 12345678910, and they all have a few (list 6) to many or even only notable entries; none of them match CSC #2. Have you even checked any of these before commenting here? Fram (talk) 15:22, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

The next sentence after the one you quoted says (emphasis mine), "These lists are created explicitly because most or all of the listed items do not warrant independent articles"}. As long as "most" of the items don't have articles, that would still be an example of CSC #2. --Habst (talk) 15:25, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

And the last sentence says "(Note that this criterion is never used for living people.)" so you wouldn't be able to use it as an argument in any case... Fram (talk) 15:30, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

As stated above, I don't think this list is an example of CSC #2. I was simply using that to show that there's no requirement of a navigatory benefit for a list to exist in mainspace. --Habst (talk) 15:32, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

Don't know how "recent" you mean with "recently", but there are at the moment 24, not "hundreds", of Olympics AfDs, including the one I just started: Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Olympics. Scrolling through these, I see a good redirect target suggested at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Filas Paraskevaidis, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Manuel José Fernández, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Michel Baur, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Luis Fortunato, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Makoto Tsushida,... I see, on the other hand, not a single one which suggests redirecting to your articles. So that's yet another argument that is completely unfounded. Can you please find something based in reality for your next try? Fram (talk) 13:57, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

There are hundreds of recent Olympian AfDs when there used to be only a few in the same time period; see WP:WikiProject Olympics/Article alerts/Archive 10 (several hundred). Please see the original post of this thread where a page was deleted due to not having a suitable redirect target, and while I haven't been following every AfD there was at least one recently redirected to the list: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Grigorios Emmanouil. Please refrain from personal comments like "Can you please find something based in reality" and be WP:CIVIL as I have done to you. --Habst (talk) 14:56, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

The vast, vast majority of these AfDs end either in keep or redirect to an existing page, there are very few AfDs that would redirect to these new lists (and most of these could redirect elsewhere, I see that at the AfD you mention another target was suggested as well). So not having these lists would in reality not be a problem for AfD at all. Fram (talk) 15:07, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

I agree with you about the majority, but in a sample size of over 150,000 Olympian articles now under review even minorities can add up. In the case of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Henri Ndinga a target was proposed but it wasn't accepted by the community at all while this list wouldn't have been rejected for the same reason. --Habst (talk) 15:20, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

The vast majority of these Olympian AfDs end in redirect or delete, not keep. Only a handful have been kept in recent weeks. Here are a few recent delete outcomes (including some where !voters specifically oppose redirecting): Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Matevž Krumpeštar, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Rahel Gebresilassie, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Wayne Morgan (cyclist), Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ahmad Nesar ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 15:21, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

Since the vast majority are still bluelinks, only a small group ended in delete (you may be right that an equally small number ended in keep, I haven't checked thoroughly enough). And e.g. the first one you posted, Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Matevž Krumpeštar: I see that a redirect was suggested, but most people wanted deletion anyway. Why would that redirect target get rejected, but these new lists get accepted? I note by the way that Matevž Krumpestar (different spelling) exists. Fram (talk) 15:27, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

@Fram The vast majority do get redirected or deleted (see my recent AfD history), and there have been many (almost unanimous...) where redirection to these lists is explicitly rejected in favor of deletion or redirection to a different list. This project is just the latest of Habst's efforts to (in my opinion) keep undue info on non-notable athletes around in some form; it follows a similar "ask, get minimal feedback, mass-implement" trajectory to this one where they endeavored to merge entire deleted/redirected biographies (including formatting!) into the notes sections of pages on countries at Olympic events, against consensus. This in turn followed their voluntary TBAN from making specious NEXIST arguments at every athlete AfD, which was partly contemporaneous with/superseded their earlier positions that "SPORTCRIT doesn't apply to all athletes", "SPORTCRIT should be ignored because the rest of NSPORT has been gutted", "SPORTCRIT doesn't mean what you or the author of the guideline or everyone who supported its adoption says it means", etc. JoelleJay (talk) 17:31, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

Wow, you actually !voted keep on something (speedy even). Sorry if that sounds rude, I was genuinely surprised. "William Giannobile is the Dean of Harvard School of Dental Medicine and the A. Lee Loomis, Jr. Professor of Oral Medicine, Infection and Immunity." That's literally the entire article on this BLP, and it's only sourced to the school website... ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 17:53, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

@JoelleJay, as always I'm thankful for our discussions but I have to correct some things here.

