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RfC about the format of yearly contest articles

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

A summary of the debate may be found at the bottom of the discussion.

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Does the standardised format of the yearly contest articles need to be altered? A.D.Hope (talk) 10:53, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

I know that the Eurovision articles have had this format for a long time, but the discussion yesterday over at In the news/Candidates did include some valid criticisms of the structure of the articles which we should discuss.

The principal problem is that, outside the lead, there's barely any prose coverage of the competitive parts of the semi-finals and final in the articles, which instead rely on tables to convey this information. This contrasts with the extensive prose coverage of practically every other aspect of the contest. It goes against the Manual of Style guideline that the lead should be concise version of the information which is later presented in full in the article body (MOS:INTRO), and the guideline that prose is preferable to tables (MOS:NO-TABLES).

A second issue is that information is not always where you would expect it to be, and in general I'm not sure the sections flow as well as they could. For example, would it not make sense to include postcards under 'production' rather than 'format'?

One solution would be to give everything a good shake-up and restructure the sections entirely. The emphasis should be on grouping information properly and giving a logical narrative overview of the competition itself. That could look something like this:

• Location

• Host country selection
• Host city selection

• Participating countries

• Returning artists

• Production

• Visual design
• Stage design
• Postcards
• Vocals
• Presenters

• Format

• Voting system and contest structure
• Semi-final allocation draw

• Contest overview (primarily prose)

• Semi-final 1 (including opening and interval acts)
• Semi-final 2 (including opening and interval acts)
• Final (including opening and interval acts)

• Detailed voting results (primarily tables, no major changes)
• Reactions(?) (new section. Can be useful to provide a space to document later developments, e.g. charts and critical responses)
• Other countries (no major changes)
• Broadcasts (no major changes)
• Other awards (no major changes)
• Official album (no major changes)

To give an idea of what how this would read, I've mocked-up what the section on semi 1 could have looked like this year:

=== Semi-final 1 ===

The first semi-final took place on 9 May 2023 at 20:00 BST (21:00 CEST). Fifteen countries participated in the first semi-final, with five eliminated and ten progressing to the final. Finland won the most points, followed by Sweden, Israel, Czech Republic, Moldova, Norway, Switzerland, Croatia, Portugal, and Serbia. Latvia, Ireland, Netherlands, Azerbaijan, and Malta failed to reach the final. All the countries competing in the semi-final were eligible to vote, plus France, Germny and Italy, and non-participating countries under an aggregated "Rest of the World" vote.

The semi-final opened with a film called 'Welcome to Liverpool', which transitioned into a dance set to "Together in Electric Dreams" and was followed by co-presenter Julia Sanina performing "Mayak". The interval featured Ukrainian singer Alyosha performing "Ordinary World" with Liverpudlian Rebecca Ferguson, and Rita Ora performing a medley of "Ritual", "Anywhere", "I Will Never Let You Down" and "Praising You". This was followed by a short film documenting the history of Ukraine and the United Kingdom at Eurovision, a cameo by Dustin the Turkey, Ireland's 2008 entry, and a game in which Måns Zelmerlöw and Filomena Cautela guessed whether prevous entries had qualified or not. The French, German, and Italian artists were also interviewed, and clips of their songs played.

The table below lists the competing entries and shows the results. [table]

We can debate how detailed the sections need to be, but I do think it's more useful to readers to present the information like this, in a single bloc, rather than it being split across multiple sections. I don't propose getting rid of the tables in the semi-final and final subsections, as they are useful, but they should be secondary to the prose.

We do also need to make sure that the tables meet the accessibility critera (WP:DTT). I'm not an expert on wikitext tables, but I suspect we're currently not in conformity. We certainly seem to be using colour as the primary means of conveying information in some cases, which is a problem.

I'm not saying I have the perfect answer, but the Eurovision articles could be improved and this is one way of going about it. In summary:

• Restructure the headings
• Group information in a logical, narrative way
• Fix the tables so they're accessible

A.D.Hope (talk) 10:56, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

• Thank you very much for raising this issue. I agree with most things you said; I think moving the participating countries section up is good as that's probably what most people will be searching for and you used to have to scroll a lot to get there. I also agree that there should be a lot more content on the reception of the show and the results, because that's a big thing each year and only occasionally gets an entry in the incidents section. Finally, I feel like the tables is a somewhat separate discussion as it's less writing and more technical, but I can also see there is still some room for improvement there. ―Jochem van Hees (talk) 12:03, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

  I generally supports the creation of a "reception" section, but there are still a lot of stuff that needs to be taken into account when deciding what can we cover in it. One, with regards to post-show public reaction to the winner, generally there's been more or less an acceptance of the eventual results, with a few exceptions where the discourse around the winner spilled over to outside the Eurovision community (Conchita in 2014, Netta in 2018 and Loreen this year for example). For the years where there was no mass outrage around the winner, what can we do about it? Two, I would also suggest adding information on Spotify and general chart impact of the songs after the final ended, but this information has been mostly contained to the top 5 of most years before 2021, and sparsely got coverage from other non-Eurovision news outlets. These are the issues I would like to bring up when creating a "receptions" section. Pdhadam (talk) 09:57, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

  I would support the addition of more wider-reaching impacts of the contest on viewing figures, chart data for the songs, etc. as long as is doesn't become another way to adding even more tables into the article; we don't need a massive table for chart data for every song in every country (not to say that that was what you were suggesting either). If we can have some prose of the high level viewing data (not what we currently have which I feel is too detailed for this article) with total figures globally plus some examples of high percentage share or massive improvements in engagement, similar to the recent article on the official website, this could be very useful. Chart data as well might be pertinent for certain cases, such as which entries entered the top 10 in a large number of countries, or where there is marked impact on certain charts, e.g. the massive impact on the UK chart where 4 Eurovision songs entered the top 10 for the first time ever. It does seem rather bizarre given the massive success of "Snap" globally off the back of the contest that this isn't covered on the 2022 article at all, but this all comes back to I guess a focus on editing for the "here and now" by a lot of editors, who have jumped straight to 2024 without taking stock of 2023, which hopefully this RfC can rectify. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 10:53, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

  I personally think excluding "Snap" made sense from an "normie"/outsider perspective - it not only did not win but finished near bottom 5 at the final. If at one point the post contest success of "Snap" is included then the notoriety of other non-top 10 placing songs (e.g. "Rockefeller Street", "Apollo") should also be taken into consideration, though those are kinda wobbly as Spotify and TikTok wasn't as proliferated back then. Pdhadam (talk) 11:34, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

  For "Snap" it was a viral explosion for the same track with the same article, whereas I believe the two songs you mentioned are more fringe because they only gained popularity because of nightcore edits, so the relationship with the contest is a lot less tangible. Maybe that information does have a place in those articles, I'm not entirely sure, but some reference to the second most streamed Eurovision song of all time on Spotify I would say is apt, even if it did only place 20th. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 11:47, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

• I think there may also be something to be said about the article size, by the way, because basically since the introduction of semi-finals almost all articles exceed the WP:SIZERULE. Though I'm not sure what to do about it. It seems that tables and references together make up around 83% of the size in bytes of the 2023 article (see my sandbox for what it looks like without them...) ―Jochem van Hees (talk) 12:28, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

  I do think that size is an issue, I'm just a bit cautious of trying to do too much at once. There is a lot of room to trim the prose though, as you can see from my recent edit of 2023 which removed 7,575 bytes from 'Location' while (I hope) remaining informative and encyclopaedic. A.D.Hope (talk) 14:35, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

  What if the semi-finals were split off into a separate article? Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 05:26, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

  I would strongly disagree with this approach, and I don't believe it would provide much of a solution long-term. Everything in the article is written from the point of view of the contest as a whole, and splitting the articles into e.g. semis and final would result in a lot of unnecessary duplication of e.g. production information, the location, broadcast information etc. Additionally, I wouldn't agree necessarily that there is a size issue per se; going by WP:SIZESPLIT, the 2023 contest article still falls within the acceptable limits for a standalone article for readable prose size (49 kB), while other more recent contest articles sit around the 60 kB range. However as mentioned in the information article, the scope of a topic can sometimes justify the added reading time, which I believe these articles do justify. There are better ways of trimming down on size than simply splitting, and I know I would have one slightly long very good quality article than two smaller articles that don't cover the topic in the same level of detail. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 16:14, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

