Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of UEFA European Football Championship finals/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was promoted by Giants2008 19:10, 15 January 2012 [1].

List of UEFA European Football Championship finals[edit]

List of UEFA European Football Championship finals (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

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Nominator(s): The Rambling Man (talk) 10:51, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured list because we have a parallel featured list for the World Cup and I thought it would be nice to get this featured and then onto the mainpage in time for the final of Euro 2012. As ever, thanks to reviewers for the time and energy. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:51, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support - I believe this list meets all the criteria laid out at WP:WIAFL. There are no glaring omissions, it covers the topic completely. The MOS is well-observed, the prose is well-written and the lead adequately covers the topic and the following lists. – PeeJay 13:06, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved comments from Lemonade51 (talk) 22:23, 26 December 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Comments
  • Ref 30 has a publish date. As does 9, 11, 14, etc – generally any BBC Sport archive page, as it was made for Euro 2004.
  • "France and Spain have also won the competition on multiple occasions (2)". I assume multiple in the adj. sense? Actually ignore that, just looked up Webster's who define it as "involving more than one". — Lemonade51 (talk) 14:48, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • I wasn't sure what you meant so I'm glad you've struck your own comment! Thanks for the review. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:53, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • Hehe, I was just unsure about the use of multiple. I overlooked that you put in brackets the number of France and Spain's cup wins which answered my query.
Resolved comments from NapHit (talk) 19:06, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
* Just the one query, how come you link to every final apart from 1964 and 1972, seems a bit odd. Other than that it looks grand. NapHit (talk) 22:00, 4 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support Great job, NapHit (talk) 19:06, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comments:

  • "The tournament takes place every four years;..." – In my opinion, this looks a bit lost, out of place. Would be better contextualized if it was the end of the first sentence ("... in 1960 and which takes place every four years. It is...") or the beginning of the second ("in 1960. Taking place every four years, it is contested by the men's...").
  • If this list is modeled after the World Cup finals list, it would be interesting to also mention in the lead the number of teams that reached the final, that won, etc.
  • Is there any compeling reason for the table listing the finals having width-defined columns? Just asking...

— Parutakupiu (talk) 21:32, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your comments! I'm about to head to bed, so if you don't mind I'll address them early tomorrow. They're all reasonable; (1) I'll look at a rephrase. (2) the WC list doesn't actually seem to cite those stats (so I didn't try to do it) and (3) no, I'll see what happens if I ditch the width-definition, shouldn't be a big issue. Cheers! The Rambling Man (talk) 21:38, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • (Take your time!) Another comment: the "Key" section is not important or big enough to be a section per se. It could perfectly be tucked into the area between the heading and the table in the "List of finals" section. Parutakupiu (talk) 23:08, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hi Parutakupiu, I think between me and PeeJay2K3, we've addressed your comments, cheers! The Rambling Man (talk) 08:22, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • I still have that column width issue. Could you test reducing the widths, to erase most of the blank space in the cells? Also, I've taken the liberty to make a few copyedits, to the lead mostly; see if you agree with my changes. Btw, the new history section is a wonderufl addition. Parutakupiu (talk) 02:06, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • I've now unforced all col widths, so it should be okay, hopefully on your monitor? The Rambling Man (talk) 10:51, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
          • Thumbs up! I have a couple of other suggestions, but I don't want to become annoying and the way the list is is already deserving of my Support. Parutakupiu (talk) 17:52, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
            • Thanks, but I don't mind if you have more suggestions to make. This won't be promoted for at least a week or so, I have time! The Rambling Man (talk) 18:00, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
              • It's really minor but I think could make the main table look neater: (1) make key symbols superscript relative to the score (here, I'd suggest replacing "^" with a bigger one (e.g. "§"); (2) place the note tags in the same line (remove breaks). At the end of it, every row would have the same height and the table would look more homogenous. Parutakupiu (talk) 18:07, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
                • See what you think of what I've done now. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:19, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
                  • Ha! Excellent, just what I envisioned. That's it. Nothing more to be addressed. Great work. Parutakupiu (talk) 18:23, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Resolved comments from Struway2 (talk) 13:58, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
(edit conflict) I'd leave this lot till the morning ;-)
  • The infobox would look neater if "Germany (3 titles)" didn't wrap the "titles)" bit underneath the flag, don't know how you'd stop it though
  • Should extra time be wikilinked on first occurrence rather than second?
  • And should replay be wikilinked? seeing as the other technical terms are
  • "France and Spain have also won the competition on multiple occasions (2)" needs a copyedit
  • as does the last sentence. Maybe something like "Greece, Netherlands and Denmark each won the competition on their only appearance in the final, the latter having replaced Yugoslavia on the eve of the 1992 tournament." It's going to be repetitive however you word it, but three "tournament"s on one line is a little OTT.
  • The little coloured boxes in the key would look neater if they were all the same size. You could perhaps use a wikitable?
  • I might have had the three sentences in the key as three separate bullet points, and have them in the order the columns appear in the table
  • In general, numeric columns look neater centred. In particular, in the Results by nation table, the huge width of the Final appearances column containing a single digit crammed up against the left-hand border looks awful.
  • Consider putting the table-related footnotes below the table to which they apply, so that the sighted reader with a deep enough screen can see the relevant notes without having to keep clicking down to the bottom and clicking back up again
  • I'd consider having the primary sort key for the Results by nation table as final appearances, seeing as that's the topic of the list, rather than wins
  • Impressed than you can get three supports for a sortable table where some of the columns don't sort properly ;-)
    • Me too. I think that's as a result of the colspan. Which I didn't add, but it seemed fine. Okay, will fix...! The Rambling Man (talk) 21:51, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • Perhaps force the 2012 TBDs to sort high (or low) until there are genuine values in there, to keep them out the way of the real data.
  • The Key to symbols table and the main table need captions, for accessibility. Wasn't necessary when they were immediately below the relevant section headers, but now they're not. Struway2 (talk) 15:12, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • 1992 final and Footnote 6: Seems strange that the UEFA History reference calls it West Germany, when German unification took place before qualifying started, the unified German team took over West Germany's fixtures in the qualifying group and the no longer existent East Germany withdrew. The prose in UEFA's history section calls it Germany.