"there have been many (almost unanimous...) where redirection to these lists is explicitly rejected in favor of deletion or redirection to a different list" -- can you please link one? Usually, the alphabetic list isn't proposed which is fine because it's new. Even I don't think this list is the appropriate redirect target in all cases; it depends on context but can at least always be used as a fallback.

This project is just the latest of Habst's efforts to (in my opinion) keep undue info on non-notable athletes around in some form -- I would urge you to please WP:AGF as I've always done for you. I have never intentionally circumvented Wikipedia P&G and I agree with your goal of removing undue info. A list of Olympic competitors in a general-purpose encyclopedia isn't undue. In the last week or so, complaints have been about the format or structure of the list, but you are the only user who has made an argument saying that a list should not exist in any form.

"it follows a similar "ask, get minimal feedback, mass-implement" trajectory to this one" -- Genuine question – what could I have done differently in this case? I proposed the list, gave an example, and pinged all interested users including you for comment, and waited a full seven days before creating the rest of the list and have continued to respond to all comments making changes along the way. I have no control over whether or not the feedback is "minimal", and on Wikipedia being WP:BOLD is encouraged if there's limited participation in a discussion.

"This in turn followed their voluntary TBAN from making specious NEXIST arguments at every athlete AfD" -- I think this wording can mislead people. I never stopped making NEXIST arguments when it's appropriate, and there was no admin action ever taken against me. I just chose to narrow the scope of AfDs where I comment, there is no such thing as a "voluntary TBAN" that isn't imposed by an admin on Wikipedia. Please see User talk:Habst/Archive 3#ANI notice for details.

"their earlier positions that "SPORTCRIT doesn't apply to all athletes", "SPORTCRIT should be ignored because the rest of NSPORT has been gutted", "SPORTCRIT doesn't mean what you or the author of the guideline or everyone who supported its adoption says it means"" -- I genuinely don't know what you're referencing here. Taking these claims at face value, the first is definitely true (e.g. SPORTCRIT wouldn't apply to Alan Turing despite him being an Olympic-level marathon runner), I've never claimed the second, and the third seems quoted in a way that isn't charitable nor makes it easy to decipher what's being said.

I respect your contributions and want to work with you on improving articles, but we have to reach a common understanding. --Habst (talk) 19:28, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

"SPORTCRIT doesn't apply to all athletes" and "SPORTCRIT doesn't mean what you think it means" arguments: (We had a recent global RfC that found strong consensus in requiring all sportsperson articles contain a citation to IRS SIGCOV – I don't think that's an accurate way to describe WP:NSPORTS2022 [...] I understand that the wording was changed from "presumed notable" to "significant coverage is likely to exist", but I think that these statements are effectively a distinction without a difference)


(I don't think your description of NSPORTS2022 matches the text of the summary, which says, There is a general consensus that the NSPORTS guideline still has broad community support, which includes WP:NATH as a part of NSPORTS.)(*)
(The nominating statement says that SPORTCRIT isn't met, but it's actually fulfilled by the found coverage, which combined with WP:NATH (being a national champion) makes this a candidate to keep based on policy. [...] the newspaper coverage amounts to SIGCOV because it can be combined per WP:BASIC.)
(That isn't accurate and regardless NSPORT and NATH are both subordinate to and have less community consensus than NEXIST in response to my statement Per NSPORT, a SIGCOV source is still required to be cited for sportspeople who meet NATH)
(and the dozen AfDs similar to it where you make the same copy-paste claim that (essentially) meeting NATH overrides the SPORTCRIT requirement for SIGCOV to be cited)
(where you made the same ridiculous Alan Turing comparison)
(Invoking WP:BASIC to combine the sources, that means we have at least three sentences on the subject, enough for a paragraph not including any future coverage found which almost certainly exists. I think that's barely enough to constitute SIGCOV still. -- continues to ignore SPORTCRIT requirement)

"SPORTCRIT should be ignored" (after pivoting away from (*)):
(Can you link the consensuses you're referencing? I think that WP:NSPORTS2022 actually helps the case for this article because by transitioning away from subject-specific guidelines like WP:SPORTCRIT, we can rely on more subject-neutral guidelines like WP:N and NEXIST that provide a clearer path to notability.