  @Sims2aholic8: The problem here isn't the prose size, it's the size of the tables. Setting that aside, the idea behind splitting would be to put some of the less important info (like Eurovision Song Contest 2023#Postcards) into sub-articles. There wouldn't be duplication because the main article would have a short summary, not a copy. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 01:20, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks for clarifying, and that does make sense. 2023 was a bit of an outlier because of the 3 locations per country, instead of the usual 1, but I think it does make sense in some cases to shift the postcard information into the country articles. In some cases I do also feel, especially for the older contests, that this might also border on WP:TRIVIA slightly; looking at what we have in e.g. 1998, 1999 and 2000, I don't personally see anything wrong with what is presented here, however is it totally relevant to the article or could the prose summary be enough? Not sure I have the answer but would appreciate the discussion all the same. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 21:42, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

  An additional thought I had after reviewing the full discussion so far was around A.D.Hope's proposal with the interval act information. While I can see how it might make sense to split these out and place them with the results to create an overview of each show as a totality, there's also a thought for me around how keeping these together provides a greater sense of continuity and gives the reader a better overview of the opening and interval acts in the context of the overall theme of the contest. To take 2023 as an example, I believe you can get a better sense of how all the acts feed into the wider theme of "United by Music" when reading as a whole, as well as the interplay between Ukrainian and British/Liverpudlian acts, that maybe you might lose if you had these acts split up according to the different shows. Of course for older contests where there was only one show, it might make sense then to move these to within the results/contest overview section, so I think some flexibility here might make sense as well. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 21:42, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

• I'd also like to add my thanks for raising this issue. I certainly agree that there needs to be more effort put in to bring additional prose into the articles. We can't be relying just on the tables to convey all the information. As an example of what I believe to be good incorporation of prose into the articles, I recently brought the 1997 and 1998 contest articles up to GA. Of course the format has changed considerably since then, but as a point of reference for what went through a thorough check on Wikipedia policies and guidance I believe these stand up. Of course a proper discussion on the overall structure is still valid in my opinion. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 14:52, 17 May 2023 (UTC)
• What accessibility issues within the tables do you envisage there being? I believe the large majority of our tables fulfil the accessibility requirements (e.g. row and col scoping, not relying solely on colour to convey information, splitting tables rather than relying on column headers in the middle of tables), however if you believe there are other criteria that we have not been following then please do shout. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 14:52, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

  I'm not an expert on the markup used in tables, so forgive me if there's stuff going on behind-the-scenes which solves what appear to be issues in the normal view. One thing which did strike me is that the third row of the detailed voting tables seem to indicate whether points were given by jury or televote soley by colour, and that there's no key to indicate what the orange rows mean. A.D.Hope (talk) 15:10, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

  Thanks for spotting that, that appears to be an oversight as the colour keys are usually present for those tables as in the other articles to indicate the winner/qualifiers. I have readded them to this article now as well. I am open to suggestions on how best to improve those tables to make them more accessible but also to ensure they remain simple to read when it comes to distinguishing between jury and public voting. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 16:45, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

  Don't worry, these things get missed. I'm not really the person to suggest improvements, the colour issue just made me wonder how accessible the tables are overall. I will say that the Eurovision tables seem very well-composed, which is remarkable considering how many there are. A.D.Hope (talk) 17:01, 17 May 2023 (UTC)

• Thank you for starting this discussion. It's always great to get an outside view on how things are laid out and to hear whether they're working or not. In general I agree with many of the points raised and don't have any issues with what is being proposed. Sims2aholic8 has the most experience in 'perfecting' the yearly contest articles and I fully support his viewpoints. Separately, I find that we run into a problem when there is the inevitable switch from the chronological order of the details as they come out to the post-contest summaries by aspect that then need to be reorganized into new distinct sections. Grk1011 (talk) 21:39, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

  Firstly, thank you. I appreciate the community really engaging with this and reconsidering its own practices.

  It might help to try and categorise information into distinct sections from the outset, rather than the articles having a 'pre-contest-chronological' and 'post-contest-summary' form. I do think it's easy to fall into the trap of sections becoming a list of dates and relatively inconsequential information (e.g. 'On March 3rd Austria did [x], then on March 5th Greece did [y]'), but that's easily avoided with a little effort. A.D.Hope (talk) 20:27, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

  I feel that this is what we are already achieving with the current structure, no? We have clear sections for location, production, format, participating countries, results, broadcasts etc. Potentially there is scope for rejigging the format slightly, moving some details around, but I don't believe that there is necessarily anything within these overall sections that suggests pre- or post-contest chronology. If there's something I'm not seeing then please do raise it here, potentially there could be a case of "wood for the trees" given my previous experience in improving these articles. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 20:58, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

  If we are talking about potentially reformatting the article slightly and moving some sections around, and I am certainly amenable to that conversation, I would like to revisit a point I raised a while ago around introducing a similar participants table that you would find in the national final articles, e.g. Melodifestivalen 2023, Melodi Grand Prix 2023 etc. It has always bugged me how little information there is regarding the songwriters within the articles, and of course adding them to the current results table would make it very unwieldy, however adding a similar table here should the participating countries section be split from the results could be a good addition. I understand of course that there is a move to try and dial back on the tables as well, however this new table could potentially allow for reduced duplication/need for references if we shifted the language column out of the results tables and into this new participants table, thereby reducing the size of the results tables. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 20:58, 20 May 2023 (UTC)

  I do think that the article sections usually end up being good summaries which aren't overly-chronological, my point was just that before a given contest those sections can be overly-chronological. Information is added as it's released, so it's not surprising that they end up that way, but we could begin to summarise earlier. It's not a massive problem, I just wanted to respond to Grk1011.

  Your idea of introducing a single 'participants' table is a good one, I agree that it would allow us to significantly reduce the size of the results tables. I'd go further, and say that if we have a full 'participants' table with artist, song, writer, and language information then the only colums neededed in the results tables are running order, country, points, and place. A.D.Hope (talk) 11:53, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  That does make sense to me now, and yes you're right that as things are announced the article can be somewhat chronological in that sense. This is probably something we could do with keeping an eye on in future and ensuring as a project we copy-edit as and when new information is announced to keep the flow of the article more chronologically neutral.

  I personally believe that the artists and songs are still required in the results tables. Removing these would I think create too much of a headache for readers, and require additional cross-checking between the different tables to figure out which artist and song represented which country, and particularly basing this on your proposed structure at the top there's likely to be a lot of content inbetween the participants table and the results tables which could add to the headache further. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 13:24, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  I've created a draft version of how best I believe the new participants table could fit into the overall structure of the article. With this new table we can remove language from the results tables, as well as any native scripts (e.g. Cyrillic for Serbian), which will also reduce the size of these tables. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 13:54, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

  Oh yes, I think your draft makes much more sense than having the full list of participants split across the three results tables.

  I'm neither here nor there on which columns should be included in the results tables. The concise part of my brain would remove 'artist' and 'song', but I can see the logic of including them so that readers don't have to keep scrolling up and down for that info. Leave them in, if it's a problem we can always reconsider.

  The RfC has been open for six days and nobody's objected yet, how long shall we leave it before implementing the changes we've agreed? A.D.Hope (talk) 12:30, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I agreed years back with editor-Zouki08 here to add songwriters for annual articles, for which I added an idea for songwriters+spokespersons+bried national selections methods and further such discussions [1] – "Songwriters for annual articles" which actually started from his discussion for removing English translations which you "Sims2" then removed but eventually nobody besides Zouki08, myself and another opined about songwriters and such table. So also pinging Zouki08 who may wanna join as this definitely needs more input for consensus. I currently however don't pursue pre-selections methods and with this I'm not sure as A.D.Hope I'm open for duplicate songs+performers names for +1 table, especially as songwriters are on lists-articles. Perhaps as your idea A.D.Hope - countries names+songwriters+languages and I can suggest +spokespersons from my previous idea (look floating as bullet-list in the article + add size); and as detailed-score tables also just show countries. With that, as I also wrote here a year ago, redirected songs links should return to yearly articles to target those songwriters lists, especially if such additional table won't get consensus. אומנות (talk) 14:12, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I personally don't like the idea of combining spokespersons within the other tables. I feel that they are two separate parts of the contest, and adding them to the "participating countries" table would be beyond the scope of that article. Additionally, for older contests, a lot of information around spokespersons is missing or is poorly sourced and unverifiable, so I fear that including this in the same area as the participating artists, songs and songwriters (where all information is available and verifiable) would detract from the table. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 14:41, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I thought if spokespersons are related enough, in general about adding 1-2 columns to justify another table with songwriters (and without songs+performers again) like also the postcards-locations (from 1970) to concentrate such other countries-escorting aspects which take size as vertical bullets, figured spokespersons are verifiable as appear/heard on the show; otherwise I don't like a table to shift language and add songwriters also per the participants-lists articles but "Zouki08" was eager so maybe he supports such table. אומנות (talk) 15:49, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

