Misplaced Pages talk:WikiProject Eurovision

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What to do with commentators and spokespersons

There seems to be a bit of a mess at present on what do with commentators and spokespersons. Originally the information was put into lists into the main year article, and it still is at Eurovision Song Contest 2007. This method caused controversy at Eurovision Song Contest 2008 and there was a discussion about it several times at Talk:Eurovision Song Contest 2008. In the end removal of the commentators and spokespersons lists and then re-placement of the information in individual entry articles was agreed at Talk:Eurovision Song Contest 2008/Archive 5#Remove Commentators and Spokespersons sections. There has been recently dissent from this, particularly from unregistered users, commenting that it is nice having the information together. The idea of creating a separate page for each year on commentators and spokespersons was not considered in the original debate but one was created more recently for Eurovision Song Contest 2009 resulting in List of commentators for the Eurovision Song Contest 2009. This then caused Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/List of Commentators for the Eurovision Song Contest 2009, the debate was closed by Juliancolton (talk · contribs · blocks · protections · deletions · page moves · rights · RfA) as merging them into Eurovision Song Contest 2009. So effectively we have gone round in a complete circle on what to do with commentators and spokespersons! There are two main issues here which need addressing:

There were only two participants in the AfD debate excluding the nominator and closing admin, and as a result the issue was not really fully discussed, I suspect that not many people on this project noticed the AfD was happening, including myself. It appears that a lack of consensus is confirmed by the fact that nobody has merged the articles with the merge tags remaining on the page for almost a month. I have considered contacting Juliancolten to re-address the issue, particularly as not a single policy or guideline was cited in the AfD nomination. How should the AfD result be dealt with now?
What happened to spokespersons? Should there be a separate page for this if there is one for commentators, or should there just be one page for both?

Any opinions on this would be welcome. Camaron · Christopher · talk 19:15, 30 June 2009 (UTC)

Given the fact that the voting order of countries is in the 2009 article anyway, couldn't the names of the spokespersons be slotted into that section? Or we could put the voting order, the spokespersons and the commontators into one table allowing all the information to be displayed in one relatively compact section. It wouldn't take up any more or any less space than what's already there and I've always found the seperate lists in articles for previous contests to be too long. --gottago (talk) 10:54, 1 July 2009 (UTC)

Yes, that could work and would fit particularly well for spokespersons and help reduce space. Use of tables for commentators and spokespersons have been objected to in the past however but with this new format that can probably be overcome. In any case the information will remain in each country's entry article as well. Camaron · Christopher · talk 14:45, 2 July 2009 (UTC)

I think this sounds like a good idea. I thought it was unfortunate that the deletion debate closed as merge since that is one of the things we didn't want from the beginning. I had no idea that a commentators page even existed as it wasn't tagged for our project and therefore didn't show up in the article alerts. We should have been notified of the debate. Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 17:44, 3 July 2009 (UTC)

Well I have just merged it in for now since it has been sitting there for months. The content can either be merged with the results tables, or a commentators and spokespersons table can be created per above. I must so that the ESC 2009 article is getting huge and there is possibly more content that could be added as the article gets better - splitting off one or two sections may need to be considered again in the future. Camaron · Christopher · talk 20:26, 25 August 2009 (UTC)

GA reassessment of San Marino in the Eurovision Song Contest 2008

I have conducted a reassessment of this article and found a large number of issues with the prose style, referencing and possible original research. There were so many that I delisted the article. These concerns can be found at Talk:San Marino in the Eurovision Song Contest 2008/GA2. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 15:39, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

You did bring up some worthwhile concerns about the prose and the diversification of sources, however, your determination of ESCToday and Oikotimes as being unreliable fansites is still under debate and they could very well be deemed reliable, making this reassessment a little premature. In the time it took you to find the errors in prose, you could have simply fixed them and left the sourcing issue for a later date when consensus is achieved. Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 16:18, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Please re-read the assessment (referenced above). My concerns were that the ESCtoday and oikotimes references were either cited from other RS sources which could have been used or cited from other fan sites or blogs or in several instances to themselves which gives cause for concern about their reliability. I delisted because there were so many concerns about prose, and about statements that were not supported by the cited sources, that I could not see them being fixed in a week. As you have been advised before please take this to WP:GAR if you disagree. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 17:18, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