(the overarching trend over the last few years on Wikipedia is against all subject-specific notability guidelines like NATH and WP:NSPORT in general and towards the general guidelines. and As discussed in Wikipedia:Deletion review/Log/2025 March 16#Emil Kalous, WP:NSPORTS2022 shifts the burden of proof away from subject-specific notability guidelines like NSPORT and towards more subject-neutral guidelines like WP:N.)

Agreeing not to make NEXIST arguments at AfD in order to get out of your ANI case (closing statement: User:Habst has committed to a change that will address this issue.) is a voluntary TBAN. JoelleJay (talk) 23:40, 14 August 2025 (UTC)

Off the top, I have to admit this is beginning to read like a Pepe Silvia whiteboard. There are 16 links and at the risk of losing the plot here I'll try to respond.

I've only seen one of the five AfDs you linked at the top, but after reading I have no issue with them -- I think Boevi Lawson and Khalid Al-Karkhi should be recreated as redirects, but both of those AfD closes were done with no bias against a redirect.

Re: the other 11 links -- you've provided lots of quotes and only 5 sentences of non-quote commentary describing them. I'll try to respond to the five sentences in kind:

1. "SPORTCRIT doesn't apply to all athletes" and "SPORTCRIT doesn't mean what you think it means" arguments -- Yes, SPORTCRIT literally doesn't apply to all athletes as said above. Re: the second quote, can you explain what the difference is between those statements?

2. "and the dozen AfDs similar to it where you make the same copy-paste claim that (essentially) meeting NATH overrides the SPORTCRIT requirement for SIGCOV to be cited" -- You linked to an AfD from February where I made an NEXIST argument. I generally don't make arguments like that any more, but even in the "copy-paste" examples you cite, they were in the context of Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)/Archive 202#Rate-limiting new PRODs and AfDs? and I always provided a rationale unique to each AfD.

3. "where you made the same ridiculous Alan Turing comparison" -- What about the comparison is ridiculous? There are many Olympians who are notable in other fields as well as for being an athlete. With a sample size of 150,000, considering statistically more than 1 in 150,000 people in the general population have a Wikipedia article anyways, this occurs somewhat frequently.

4. "continues to ignore SPORTCRIT requirement", "SPORTCRIT should be ignored" (after pivoting away from (*)) -- Considering the BBC Arabic article linked satisfies SPORTCRIT, I don't see how it was ignored in that case? I also never said that SPORTCRIT should be ignored.

5. "voluntary TBAN" -- I think it's misleading to say "voluntary TBAN" because a WP:TBAN is, by definition, given and enforced by an administrator (whether voluntarily or involuntarily followed). FOARP made an ANI thread 3 months ago that ended up being closed two hours after it was created with no administrator action, and because I respect FOARP's contributions I spoke with them about what they were concerned about and changed my editing pattern. In User talk:Habst/Archive 3#ANI notice, you said it was an insignificant ("WAY WAY too narrow") restriction anyways so I don't see the point of continuing to bring this up in unrelated discussions several times now.

Like I said, I respect your contributions and I think it would be helpful to come to a common set of facts so we can focus on improving articles instead of endless discussions. With respect, --Habst (talk) 02:32, 15 August 2025 (UTC)

• Oppose this mess - I was neutral on this up until it became obvious, based on the statements of the creator, that this was just a WP:POINTy attempt to vindicate the already-deprecated automatic notability of Olympians by providing some kind of redirect point on WP for every single one of the 100,000+ Olympians who has ever existed. No. We did not go through all that mess with Lugnuts only to have it resurrected in another form.

This is a useless list. It does not aid navigation, because to find the subject you already have all the information you need to find them by knowing their name, so why would you look at a 100,000+ entry list to find it? Nothing relates the entries in the list other than having surnames sharing the first two or three letters. The only purpose it serves is to provide a redirect point so that articles that should just be deleted are instead redirected.