There is however a logicality to adding a new table for participating countries that includes artists, songs and songwriters as they are all intrinically linked, but this does not extend to the spokespersons. You can't have a song without songwriters, or a song without a performer, or a competing country without all of these. However the spokespersons sit outside of this relationship, and so including them in the same table would not make logical sense in this regard. We're also trying to get away from lots of big massive tables in this article, so while there could be some sense to splitting the songs and artists from the results, and then adding in only the languages and songwriters here to include new relevant information but also reduce the size of the results tables, I believe adding an additional column with the spokespersons here too would make it too unwieldy. Additionally, since the section the participants table would be included in relates to participants, and not the voting, the spokesperson would then be out of place entirely, whereas keeping them as part of the results section with the voting tables makes more sense and is a more logical place for that information to be stored, as the spokespersons appear only briefly during the contest, and then only during the voting segment. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 15:59, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I already thought before if spokespersons are related enough, while I actually do like somewhat what you raised about spokespersons next to the overall results table if another table is created for songwriters, as they still participate in the show while songwriters don't appear... but I don't pursue this, I'm okay and open to keep them as a list at the detailed-scoring dedicated chapter. I point that I suggested while not duplicating songs and performers, to give a solution for a richer yet still small table, as I'm aware this discussion is also from other editors desire to reduce table width-sizes. And there's issue of presenting songwriters at the aforementioned lists articles. Also scoreboard tables and other sections only repeat countries names without duplicating further; even though I understand the aim to present songwriters intricately next to their created songs, which can be just pointing the songs and not also artists again. All-in-all I would still look for a way that songs and performers will appear once - be it ideally next to songwriters. אומנות (talk) 17:03, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Firstly, thank you for joining the discussion, @אומנות. It's good to have more people involved. Would you mind clarifying if you still think that the spokespeople should be listed in the 'participants' section? I'm reading the discussion and it's not quite clear.

In terms of tables, I'm not intrinsically opposed to them, it's just best when they're accompanied by prose. The main exception on the Eurovision articles is the 'detailed results' section, where prose would be redundant. The 'spokespersons' list is okay as it is, in my opinion, but it should probably be moved to the 'format' or new 'participating countries' section when we reorganise the articles. A.D.Hope (talk) 18:20, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

Thank you too A.D.Hope and also very nice for me to meet (kind-of) more people, especially as this specific subject was a hard-long one few years ago with many ideas and angles. I mean that I don't mind much if the spokespersons stay exactly the way they are now, but I will be glad if they are within any table somehow as the songs-performers-scores are organized in tables. I can also support your idea to move them to "format" or new "participating countries" as a list. I add that postcards - I now realize they got their own whole table in 2023 due to different locations, I therefore support at least a bullet-list with 3 locations details in prose within the bullets at least; or maybe it's completely "undue" weight.

Overall I agree with your approach for prose importance with tables, while I take it further to prefer prose instead of tables or instead of bullet-lists where available.

2 examples: following another discussion, I helped to shift "returning artists" tables to prose as I came up with splitting to 2 paragraphs if it was too long. I created 1-paragraph for returning Eurovision soloists, another for backing vocalists+other Eurovision events participants. On songs articles where there's music "chart", I add above a prose about weeks-span and dates of charting and such.

With this I add another suggestion I thought about for some years: The 12 points tables look undue as the 12s are highlighted at the full-breakdown results tables, while can easily be summarized in prose, like: "Israel received the maximum 12 points from 5 countries televotes - France, Italy.. Spain recieved from 4 countries juries.." I know some countries get from 18 televotes/juries, but still removes few more small tables and enriche-give prose even above the full scores. Otherwise perhaps just pointing in prose how many sets of 12 points were received by countries without pointing from which countries. Otherwise perhaps to remove this tables without prose and the readers look at the bolded 12s at the full tables. Those are the alternatives I think about to also reduce size. אומנות (talk) 19:27, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I do believe that it is important that the balance between tables, prose and lists is maintained. Where it makes sense to use a table, that should be the primary means to conveying the information, for example the participants and results tables within these articles. The points you raise around the returning artists, I do agree that these should remain in prose format given trying to force this information into a table would be too complex (there are a number of older contest articles where this has yet to be rectified however). Spokespersons however I believe are best kept in their current format, as a bullet list embedded within the voting section, due to the simpler nature of the information in comparison with the participants or results. A table with two columns (country and spokesperson) doesn't make sense in my mind compared with a bullet list that is then easier to manage from a formatting perspective through div cols etc. The 12 points table I feel remain better as tables because of the complexity compared to trying to convey this information in prose. I believe that trying to force the the 70-80+ 12 points that are awarded each year into prose would be far too complicated a task, and would make the information much more difficult to understand. However there is a point around how useful these tables are in general; is there a WP:UNDUE aspect to these tables where we call out each country's favourites specifically when this information is already presented in the voting tables? Sims2aholic8 (talk) 21:16, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

I precisely view importance for tables, albeit richer ones, as I said, about optional spokespersons column to add alongside 3-4 other info-columns; didn't suggest to create a table only for spokespersons+countries, and why I don't flow with your suggested duplicate songs-performers columns or otherwise similarly just countries-languages-songwriters table. I agree participants and results should be conveid by means of a table as now. Anyway I'm open to keep spokespersons as a list and I like A.D.Hope option - at a reorganized "participants" chapter as they're the juries-vote segment in the show. Returning artists - I arranged to prose few years ago also across older articles besides the splits of longer material in the newer ones, but others changed back to tables over the years, I saw it I knew about it, didn't have energy to argue with lack of collaboration-consideration going here. For the 12s tables - still under split paragraphs or with introductory text for juries and for televote, adresses 30-40, with the point to reduce size while enrich prose, but I already cut back for flexibility on the same comment to just write how many sets of 12s; for those who got any (without detailing which countries gave the 12s), which is easily addressed by a sentence for jury and a sentence for televoting. That said, as formerly, I'm also flexible for the 12s-tables removal without any replacing-prose, as you pointed out "Undue" possibility and mostly as I pointed the 12s appearance in bold-black inside the full breakdown tables which you also agree with. אומנות (talk) 22:43, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

• I agree with both of you that we could ditch the 12-point tables, as they really only duplicate what's in the main tables.
• We seem to agree on keeping spokespeople in the current list; I'm not overly bothered where that list is so long as it makes logical sense.
• Returning artists are best as prose, glad we all agree on that also.

Is there anything I've missed? A.D.Hope (talk) 19:58, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, in the 2016 discussion I also proposed to ditch those 12s per table-info duplication and size and a several tables one after the other. It fell through the cracks as the main discussion was for another table. With regards to another basis of this discussion, about enriching prose for tables, can be worth adding 2 sentences above the full breakdown scores tables - for the amount of 12 points-sets a country received from televote, and from jury. And, as some get the same amount can be like this: "Italy and Spain each recieved four sets of 12 points; Albania, Romania and Germany each recieved one set." Or something discriptive along this lines. Otherwise I still support to remove the tables without prose. I like the option you raised for spokespersons at "participants" per show-wise as they're often past participants besides taking part as the show's voting segment, but I'm okay to keep them as is. Glad you also agree about returning artists, as more strength to a past agreement and which I implemented in several old and new editions. So for me you covered the stuff I wished here for now to change or otherwise maintain. אומנות (talk) 03:22, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Is the additional prose around which entries get which countries' 12 points really required if we remove the tables? I think some prose about which countries were the favourites with the jury and public as a whole would have a place, but I don't believe a point-by-point for every country's favourite is required and would somewhat contradict WP:NOTSTATS and strikes me as a little bit WP:UNDUE. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 08:18, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