Ok. Just note that when they site to themselves it means they use their own resources, ie interviews, field reporting, email correspondence with networks, etc. Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 17:21, 5 July 2009 (UTC)

GA reassessment of Flying the Flag (for You)

I have conducted a GA reassessment of this article and have found a few minor referencing concerns which may be viewed at Talk:Flying the Flag (for You)/GA1. Thanks. Jezhotwells (talk) 23:07, 11 July 2009 (UTC)

Continued use of edit notices

This project continues to use a few edit notices in its articles. The pages used for edit notices have been moved around a lot but are now as follows:

They are on a global blacklist so only admins can edit them due to the vandalism potential. They have not been perfect in reducing inappropriate edits but do seemed to have helped. If anyone wishes to make any changes they are free to request them here. Camaron · Christopher · talk 12:02, 12 July 2009 (UTC)

Macedonia mass re-naming

Just to let the wider project know the decision over Macedonia naming has been made at WP:MOSMAC2 in the form of a new guideline, resulting in mass re-naming of Eurovision articles related to Macedonia. The relevant section is...

the country will be referred to in these contexts in the same manner as it is referred to elsewhere on the project. Diverging naming practices used by the organisations themselves may be reported (for instance in parentheses after the first reference to the country, or in a footnote), but will not affect usage within the article.

The interpretation made of this guideline is that the EBU continues to use F.Y.R Macedonia, so that should be 'reported', but the primary names now used per the guideline is Macedonia or Republic of Macedonia. It is still a little open to debate on which of these main names is to be used for articles titles e.t.c., editors have so far interpreted it to be Macedonia. The guideline is not rigid so it also open to debate exactly where F.Y.R. Macedonia should still be used e.g. should categories stay where they are?, and should F.Y.R. be in brackets in navboxes? A move request for more re-names has been started at Talk:F.Y.R. Macedonia in the Eurovision Song Contest 2008. Camaron · Christopher · talk 09:12, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I think most of the implementation is pretty straightforward. I would propose:

All article titles to be moved to plain "Macedonia in ..."
Each of the "Macedonia in..." articles to have "Republic of Macedonia" as the first reference to the country in the lead sentence
The main Macedonia in the Eurovision Song Contest article to contain a reasonably concise explanation of the naming practice and its motivation (probably with link to Macedonia naming dispute etc)
The other "Macedonia in the $year ..." articles to have a single, brief parenthetical note or footnote of the type "...under the name of...", either in the lead or perhaps in the infobox
Routine references to the country or its entrants etc. elsewhere, including result tables and the like, to use plain "Macedonia" (MOSMAC2 is actually quite clear about this, because ESC contexts are always unambiguously about independent countries, so there is no ambiguity.) I have already edited {{Esc/Macedonia}} accordingly. Note that the principle of "reporting" the divergent naming practice where appropriate does not leave room for parenthetically sticking an addition "FYR" in on every occasion – reporting encyclopedic information means you report things once, where it's relevant; you don't report it mechanically over and over again.
The category Category:FYR Macedonia in the Eurovision Song Contest is currently up for discussion at WP:CFD; the question is whether to go by MOSMAC2's principle of "disambiguate only where necessary" (hence moving to "Macedonia in..."), or whether to go by WP:NCCAT's preference for maximally uniform naming schemes (hence moving to "Republic of Macedonia in..."); keeping "FYR..." is basically not an option.