It is basically a phone-book, something that Wikipedia has very long-standing rules against hosting.

Go and contribute to Olympedia if this is what you want to do. FOARP (talk) 10:16, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

Disregarding all of the motivations ascribed to me here that both aren't true and are, in my opinion, not assuming good faith -- I think this demonstrates a misunderstanding of WP:OWN. On Wikipedia, articles do not have owners, and you are free to judge them on their own merits regardless of what you think of whoever happened to make the first edit.

Getting back to the motivations -- I promise you that there is no ulterior motive or agenda being pushed by creating this list of Olympic competitors. I didn't create it to make a point, although I did create it in part to fulfill an immediate structural need in addition to its navigational benefit. I have no disagreements with WP:NSPORTS2022 or any existing sports notability guidelines.

Yes, one of the ways the list is useful is if you know the name of an Olympian but want to find out other information about them. That's the same basis upon which Wikipedia is built -- generally, in order to find an article, you need to know its name first (understanding that categories, lists, and links can sometimes help with discovery). The list is organized alphabetically right now as is standard for encyclopedic lists (see e.g. List of Major League Baseball players (A)), but that can certainly change in the future. Having a redirect target is one benefit, but certainly not the only one -- for example, having the "games" column makes it easier to find related content on Wikipedia about their performances.

It's not a phonebook per comment, and in fact it seems a list like this is explicitly allowed for by WP:NOTDIRECTORY in its first two sentences. I'm interested in achieving community consensus and editing on Wikipedia. --Habst (talk) 13:16, 8 September 2025 (UTC)

Help on Dora Varella

So, I edited the article on Dora Varella that had almost nothing about her, but I am still struggling on more sources and information to be added. Can someone help me on that? Haddad Maia fan (talk) 02:15, 26 September 2025 (UTC)

I'm having a look at this now. The Achievements list doesn't look right – according to the infobox she turned Pro in 2019, but some of the listed Professional achievements are from pre-2019, so that doesn't make sense to me. E.g. Brazilian Bowl Championship (2015) and the Pan American events (2017 & 2018). I found sources for her wins (as an amateur) at the Girls Vans Combi Pool Classic (2016, 2017, 2018) but you've listed these twice, under amateur and pro. Assuming the Classic is held in the US and organised by the WCS, I'd assume this is referring to the same thing? Rodney Baggins .talk. 19:11, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Tony Parker

Tony Parker has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 20:23, 13 October 2025 (UTC)

Football at the 1896 Summer Olympics

I ran across this article that was (until recently) tagged as a suspected hoax, and after some digging I do agree with it, and it seems at the least to be at best a fringe theory. I've begun drafting an AfD, but I still haven't totally convinced myself that I'm correct, and would love to hear from some people that actually know a thing about sportsball (I very much do not). My main conflict is whether 1) my interpretation that this is at best a fringe theory is accurate and 2) whether it's worth having an article on the fact that this is a fringe theory.

The drafted AfD is at my sandbox (permalink). The main issue I ran into was being unable to verify a number of sources, so anyone who is able to access and assess those sources would be greatly appreciated. Perryprog (talk) 15:46, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

1.Are there any guidelines on Wikipedia about the creation of articles on fringe theories?

2. Does the none existence of sources that confirm this event happened are sufficient to qualify it as an fringe theory? Haddad Maia fan (talk) 16:37, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

1) Quite a bit! It depends on where on the range of "actual hoax" to "fringe theory" in that it's a theory that's held by a (usually vast) minority or subject matter experts. For the former, WP:G3 in the obvious case applies with normal AfD for the non-obvious case. This is what the Do not create hoaxes guideline covers. On the other end of things, it's a matter of due and undue weight—we don't mention flat earthers on the article about Earth because it's such a minuscule minority view that it doesn't warrant mentioning there. For more borderline instances (which this article very well might be), it's a matter of balancing the amount of text dedicated to each view. Right now the article heavily implies that the matches did happen, with only a small section (that then is "disproven") talking about the disputation of their existence. That's what WP:FRINGE, WP:UNDUE, and to an extent the rest of WP:NPOV talk about.