I talked about solely pointing the amount of 12-sets so for the perspective of about 10-15 countries who receive any (in the finals, less of course in semis), for which the previous example "From the jury, Italy and Spain each received four sets of 12 points, Israel and France three... From the televote...", e.g no pointing of all 37 countries' awarded 12s, which is precisely some short prose (2 sentences) to give summaries-insight about the jury and televote 12s above the full detailed-votes chapter's table. As many others said at other pages (mainly the 2023 ESC talk for Finland and Sweden points discrepancy), overall-points for jury winner (like 243 for Sweden) and televote winner (376 Finland) and the points-gap summaries can be above "participants" chapter tables with the overall scores. Here will also contribute my view that is should pointed that Sweden (as the winner) failed to receive any 12s from the public, and can be either at "participants" or "detailed-voting"; ImStevan I understand you like and further easy to see the 12s detailed separately but that you also recognize it duplicates, so I think this 2 sentences suggestion still supplies some 12-points addressing and enriches for the discussion to add prose even above full-votes tables, while also provides for the discussions about reducing article size, eliminating duplication, with the voting-breakdown tables adhering by already showing in black-bold (for easier visibility) which country gave 12 points to which. Otherwise however (without any prose), I remain supportive to remove 12s tables. אומנות (talk) 23:12, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

As a sign of good faith, and as apology for not paying close enough attention with your suggestion, I've drafted some wording for prose to be added to the "detailed voting segments". I do believe some sort of prose in this segment is justified (and which I also included in the articles I've pushed to GA for 1997 and 1998. The prose on 12 points received doesn't look that out of place in my mind, and could be a good addition. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 09:48, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

Support All articles on the yearly contests are great, but the collection of bare tables makes an impression that the quality is much lower, so restructuring a bit so that content from other sections fills in the gaps on the semi-finals and the final is spot on.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 17:53, 21 May 2023 (UTC)

 Comment: I agree with everything but the 12 points tables being removed. I now it's duplicate info but idk they just feel right ImStevan (talk) 20:25, 27 May 2023 (UTC)

Hello everyone! I've just edited Eurovision 2023 to implement the changes we've been discussing for the past few days. It seemed time to actually see what they'd look like rather than just talking about them, and I hope you agree.

I have tried my best to follow the outcome of the discussions here; if I haven't please assume I've simply made a mistake rather than riding roughshod over your comments! Two changes which will likely warrant further discussion are:

• Removing all the 12-point tables — we can always put them back, but we need to see what their absence looks like.
• Collapsing most tables outside 'detailed voting results' default — I wanted to see how this affects the legibility of the article.

I haven't done much with the prose itself, so it's not quite as I'd like it in several areas, but hopefully this is an aid to discussion nevertheless. (pinging @Jochem van Hees @Sims2aholic8 @אומנות @The ed17 @Grk1011@ImStevan@Kiril Simeonovski)

A.D.Hope (talk) 10:03, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

I wouldn't make the semi-finals tables collapsible nor collapsed, I think they should stay as they were. It also just kinda seems empty without the 12 points breakdown, but that's just a me thing. The rest of the tables (host city, postcards) can stay collapsed ImStevan (talk) 10:21, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

@A.D.Hope: Thanks for taking the initiative to carry out the edits! There is certainly a logic and flow to how the article is now laid out. A few things I would like to note:

• Firstly with the collapsed table in the postcards section, I think this shows somewhat how less relevant this information is to the article. The section itself with the prose around the production etc. is still useful, but I believe we should be thinking about removing the overall postcards table from the article since this information is already covered in the individual country articles.
• I don't like the use of collapsible tables for the results tables, I feel this almost gives the impression of shoving the overall running order and results under a rug. I feel including the new "participants" table in the relevant section might help to reduce the size of these tables by allowing up to remove the language column. I've made some further modifications to the article to include this table and modify the results tables to show how this would look.
• I think in some cases yes the interval act information would make sense in the new "contest overview", however just wondering how we would best cover some recurring segments? As an example, in 2023 there were segments with Måns Zelmerlöw and Filomena Cautela in eacch semi-final, however currently there is only the reference to this in the first semi-final coverage. There's also the various segments with Timur Miroshnychenko which aren't mentioned anywhere.
• One additional comment, I'm in two minds about relocating the Spokespersons section. There is a logic I guess to including it with the other contest overview segments since it's part of the show, but it's also part of the voting segment so there is also a logic to including this with the voting tables. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 11:15, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Thank you! I'm not sure if everything works, but it's good to see it laid out. In terms of your points:

• I'm in two minds about the postcards. While the table does take up a lot of space it is handy to have all the information in one place.
• The new participants table looks good, we can count that a success I think! I still think we could get away with eliminating the artist and song columns from the results tables, although admittedly they don't cause any problems width-wise.
• Recurring segments can just be mentioned in the prose, I think. When I made my big overhaul edit I focussed on the layout rather than the prose, but it can easily be updated.
• With spokespersons, I think it depends on how you view the two sections. In my mind 'contest overview' is the main section for the whole contest, while 'detailed results' is for the nitty-gritty of the voting figures rather than being about the voting section as a whole. On that basis it makes sense to put spokespersons in the former.

A.D.Hope (talk) 11:27, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Thoughts? Sims2aholic8 (talk) 11:09, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

I think the new layout works well. I'm honestly not too invested in the main contest articles so any further tweaks are likely fine by me. However, I don't believe we are supposed to be hiding tables per WP:ACCESS (and the long table titles are jumbled up when the table is hidden). Grk1011 (talk) 14:42, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

I've reverted the collapsed tables back to default to non-collapsed for now (whether they should retain the ability to be collapsed is another question). I've also tested out adding the specific participating broadcasters into the participants table; I believe this information should be included given that the event itself is a television production and entries are dependent upon an EBU broadcaster in the relevant countries choosing to participate. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 14:59, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

The changes all seem pretty smooth, but with regards the “12 points” tables, I believe that they should remain. They can be hard to find among other pieces of information in the “Detailed Voting Results” subheading. I understand it uses less room, however I feel that it is less user friendly. EMTrainspotting (talk) 10:55, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Comment:

• What are people's general thoughts on the host city bidding table? We could probably get away with just the prose description and map, you know.
• It won't look the same for everyone, but on desktop the text of 'location' is very awkwardly squeezed in between the picture, map, and infobox. Can we do anything about that?

A.D.Hope (talk) 11:30, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

I think given the amount of detail that is presented in the table, I think it could be tricky to squeeze everything into prose and for it to still read well and convey the information in as manageable a situation as possible. Particularly when thinking about the "notes" column, that's a lot of varied information that would either need to be included in the prose and therefore take up a lot of space, or be removed which leaves gaps in information potentially. Everything in the map as well also needs to be sourced somewhere in the article, which is what the table allows for.

Yes the current layout does throw up MOS:SANDWICH issues. I'm not sure what potential solutions we have to hand to help with this, apart from moving the image/map in the Location section to float right, which unfortunately would then lead to a very long group of multimedia on the right side of the article. Could we potentially do with scrapping some of these? I wonder how useful the street map of Liverpool with the various areas of interest is exactly to this article. Not saying we should get rid of it, but more posing the question. As for the table itself it may make sense to add a {{Clear}} directly before to give more space and allow the table to expand further, similar to what is achieved in the 2022 article. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 14:05, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

 Comment: The table with all competitors and songs is a good idea. I've wanted that for a long time, however, perhaps that could be moved to the official album section? Like how its been done here – ImStevan (talk) 11:06, 29 May 2023 (UTC) I think the new layout works well. I'm honestly not too invested in the main contest articles so any further tweaks are likely fine by me. However, I don't believe we are supposed to be hiding tables per WP:ACCESS (and the long table titles are jumbled up when the table is hidden). Grk1011 (talk) 14:42, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

We used to have similar album track lists within the English articles, however I don't believe the track lists are relevant information to this article since it's not an article about the album. Additionally, if we want to make this consistent across all these articles going back to 1956 then this wouldn't work because the official albums have only been published since 2000. In some cases (see Eurovision Song Contest 1999 as an example) there will very little information and zero chart information available to warrant a stand-alone album section at all. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 11:22, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