Fut.Perf. ☼ 10:02, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

I missed the bit about navboxes in the later sections, well that speeds things up a bit. Yes constant brackets with F.Y.R. Macedonia in would not look right so one occurrence will do, as specified by the guideline. I don't have any strong opinion on the category, though if the rest of the article uses Macedonia it may be easier for the category to do so as well. Camaron · Christopher · talk 11:31, 13 July 2009 (UTC)

Progress on ESC FAR

Since the start of July, the only substantive changes have been Grk formatting some cites. Is anyone still planning to work on this? YellowMonkey (cricket calendar poll!) paid editing=POV 02:53, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

I'll be doing some more. Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 11:58, 17 July 2009 (UTC)

My location for the past week has made it very difficult for me to do very much article work, and that will remain the case for at least the next two days. After this I may be able to help out with this article a bit more. This project only has a small base of very active users compared to other projects so getting rapid improvements will not be easy. Camaron · Christopher · talk 16:39, 23 July 2009 (UTC)

Is a monthly newsletter viable?

I suddenly realised it was almost the end of the month yesterday and that it was time to draft another newsletter for the newsletter department of this project. I have started writing it but like last month I am struggling to find stuff to fill the page and there does not seem to be very much interest. I take note that this project only has 75 members, few other projects of this size have a monthly newsletter. Even the far larger WP Video games only has a quarterly newsletter. While I think it would be a shame to scrap the newsletter completely, I do not think a monthly newsletter is viable in the long-term at least until the project gets significantly bigger. I see two main options:

A bimonthly newsletter e.g. one at the end of February, April, June, August, October and December. A possible transition to this system would be to delay the release of the current draft newsletter till the end of August.
A quarterly newsletter e.g. one at the end of March, June, September, and December. A possible transition to this system would be to finish the current draft newsletter for early August and then not do another until the end of September.

Other options including an annual or twice annual newsletter would probably be too infrequent to make the newsletter that useful. I am personally in favour of the quarterly option to get the work load right down and allow this project to focus on other things while still being frequent enough to be useful. What do others think? Camaron · Christopher · talk 13:05, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

No problem with reducing frequency. Ultimately the periodicity should be determined by those who actually write it. My only suggestion is that we stagger whatever choice is made, so that an issue comes out at the end of May, when the results of the Eurovision Song Contest are still fresh news. -- Alexandr Dmitri (Александр Дмитрий) (talk) 14:06, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

That could work, if one was released at the end of May in a quarterly system then the others would have to be the end of August (easy transition as a plus), November, and February. This would also fit with the Junior Eurovision Song Contest which is usually in November. A bimonthly could be staggered to have one in May, September, and November for all three contests. Camaron · Christopher · talk 15:55, 30 July 2009 (UTC)

I agree, quarterly would suffice. --Tuzapicabit (talk) 14:50, 31 July 2009 (UTC)

Thank you by the way to Stephen and Sims2aholic for getting the July edition out before I could blink and supplying some fresh news. I would like to hear their views before going ahead with anything however. Camaron · Christopher · talk 15:29, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

I don't mind making the monthly newsletter and I think that too much happens for it to be less frequent. I've been slow on wiki the last month or so, mostly because of the aggravation from the GA reassessments, but a whole month to make a newsletter isn't bad if you work on it a little at a time and as information comes in. On that note, people need to start submitting their own news, announcements, etc on the newsletter department's page! Grk1011/Stephen (talk) 16:33, 2 August 2009 (UTC)

Yes the fact that news comes quickly would be a problem, particularly for a quarterly newsletter. I still do not think a monthly one is very sustainable unless input from outside the core few currently doing it increases a lot. I would be happy with a bimonthly one as lowering the work load and allowing us to produce more beefed up and higher quality newsletters, and still keeping frequency reasonable. A bimonthly newsletter could also be timed to fit perfectly with the end of all three Eurovision contests when the big news is out. Camaron · Christopher · talk 08:55, 4 August 2009 (UTC)

I would say do it monthly between January and May or June when Eurovision fever is at its peak and there's plenty of news flying about. The rest of the year maybe do it every other month. I know that's not a particularly conventional schedule but I think it would work out in the end. Plus I really like getting this little nugget in my Wiki inbox! --gottago (talk) 23:39, 16 August 2009 (UTC)