2) In-article, we can't rely on the apparent fact that there are no contemporaneous sources discussing the matches as that would constitute original research (it'd be synthesizing ideas from primary sources). (We can rely on that however in determining if this is a hoax that doesn't warrant an article at all, or an article that discusses the hoax as a hoax.) Because I've been unable to access a number of sources that would provide some evidence that the matches did happen, I'm still on the fence as to where exactly this lands, though from what I've read so far I'm fairly convinced the matches didn't happen. This article is in large part why. Perryprog (talk) 17:42, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

Note that this project kinda recently had a discussion about this article, you can look through the project archives - I would recommend you read it. If we didn't decide an AfD was valuable, there will be reasons. Kingsif (talk) 23:23, 19 October 2025 (UTC)

Ah, yeah I see this discussion which seems like what you're talking about. It doesn't seem like much came of it, though, or like any clear action was taken. Courtesy ping to that discussion's participants: S.A. Julio, Govvy, and Topcardi. I'd love to hear if y'all think it's worth taking to AfD or if something should be kept around (redirect, total rewrite, slight rewrite, etc.) Perryprog (talk) 00:24, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

My read of that discussion, which I thought about earlier as well, was that it is probably worth discussing but would require basically rewriting the article to make it more about the game and the subsequent erasure (e.g. "did it happen?!?"). Not sure how well that would work, though, if sources just don't really exist. Primefac (talk) 01:04, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

So far it feels like every single source points back to either the interview I mentioned in my AfD draft (which as I mentioned in the AfD draft I linked earlier is absolutely not worth being the basis of anything), or the RSSSF page which is... questionable. The main thing that could maybe sway me is figuring out what the four "Olympic historian" sources say (and what they source), but I'm not sure they exist online. Perryprog (talk) 01:49, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Just to chip in here, I don't think anybody thinks is a deliberate hoax. Just that certain people have conflated and confused certain facts together. It's a 2 + 2 =22 situation. Topcardi (talk) 14:38, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

Based on reliable sources such as "The Rumoured Football Matches at the 1896 Olympics" there does seem to be somewhat of an open historical question/debate to if such matches did occur.

I would be up for moving this article to something like Rumoured Football Matches at the 1896 Summer Olympics to spur continued fact-finding but make clear it is a WP:FRINGE theory. Failing that, redirect the page to Football at the Summer Olympics#Beginnings where the rumoured 1896 game is discussed. PK-WIKI (talk) 23:32, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

Those sound like good options - both above draftifying IMO. Kingsif (talk) 23:47, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

Olympedia

To let you know, Olympedia and the IOC have agreed a new contract and the website will be reactivated sometime in the next couple of weeks Topcardi (talk) 17:51, 21 October 2025 (UTC)

But heaven forfend that anyone should say that what is effectively a Wiki run by the IOC is not an independent, reliable source.... FOARP (talk) 08:56, 17 November 2025 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Petra Kvitová

Petra Kvitová has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 23:55, 3 November 2025 (UTC)

Good article reassessment for Dwain Chambers

Dwain Chambers has been nominated for a good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. Z1720 (talk) 01:40, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

[Another] Olympedia discussion

Link here: Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard#RFC:_Olympedia ~WikiOriginal-9~ (talk) 16:57, 18 November 2025 (UTC)

Andrei Kirilenko

There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Andrei Kirilenko that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. Emiya1980 (talk) 04:54, 12 November 2025 (UTC)

Template:Infobox chess biography has an RfC

Template:Infobox chess biography, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has an RfC for possible consensus. A discussion is taking place. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. Khiikiat (talk) 10:41, 1 December 2025 (UTC)

Discussion about WikiProject banner templates

For WikiProjects that participate in rating articles, the banners for talk pages usually say something like:

• "This article has been rated as Low-importance on the importance scale."

There is a proposal to change the default wording on the banners to say "priority" instead of "importance". This could affect the template for your group. Please join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Council#Proposal to update wording on WikiProject banners. Stefen 𝕋ower ^{Huddle • Handiwerk} 19:47, 6 December 2025 (UTC) (on behalf of the WikiProject Council)