I disagree with this participants table per duplication of songs+artists as I discussed and explained alongside another's reluctance for duplication and for adding one songwriters column which appears on ESC song's lists articles, and now further "broadcasters" duplication which appear under "braodcasters and commentators" chapter. I can't undo this tested table (which was already shown for test on sandbox) since further edits were made (as "broadcasters") and other shifts. Sims2aholic8 I understand your similar desire as to follow my idea from 2016 to add "broadcasters" (alongside spokespersons) as my overall idea back then for concentrated further details of all kinds of participants further table, but that was also from the view of putting them instead of the table detailing all channels and commentators (I suggested then it's too detailed as they are external and as there are several TV and radio channels in each country which makes it too much). As you saw in addition I also pinged user "Zouki08" thinking he's likely to support towards your direction or at least opine, but I don't know if and what exactly he would support compared to 2016, I disagree with this duplication and that comes from someone who also suggested similar things few years ago albeit replacing-removing details instead of duplicating, and also per not serving to show semis and final running order in separate tables only further down under "results". So, overall there are 4 participants with different opinions and explanations also to the side of avoiding duplication for a discussion which started as ways to remove repetitions and tables. As you now reverted "A.D.Hope" collapsible tables as something you disagree with, and even small stuff as specific cells are said by you and others to require more input and consensus; revert this table please back to the stable tables with points and scores and by running order with split to semis and final. If you want to pursue this, again I hope Zouki08 can also view, and possibly posting on more noticeboards if there are for more views. Thank you. אומנות (talk) 15:57, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

The reversion of the collapsible tables is, as pointed out by Grk1011 as WP:ACCESS issue. Tables should not be by default shown as collapsed, because this can cause issues for some browsers where the collapsability functionality is absent. The inclusion of the broadcasters in the participants table is actually not a duplication, as in some cases there are different broadcasters within countries which broadcast the shows versus which broadcasters actually participate. As an example, each year the participation for Belgium transfers between VRT and RTBF each year but both take the broadcast of the contest each year; historically the participation within Germany, the Netherlands and Russia has also changed between different broadcasters however within Germany and the Netherlands the responsibility for broadcasting the contest lies within the overall umbrella organisations; Das Erste and NPO 1 are not channels for NDR and AVROTROS but instead they feed into those channels with their own broadcasting initiatives. I've done minimal changes to the results tables, the only change being the removal of the language column since this is better covered in the participants table, so I do not understand what you mean by revert this table please back to the stable tables with points and scores and by running order with split to semis and final. I believe both can exist and both have a place within these articles, and I'd like to keep them as they are now until we get more input from other contributors to this RfC. Sims2aholic8 (talk) Sims2aholic8 (talk) 16:29, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Comment: I like this new format, I think it makes more sense this way. An additional idea would be to potentially include a column for the selection process as well, for example, if a national selection was used to note down the name, e.g. "Melodifestivalen 2023" or for countries that selected their entry internally to write "Internal selection". Not sure if this would be too much information or not, just an idea.

On a side note, just a call out when it comes to the "Contest overview" section, in my opinion I think the place column should be listed before the points column as it used to, as generally I think one refers to the place first, and it would be consistent with how the 'country in the Eurovision Song Contest' articles are formatted. Aris Odi ❯❯❯ talk 12:21, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback! I think a separate column for selection process is not exactly relevant to this article. It's on each participating broadcaster to determine how to select their entry, and what each country decides to do has zero bearing on how the contest functions itself. This information is better placed within the separate country articles for 2023 and at a higher level in the articles for each country's history in the contest. Each individual country's article outlining their preparations for the contest in question are also already linked within the participants table for ease of access if a reader is curious to how a specific entry for the contest was chosen.

The main drive for changing the order of columns was to include the split results directly in these tables (see the previous RfC on the subject). I would not recommend we attempt to try this again as there was considerable pushback after the fact, but keeping the tables in this manner is consistent with how the information is presented on the official website, both for the individual contests and as you mentioned the slightly different order for the countries' participation history. Happy to have a discussion around this however if there are additional voices for one way in particular over the other, but my personal preference here would be to keep the order as it currently is. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 13:52, 30 May 2023 (UTC)

I too suggested once "internal"/"national-named" selection column Aris Odi, within further-details table alongside responsible "broadcasters" or similar – but without duplicating songs/countries; and instead of all the TV/radio-channels+commentators table which are external to the event and relevant to countries articles anyway. If such a table, I keep my support for +selections column.

A.D.Hope I appreciate your consideration with your edits for aiding the general agreements as you left the stable tables while reorganizing chapters which seem to reflect all views here thus far, mostly appreciate you acknowledge that even removal of 12-tables may need further discussion (even though of course I'm personally support to remove). It's important for me to say this to you, because you can then understand why I'm bothered by a new table and column shifts despite ongoing discussion, and as you-too keep noting to remove columns duplication and as you collapsed "overall results" table as an effect of this other "participants" table, and per column fir songwriters who are included in lists articles. If it wasn't for these ongoing repercussions, I would also agree to begin with.

With that, I never disagreed with reverting-collapsible "Sims2aholic8". The point is an example for you immediately reverting bold edits when you disagree – be it collapsible or anything else – so give equal respect and rights when you're asked to revert yourself, and when there's an ongoing discussion exactly about if and how to reshape tables and which columns to add. Precisely the changes for the referred "stable tables" you made, so when I asked you to revert you knew what I mean; and are therefore huge changes also per disregarding the core of much of the argument in this discussion; even now between 4-5 participants there are suggestions to remove duplication, to collapse or add another selections-column, and you also keep talking about reordering columns. And when in other cases you demand more input even for updating an infobox parameter as at the 2024 ESC discussion.

And as A.D.Hope also understood to keep the stable tables for now while he reorganized and noted he hopes he didn't gaslight any comments here. For what you said about participating-broadcasters – yeah they are duplication since the existing channels-commentators table naturally includes actual participating (and broadcasting) channels which can simply be marked in "bold" within this table for countries as Belgium and any with several channels, and a key color-footnote above the table saying "participating broadcasters are indicated in bold". Another example why this ongoing discussion as the proper means instead of keeping an edit which demotivates to keep discussing and come up with more ideas. With that, your reply to me feels hurtful as gas lighting, as you say you just made "minimal changes" and that you "don't know what I mean". I decided to move the other half of this comment to your talk page. I will keep over there about why I feel hurt from you and hope you are willing and can kindly reply about other stuff over there. אומנות (talk) 03:23, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

@אומנות: Thank you for raising this point. I have left a thorough reply on my talk page, but just to add for the record here as well that I apologise if my words or actions within the RfC caused pain or controversy to you or anyone else. It was not my intent, I understand sometimes I can come across as brusque but it is more of a natural speaking/writing pattern than coming from any negative place. As I mentioned on my talk page, I feel most of my replies within this RfC have come from a place of "evidence-based" thinking, and reasonings for not supporting certain suggestions are based around Wikipedia policy or from an attempt to keep the yearly articles focussed on that topic and to avoid "scope creep".

As I said with the national selections column, this isn't an integral part of the contest itself, broadcasters are free to choose their entries however way they want and this has no bearing on how the contest itself is run; hence why I believe this information should not be presented within this article but explored further in the "country by year" articles which are linked several times across the article. As mentioned not only by me but other users, collapsible tables which automatically hide the contents are an WP:ACCESS issue. Additionally, your suggestion to highlight participating broadcasters in the broadcasts table for participating countries in bold does not align with the Manual of Style guidance for boldface.

As I covered within the reply on my talk page as well, my "not understanding" was a genuine ask for further clarification on your response, and not me trying to be vindictive or to gaslight you or anyone else. I feel like I've been very clear throughout this RfC around certain topics why they should or should not be introduced, and I certainly want to be as engageable and collaborative as possible when it comes to disagreements. I certainly don't believe I should have my own way all the time, but when there are suggestions made that I feel go against policy or have limited logic to how these articles in my mind should be formatted I will speak my mind. Will I always win? Of course not. However if my way of writing or contributing is causing issues for other, then I hope they can come to me and I can do my best to make changes. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 08:56, 31 May 2023 (UTC)

• Why are the qualifier/running order tables now hidden by default? That's the information I'm most interested in, and I don't understand why we need to hide them in favour of prose. We did need more prose, but at the same time these articles are table-dependent because it's the easiest way to display a lot of information coherently... SportingFlyer T·C 13:10, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

  @SportingFlyer: Can you please link to the articles/sections you are referring to precisely? From what I can see from the articles between 2021 and 2023 the results tables are not hidden or even collapsible; this functionality was reverted a while ago as it infringes upon MOS:ACCESS. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 20:18, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

  Huh, they are no longer collapsed. Maybe I clicked a link to an earlier revision without realising it? Sorry for the confusion. SportingFlyer T·C 20:23, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Summary

Since this RfC will be automatically closed in a few days anyway, and there has been no further discussions in a week or so, I'm taking it upon myself to summarise the discussion points above, to outline the agreed approach going forward for these articles, and to close the RfC.