Simple answer: why not just produce a newsletter whenever there's enough news? So if there's not a lot to write about in the low season, it may be 2-3 months between newsletters. Then when there's lots of news in March-May, it can be every few days if necessary. the purpose of a newsletter is to provide news - so do so accordingly :) It's not as if members have paid subscriptions which need to be justified by any particular frequency of output! EuroSong 13:02, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

That could work, though some degree of organisation needs to remain for where to create newsletter pages e.g. currently it is done on month. I doubt frequency can increase hugely during the main Eurovision season as on top of increased need to edit articles some editors have exams in that period, a problem with this project. Camaron · Christopher · talk 08:38, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Dealing with criticism and controversy

I have noticed that there have been a lot of 'Criticism' and 'Controversy' sections appearing in Eurovision articles. There use however on Misplaced Pages has been, with little surprise, controversial. A an essay have been written on the subject at Misplaced Pages:Criticism, Misplaced Pages guidelines also discourage the use of the terms of criticism and controversy at Misplaced Pages:Words to avoid#Controversy and scandal, as they are often misused. I have found five articles with such sections:

I have found that such sections can cause issues at GA/FA, such as with The Lion King, and should be replaced if possible. The problem with them is that by giving the negatives a dedicated section you can potentially push an article off WP:NPOV, and in some cases other sections have to be overly positive to make up for it.

For example in the ESC 2009 article there is plenty about the negative reception to the contest, what about the positive reception and the rebuttals however? I'm sure there must be some, but there is not very much in the current article. Perhaps it should be replaced with a more balanced reception section. This could easily be done in the ESC 2007 article too. Alternatively each of the issues could just be given its own section as appropriate without declaring them as controversy. In the ESC article the criticism and controversy section does contain rebuttals, though perhaps it would still be better as reception or similar. In Azerbaijan in the Eurovision Song Contest 2009 about a third of the article is dedicated to criticism and controversy. The rest of the article is written in chronological order which this section does not seem to fit well into, perhaps this section could be re-organised into some after the contest section, since that is what it deals with. In Azerbaijan in the Eurovision Song Contest this section just seems to deal with the Azerbaijan-Armenia dispute, so perhaps this section should be re-named to reflect this.

I would also like something to appear in the proposed Eurovision guideline about this as it is an issue which is worthy of note. What are other peoples thoughts on this? Camaron · Christopher · talk 09:16, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

I think the section about controversies in Azerbaijan in the Eurovision Song Contest violates WP:WEIGHT. It gives inappropriate weight to the controversies, some of which are in reality nothing but yellow press reports, such as the section about alleged vote stacking in Belarus. It is based on just one article in a Belorussian newspaper. The section should be shortened. In fact, it takes as much space as the rest of the article, which is not appropriate. Grandmaster 09:43, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

This sounds to me like an ill-disguised attempt to whitewash-out "inconvenient" content from articles. Meowy 14:53, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

I strongly agree with you, as no one wishes to discuss the omnipresence of the English language in the ESC 95.93.234.32 (talk) 15:10, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

Let us not mix up including criticism which is WP:NPOV and not WP:OR as appropriate in the articles in a fair and balanced way per WP:WEIGHT and some of the text which has been included (and in some cases removed). I'm the first to admit that the voting system is not utopian and 95.93.234.32 I agree that English has become increasingly used since the inception of the ESC, but there are ways and means of presenting the information. -- Александр Дмитрий (Alexandr Dmitri) (talk) 15:46, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

I was expecting a response along these lines at some point, my answer to such accusations is very clear: No. I have no links to either Armenia or Azerbaijan and I have no personal investment in any side of the controversies mentioned in these sections. My interest here is a good faith attempt to try and improve the encyclopedia by aiming to have articles follow neutral point of view as much as possible with views presented fairly and without bias. That is probably true of almost all editors of this project, and assuming otherwise will not help resolve anything. Camaron · Christopher · talk 17:34, 27 August 2009 (UTC)

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