• "Participating countries" to be split off from "Results" and placed in a new section just below "Location"
• New "Participating countries" table to be added, outlining country, broadcaster, artist, song, language and songwriters (with additional column for conductors for contests prior to 1998)
• Results tables to be added to new section entitled "Contest overview"; language columns and any non-Latin scripts to be removed from results tables, as these are now included in the participating countries table, but artist and song columns to be retained
• Opening and interval acts and spokespersons (previously included in "Production" and "Detailed voting results" sections respectively) to be moved into the new "Contest overview" section
• Additional prose to be included within the "Contest overview" sections outlining the results of each show (which countries qualified/didn't qualify in the semis, which country won in the final)
• Retention of 12 points tables in "Detailed voting results" sections, but with added prose ahead of tables outlining how many 12 points were received by countries

I have updated the Format and Guides page and Eurovision Song Contest article template to explain the new format, which should hopefully help editors to visualise the changes going forward. Many of these changes have also been made within several articles, with 2023 being a prime example. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 14:08, 13 June 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Daily News Desk Issue 1 Thursday 17 August 2023

Eurovision Daily News Update 17 August 2023 Recently in the news... Azerbaijan will close applications for their selection on September 30. Mae Muller has canceled her November tour. Belgium will choose their 2024 representative internally. EasyJet is launching a new route from the United Kingdom to the Icelandic city of Akureyri, near Húsavík. Happy birthday to... Katri Helena, Carrie Grant, Ilinca, Anton Lissov Did you know... The most covered Eurovision Song Contest song is Domenico Modugno's 'Nel blu, dipinto di blu (song)', also known as 'Volare'. The song has been covered by famous stars such as Dean Martin, Cliff Richard, David Bowie and many more. Eurovision entrant... Marion Welter (born 1965) is a Luxembourgish singer. When she was 15 years old, she became part of the band Quo vadis. She studied music in a music academy and has worked in several styles of music, such as classical music, pop and jazz. She represented Luxembourg with the band Kontinent in the Eurovision Song Contest 1992 in Malmö, performing the Luxembourgish song "Sou fräi" (As free). The song ended the contest in 21st place (out of 23 contestants) with 10 points. Before and during her performance, she had an acute attack of malaria that seemed like a severe migraine. She became infected with malaria during a vacation in Kenya in 1990.

Ktkvtsh (talk) 23:10, 17 August 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for compiling the daily news. However, there seems to be an error: I see the daily news on the talk page. I guess the correct tab would be the "news desk" tab? EurovisionLibrarian (talk) 14:12, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

I agree. I will work on that when I get off work in a few hours. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Ktkvtsh (talk) 14:17, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Memo on new features

WikiProject Eurovision News Desk Dear Eurovision Wikipedian, Our project pages have undergone a full color change and now resemble the Swedish flag . Content and design updates are taking place daily. The new Archive tab will make it easier to find and view just about all of our archived pages. It is a work in progress. Issue 49 of the newsletter is currently pending delivery. While we await that, you can now receive daily and/or weekly Eurovision news updates. Sign up below have a wonderful week. To receive a daily or weekly Eurovision news update please click on the appropriate button. Cordially, News Desk Editor-in-Chief Ktkvtsh (talk)

Ktkvtsh (talk) 09:25, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Daily News Desk Issue 1 Tuesday 15 August 2023

Eurovision Daily News Update 15 August 2023 Happy birthday to... Kølig Kaj who is 53 today. He represented Denmark in the Eurovision Song Contest 1997 placing (16th) Recently in the news... Wild Youth were accused of being too drunk when performing at the Ballygar Carnival in Galway, Ireland. The carnivals organizers released a statement supporting the band. Did you know... Natalia Gordienko, who represented Moldova in the Eurovision Song Contest 2019, holds the record for the longest continuous note in Eurovision at 17 seconds. Eurovision entrant... Guy Bonnet is an author, composer, and singer, born in Avignon, France in 1945. He wrote the lyrics and composed the music for the French entry in the Eurovision Song Contest 1968 (performed by Isabelle Aubret). In 1970 he participated in the Eurovision song contest for France with "Marie-Blanche" coming 4th out of twelve contestants. In 1983 he represented France in Eurovision again with "Vivre" (finishing eighth).

Ktkvtsh (talk) 10:01, 15 August 2023 (UTC)

Nul points and alternatives

Why do we still have zero points in the infoboxes for each year? How is that data as relevant as anything other in the infoboxes? I would suggest removing it or replacing it with "top 10" since the EBU puts a lot of emphasis on finishing in the top 10 on their socials. For some earlier years it could instead display countries that earned automatic qualifiers spots for the next year (since it was based on finishing in the top 10 minus the big 4) ImStevan (talk) 14:03, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

I would support removing the "nul points" field. As you say I'm not sure how relevant it is to be calling out this information at that level, and I think it has been kept around more out of legacy than anything else. I would not support replacing it with another field however, as I think the infoboxes can already be too big with what we already have there. There are no awards given to the top 10 or to any other country other than the winner of the final, so including these at the infobox level I think would be WP:UNDUE; the inclusion of the top 5, as well as potentially any other notable high or low performances, in the lead is about the right level for weight for other countries' performances. I'm not sure about the relevance of your other suggestions, and personally I believe this information is better presented as prose within the articles themselves. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 11:14, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps presenting the top 3 would be nice since Eurovision does emphasize on top 3 finishers too when presenting the most successful countries, like here ImStevan (talk)

 Comment: What about removing nul points and adding the number of finalists (2004 onward) like this? ImStevan (talk) 22:03, 15 June 2023 (UTC)

@ImStevan: I like the addition of the number of finalists for post-2004 contests. Thanks for adding this new field to the infobox; I've tweaked the placement of the field to move it directly after the number of entries, since it is information related to the participants after all rather than the voting. I believe adding top 3 countries to the infobox would verge upon WP:UNDUE; there are generally no prizes awarded for the second- or third-place finishers, so I don't think adding these to the infobox would work, but happy to hear other viewpoints on this too. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 08:53, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

@Sims2aholic8: Couldn't then an arguement be made about removing silver and bronze backgrounds from tables in every country's participation article? ImStevan (talk) 10:39, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

@ImStevan: I personally think the right balance is currently struck for the country articles by including the shading, as this helps readers to quickly identify any top 3 placings and last place finishes across all entries. However I think continuing to show the top 5/10 in prose within the yearly contest articles while only shading the qualifiers and winner in the tables is more applicable for these articles given that the information presented is specific to that year, and by that logic continuing to only showcase the winner in the infobox makes more sense. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 11:28, 16 June 2023 (UTC)

Televoting

In the results section for SF2 of 2023, we have a collumn that says "Televoting" on the top that pretty much provides no new info as the fact that televoting was used is presented in both the prose before the table, and by the colors in the table. I'm bringing this up because San Marino just isn't using a televoting, so why label all the votes as "Televoting" in the first place? Don't we have the legend for that? I'd suggest changing it to simply "Countries voting" in the semis. As for the final, we could do it for consistency purposes, cuz in those tables we have the info relayed on top of the tables and on the legend aswell, which seems excessive, but I could see why it'd stay there ImStevan (talk) 07:15, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for flagging that up. I think this was kept more due to copy-and-paste from the previous years, but you're right that it serves no purpose when the votes in the semi-finals are only determined by one voting method. I've removed these column headers from the semi tables, retaining them for the final tables given the split results require a bit more clarification. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 07:48, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

I'm struggling with something related to this in the San Marino article actually. Unlike previous years, I cannot seem to track down any source at all that says San Marino's televote points were from the back-up jury this year. I seem to be left with a WP:SYNTH issue where I have one source that says San Marino can't have a televote and another that says if there is no televote then the back-up is used. I have nothing tying them together to 'prove' that actually occured this year. Grk1011 (talk) 13:00, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

It does appear to be a very tricky situation. There's a reason why when I did the prose write-up for the detailed voting tables I had to add a {{citation needed}} tag to the San Marino SF2 jury reference, as I couldn't find any sources either. It's undoubtedly true (the SF2 "televote" and the final jury scores have a lot of similarities, especially compared to the final "televote") but there's nothing we can point to to verify this. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 13:11, 21 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, we have no definitive proof that we can point to and say "hey, here is the source that San Marino used the jury". We have multiple sources that can point to the fact that they can't organize a televoting, but the official sources stating what exactly happens are conflicting but even if they weren't, using that as proof could also be considered a WP:SYNTH. I reckon this is just a situation in which we have to guess for now, and wait for a source to pop up (San Marino's delegation will likely say something about it when discussing their voting with the EBU in the upcoming year(s)). ImStevan (talk) 14:20, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

References

Good article reassessment for Dolph Lundgren

Dolph Lundgren 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. Onegreatjoke (talk) 21:02, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Content assessment

 You are invited to join the discussion at Wikipedia talk:Content assessment#Proposal: Reclassification of Current & Future-Classes as time parameter, which is within the scope of this WikiProject. This WikiProject received this message because it currently uses "Current" and/or "Future" class(es). There is a proposal to split these two article "classes" into a new parameter "time", in order to standardise article-rating across Wikipedia (per RfC), while also allowing simultaneous usage of quality criteria and time for interest projects. Thanks! —CX Zoom[he/him] ^{(let's talk • {C•X})} 21:53, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

National selection events field in Infobox song contest country

I wanted to gauge opinion on the idea of removing the "National selection events" field from Template:Infobox song contest country in this forum first before going ahead and unilaterally making any changes. Originally this field I believe was envisaged to be used to include the names of notable NFs (e.g. Melodifestivalen), however it has now become in my opinion a very unyieldy field, with a mismash of information covering various national finals and internal selections which is largely based off of random fan sites and very little from reliable sources. In many cases little of this information is present in the actual body of the articles, creating an obvious WP:OR conflict and also contravening MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE. I don't believe we should be trying to summarise complex and changing information such as this in an infobox, and I believe any selection process information is better served by being included in the prose of the article, as has been successfully been achieved with several articles in the series (e.g. Andorra, Romania and San Marino). Sims2aholic8 (talk) 16:15, 26 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree that this kind of information should be sourced and that including it in the infobox may (and does in many cases) result in very articulated text that should have no place there and would be better off in the article body. On the other hand, I believe it could still be useful to provide – alongside or instead of the prose – a summary table or a list for a more immediate glance at the selection methods. 〜イヴァンスクルージ九十八［IvanScrooge98］（会話） 08:36, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree that it should be changed since it's not actually summarizing parts of the article properly and is typically unsourced. I think including links to events like Melodifestivalen are helpful for the infobox, but perhaps could be presented in a different way. Grk1011 (talk) 01:12, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

I've conducted a test case on Sweden in the Eurovision Song Contest; I've added a new "Related articles" section (heading name TBC) so that we can include any links to notable national selection events within the infobox, and removed the original "National selection events" field. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 08:31, 3 July 2023 (UTC)

Draft:Junior Eurovision Song Contest 2023, and mainspace

We're approaching JESC season and this article is still stuck in draftspace after getting draftified (by members of this project) and then declined. Appeals to the initial reviewer have been rejected, and I've appealed on the AfC Help Desk but I'm not sure that's going anywhere. Frankly, I don't understand the promotional/source concerns, and that's coming from someone who mostly does anti-promo/anti-spam work.

Are there any AfC reviewers in the project here, or does anyone have any ideas on what to do here? Blue Edits (talk) 08:44, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

The issue is that normally someone (like myself) could move it out of draft-space, but an admin has locked the destination page due to the constant move issues last year (Junior_Eurovision_Song_Contest_2023 <- if you click on it, you can see the creation history). I too find this to be a very bizarre application of the rules since it's an established event, has over 70 references to reliable sources, and is way past the typical creation date of prior year's contests. Grk1011 (talk) 13:11, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

We'll simply ask. @Theroadislong:, why has the article not been moved into the main space? ImStevan (talk) 18:31, 7 July 2023 (UTC)

I started a deletion review, because I agree that it is taking far too long. ―Jochem van Hees (talk) 10:45, 9 July 2023 (UTC)

@Jochem van Hees: thanks for getting this done! Grk1011 (talk) 13:17, 10 July 2023 (UTC)

A table to help with country-by-year article creation and maintenance

As the title implies, I've made a table (link) consisting of all country-by-year articles because I think this can be useful for creation and maintenance of said articles. The intent is to help people find redirects to turn into full-fledged articles using the table, as there are currently 304 redirects and 35 nonexistent articles (all of those 35 are from 2024, and will likely be made over the coming months as national finals roll in). Hopefully this will be a useful tool, if there's anything you think should be added, please let me know either here or at my talk page here. :) Actually_NeverHappened02 (a place to chalk | a list of stuff i've done) 00:24, 15 July 2023 (UTC)

Entries

Since we now have subtext under the participants section that states that the information is provisional, can we add the entries parameter back before the official announcement? ImStevan (talk) 13:12, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

I tried to do this at ESC 2024 but it was undone on the grounds that it needs constant attention for updates. I didn’t bother reverting or opening a discussion since it makes little difference to me, but considering the clear “provisional” header I believe we could leave the confirmed number of entries. 〜イヴァンスクルージ九十八［IvanScrooge98］（会話） 15:56, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

News Desk

Thanks for inviting me! I'm currently a news writer and I do some Eurovision news writing on the side. I noticed that the news desk seems to be innactive since 2020. Would it be possible for me to be able to get that back up and running? Ktkvtsh 23:56, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

Project objectives

Hi all- I've been thinking about our WikiProject main page and the objectives don't make much sense anymore given the way we've evolved as a WikiProject and encyclopedia. I made the objectives pages about 15 years ago at this point and I think we should have something there, but not in that format or order. For example, our goals are no longer to basically create stubs articles for everything, nor should adding references be 5th in the order. Objective 7 (WP banners and categorizing) has basically been complete for several years now. What should the page be? Any ideas? Grk1011 (talk) 13:59, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

If we have any new objectives we can replace those. I also find the overall layout a bit confusing: there are two columns but both columns are just filled indiscriminately with stuff; "topics covered" is huge and mostly filled with things that we don't spend a lot of time on like Magic Circus Show. Also, maybe quick links could be closer to the top and some of the categories could be collapsible? Blue Edits (talk) 06:31, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Does anyone run the news desk currently?

I would be interested in helping out with the news desk. Is there someone with more information? T. S. Holdiness 11:10, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Hi, welcome! I don't believe so. Grk1011 (talk) 13:15, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

I would love the opportunity to get it going again! T. S. Holdiness 13:23, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Hey, welcome to the project! If you'd like to take this on then please feel free to give it a go! Sims2aholic8 (talk) 15:45, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Awesome!!!! Will do! T. S. Holdiness 15:57, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

Newsdesk overhaul

WikiProject Eurovision Important Announcement Dear Valued Project Member I hope this announcement finds you well. I am User:Ktkvtsh and am the new Editor in Chief of the Newsdesk. Regretably, the former news team became inactive due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. Newsletters have not been sent out for three years. Now that is going to change. The Newsdesk has recieved a complete overhaul and is now full of information, news. Hopefully you find it to be user friendly as well. I am open to any suggestions you may have, which you can share here. I am looking forward to furthering everyone and my own knowledge of the Eurovision Song Contest. Cordially, T. S. Holdiness 09:44, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Broadcasting in the 20th century

Can the broadcasts be used as sources in these cases? If there were other sources I'd assume we would've found them by now 1989 1990 ImStevan (talk) 12:53, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

You can cite to the broadcast if it's obvious to the average viewer. Things like results shown on screen or announcements made are typically ok. More subjective things like describing what you see sometimes gets close to the line of WP:OR. If you do include a courtesy link (for example the ones you linked above), make sure that the videos were legally posted to Youtube, etc. by an entity that has the rights to do that. The proper template to use is {{Cite AV media}}. Grk1011 (talk) 12:59, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

The ones I used lead to the internet archive ImStevan (talk) 13:26, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Sources

It has been 6 years since most sources on the sources page have been reviewed. Perhaps it's time to add new ones, and do a review of the existing ones?

For one, I would move Wiwibloggs into reliable, add OGAE clubs as reliable sources and especially add Eurovoix (probably the most reliable secondary source I've encountered) as reliable sources and add broadcasters' sites as reliable sources ImStevan (talk) 14:46, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Good thinking. Thanks for being proactive and bringing this up. T. S. Holdiness 14:58, 26 July 2023 (UTC)

Taskforce

Has the topic of creating taskforces come up yet? Ktkvtsh (talk) 07:08, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

We have talked in the past about the wikiproject being something different, like WikiProject EBU or WikiProject Song Contests with a Eurovision task force for example. None of them really gained traction since any option ended up both expanding and reducing the scope of the project and removing some overlap that most editors like. The reality is that there are really only 5 or so 'everyday' editors so we've just been having discussions on the talk page as necessary. Did you have a task force scope in mind? What type of articles do you enjoy editing/improving? Grk1011 (talk) 12:43, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Mostly, I like working with citations/sources and photos.I also enjoy the design aspect. I love to write as well news. Ktkvtsh (talk) 21:49, 28 July 2023 (UTC)

Yeah those brief discussions we had didn't exactly go anywhere, but I do think a rethink about the overall scope/name of the project is needed. Especially since the project's remit has now expanded to include other song contests not actually run by the EBU, I'm not sure "WikiProject Eurovision" is really a suitable title for this WikiProject anymore. Additionally, given the large majority of editors are focussed solely on the song contest aspects of this project's remit, I have grown a bit confused by the inclusion of broadcasters and networks within the Eurovision network as part of this project's scope. Of course the participating broadcasters are an important aspect of the EBU contests (as well as the ABU contests and American Song Contest), but looking at Wikipedia:WikiProject Eurovision/Popular pages some of the broadcaster articles which get a lot of views (which are tagged with our banner because of their links to the EBU) I don't believe are actually relevant to this project. I'm conscious I don't want to be creating a lot of work for anyone, but conversations about our remit and what we want to achieve as a group are overdue. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 09:41, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Couldn't agree more. I'd also like to include that the design of the project has become outdated. We are in need of a complete revamp.

Is there a way for the editors who are consistently working here to get together in a talk page somewhere and figure out something definitive? I will work on a list of changes we could go ahead and do right away while we work on a big picture change.

I think the most obvious path is to become the WikiProject Song Contests and be the hub for all song contests. That way every contest around the globe will have uniform Wikipedia pages and most likely we will have a larger group of active members. Then we could do task forces for the major contests that have editions in different countries (like the Voice and Idol) and so on.

The collection of templates and user skills here could be used to benefit a huge chunk of Wikipedia. Ktkvtsh (talk) 09:57, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

Maybe it would make sense to split the project into a project Eurovision and a separate project (Other) Song Contests. I myself contribute largely only to ESC-related articles and don't care much about other song or dance contests, and I still feel it would be helpful to have a project with only Eurovision as its scope. But I'm open for interesting suggestions. EurovisionLibrarian (talk) 18:37, 1 August 2023 (UTC)

I believe this is where task forces would make a lot of sense. In this regard there would be a wider group which covers all song contests, but individual editors which are only interested in certain contests can then align themselves with specific task forces. That way there can be a centralised guidance available on formatting, sourcing etc. but also allowing individual task force members to work on the articles that appeal to them. If we were to split the projects we would then run the risk I believe of too much divergence occuring between the different contests in terms of their content. Templates as well are a shared resource for all contests, so again another reason to continue to have a single project with the addition of task forces. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 09:20, 2 August 2023 (UTC)

"Other countries"

I find it kind of confusing as to why broadcasts that are directly linked to the contest, aswell as the album, stand below the section about countries that had nothing to do with the contest in any given year. I think the other countries section should be moved all the way down, below the album, as the least relevant info of any given year. it's certainly less relevant than countries that actually broadcast the event ImStevan (talk) 20:53, 29 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree with you that the current placing of this section is a little odd. I actually believe there is a slight WP:UNDUE issue with how this section is presently as well, as I think too much emphasis is given to countries that didn't take part. We have done our best to neuter this section in the past, but I think we can go further. I also believe, given the creation of the new "Participating countries" section that if we are to include an "Other countries" section, it should be as part of this. I've done some changes to the 2023 contest article (see here) which moved the other countries to within the participants, and moves everything to prose, rather than the current bullet list format. In this way the high level points around why a country does not participate are covered, but we don't give undue weight to non-participants by giving it a completely separate section. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 08:53, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I like it ImStevan (talk) 12:47, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I like this change a lot. Having this information as prose instead of a bulleted list really aids in making the article feel more encyclopedia-like. Wikipedia isn't really supposed to be a quick-reference guide and I think we fall into that trap sometimes. I did move the "Eligibility..." paragraph up since it actually does a great job at introducing participation in general. I'd suggest giving this change at least a month before rolling it out to other articles. That way people still have time to raise any concerns. Grk1011 (talk) 15:25, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I like it too. I moved the section at Eurovision Song Contest 2024 but for the moment I left the bulleted list since in this case we are still talking about potential participants. 〜イヴァンスクルージ九十八［IvanScrooge98］（会話） 15:36, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I agree that for now we should keep the bullet list given the information presented at present is more complex. Once the official participants list is published we can then move to a prose-only format when there are fewer countries and can remove any duplicated overlap in terms of reasoning behind non-participation. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 17:10, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I have officially moved and reduced the section in all the articles where it was present. I also added the {{further}} note linking to List of countries in the Eurovision Song Contest where it was missing. 〜イヴァンスクルージ九十八［IvanScrooge98］（会話） 11:20, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Newsletter

Could someone help me with copy editing the newsletter and sending it out? Ktkvtsh (talk) 14:31, 5 August 2023 (UTC)

I can help out here. If you could link me to the newsletter that would be great. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 09:12, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

Here is where I've been working It is stored in the archive tab. Ktkvtsh (talk) 10:11, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

How do I send it out to the mailing list? Ktkvtsh (talk) 23:45, 10 August 2023 (UTC)

Taking a look at Template:Mailing list member you will need to become a mass message sender. It may make sense for a few very active WikiProject members to request massmessage user rights. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 09:03, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Good idea. I sent a request but got no response. Could you post a new request? Ktkvtsh (talk) 09:23, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Discussion on ProveIt automated edits

I would like everyones input on the use of ProveIt automated edits to normalize refereneces. Recently I have been working on normalizing all WP ESC articles to help them to be uniform. @IceWelder disagrees, saying "Not all Eurovision-related articles are edited by the same people. If they have established formats, there is no need (or even incentive) to change them." You can see our original discussion here Ktkvtsh (talk) 23:12, 21 August 2023 (UTC)

Newsletter Issue 49: Haven't been able to send this out. So will post here for everyone.

→ Issue 49 ← Headlines Loreen won the 2023 Eurovision Song Contest in Liverpool. Eurovision Choir canceled indefinitely. Junior Eurovision 2023 to be in Nice, France.
At the time of publication the project statistics were as follows
Number of articles	Unassessed articles	Good articles	A-class articles	Featured articles	Number of members
7263	0	171	0	4	105
• HOME • TALK • NEWSDESK • UNSUBSCRIBE • ARCHIVES • • Published by the Eurovision WikiProject •

Ktkvtsh (talk) 08:14, 20 August 2023 (UTC)

It's good to see you have been able to send this out to all WikiProject members now! Just an FYI, A-class has now been made redundant for WikiProject Eurovision articles (see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Eurovision/Archive 26#A-class assessments), so for future editions the template should be modified to remove this. Sims2aholic8 (talk) 07:45, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes very glad. Okay good to know. Thank you! Ktkvtsh (talk) 07:47, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Public domain images of the 1964 Eurovision Song Contest

Last year I stumbled upon these images from 1964. [2]

I believe these are public domain images, as they were made in Denmark before 1970. I don't have the time or tools to upload them to Wikimedia Commons. Any volunteers? Clausule (talk) 08:23, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

I will look through them and confirm they are CC0 and upload them! Thanks! Ktkvtsh (talk) 08:31, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Sadly right away, after translating the page, at the bottom is this disclaimer "The images may under no circumstances be used in commercial contexts, e.g. in connection with advertising supplements or in connection with the direct sale of goods. The images must also not be used to propagate certain attitudes or views. DR has all copyrights to the images. If you need to use an image from DR in a commercial context, it will in some cases be possible to use the image for a fee. Contact DR Arkivsalg via their site at www.dr.dk/Arkivsalg Private individuals may share the images on Facebook via the sharing button on the site (embedded). It is not permitted to upload them to Facebook and other social media from your own hard drive." They are not public domain. Ktkvtsh (talk) 08:33, 22 August 2023 (UTC)

Sorry, I missed the Danish disclaimer and assumed they would be considered:

{{PD-Denmark50}}

Probably these works are "photographic works of art" in the eyes of DR, although I have my doubts about that. I would guess these are journalistic images that depict an event and (most of) the photo's seem not to be staged by the photographer. But of course Wikimedia shouldn't take any risk. Clausule (talk) 11:22, 31 August 2023 (UTC)