Comments

  • I'm uncomfortable with how this list meets criterion 3b: "does not largely duplicate material from another article, and could not reasonably be included as part of a related article". As far as I can see, the only thing in this list that the parent article doesn't include is the name of the stadium each final was held in. And the history section of the parent article actually includes rather more prose about each final – i.e. some – than there is in this list. There's prose about the final, i.e. format, tie-breaking criteria, in this list, but did you not consider including anything about any of the individual finals? As it stands, it's a little like having an episode list that just gives the name of each episode.
    • Agree with that comment too. Just thought it could be a useful fork from the lengthy main article. Wouldn't want to repeat the "History" section of the main article but think it's justifiable as the replacement for most of the "finals" section of the article. Especially given the size of the main article. However, I guess (from your perspective) it could be eight times the size to discuss each final? Perhaps this is a lost cause (despite the supports!), and if so, we need to reduce the World Cup Finals FL to nothing too. This is where we need to decide what a list does and doesn't do, given there's an article dedicated to each final, would be worth a discussion. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:55, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hope some of this might be helpful. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 21:42, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Struway2, delighted! Typical you leave this until the moment I"m about to go to sleep. I'll deal with your comments tomorrow, but be advised, if they're too difficult, I'll just resign from Wikipedia altogether and become a unicorn (with wings, not entirely a Centaur, but close), and make you an admin. Your choice... The Rambling Man (talk) 21:46, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Hey, thanks for your comments. I think between me and PeeJay2K3, we've covered most of them, the only one left is the concern over 3b. In my opinion, that info should be removed from the main Euro page and just linked as a {{main}} to here. The article is long enough to support this info being forked off. As I said, since we have an article dedicated to every final in any case (linked to from here), it would seem nugatory to add more info on each final here. But interested in what you think. The Rambling Man (talk) 08:22, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I'm not too bright this morning. Could you clarify what info you'd remove from the main Euro page?
Just for comparison purposes, I've been looking at episode lists. The featured List of The Simpsons episodes has some words about how many series there have been and stuff, and then a table with a row for each series, and then a table for each series with a row listing each episode. Below that you get the featured The Simpsons (season 1) et seq, which have lots of prose and a list of episodes each with a few lines of what happened in that episode. Below that, you get the good article Simpsons Roasting on an Open Fire et seq, an article for each episode. So it's clearly accepted in this genre that the existence of a mature developed article on each item listed doesn't mean you shouldn't have words about that item in the next level up.
I think my basic problem is not that this list shouldn't be spun off the parent article, but that it should justify being spun off by having more than minimal content. I'd expect an article about the finals of a competition, whether a list or a prose article, to tell me something about those finals, not just list the results in a table with detail translated into punctuation marks. A few years ago, lists about football club seasons had a truly minimal amount of prose and a few footnotes; these days we expect rather more information. Compare any of the early promoted versions, e.g. Aston Villa or Ipswich, with more recent, e.g. Watford or Brighton. Obviously with long lists like those, it's impractical to describe in prose what happened in every season, but the existence of a "History of ... F.C." article isn't an excuse for not describing any of them. List of FIFA World Cup finals was promoted nearly three years ago. Standards change.
Just about to go out. Will cap resolved comments when I get back, definitely looks better. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 09:34, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Would you prefer something like this or would you prefer a focus on the match itself? The former is relatively straightforward, the latter less so, but either way, is this (in principle) the kind of thing you're after? The Rambling Man (talk) 09:57, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
I'd prefer a focus on the match itself, seeing as this is a list of finals in the sense of "last match in each tournament". At least I think it is: I wish, for clarity, that the later stages of a tournament and the plural of the last match in a tournament weren't both called "finals". Your example leans more towards a "List of UEFA European Football Championship seasons" spin-off, i.e. an expanded version of the parent article's History section. In terms of layout, I'm not bothered whether the prose goes in the table how you've got it, or in a history section separate from the table. All in my opinion, obviously. Does anyone else have a view on this? cheers, Struway2 (talk) 13:49, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Okay, I'll see what I can conjure up. Thanks for getting back to me. Could you check if we've addressed your other issues at some point convenient to you? Cheers, The Rambling Man (talk) 14:24, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Hey, added some prose, so I expect some comments back from that, but hopefully I've addressed your major concerns? Let me know what's left! Cheers, The Rambling Man (talk) 18:09, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Haven't gone through checking references or grammar or anything like that, but the new prose looks impressively close to what I'd have wanted. Relieved you decided to address the comments and not follow through on your unicorn-related threat above. Apart from any possible incongruity in your assuming the role of a "symbol of purity and grace" (so say Wikipedia, so it must be true), I'd have made a crap admin. Is it worth leaving (the serious part of) this thread visible, for the benefit of other reviewers, or shall I cap it all? cheers, Struway2 (talk) 18:52, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
You were right, there were some lovely things there (coin toss, penalty, Van Basten goal) that were well worth bringing to the table. I really enjoyed writing all that as it happens. It would be good if you could cap things you're happy with, FLCs don't tend to get this big these days and I don't want to put anyone off. If it helps, I'd be happy to nudge those editors who have already commented, since the list has taken a bit of a turn since they reviewed it? Either way, I think we've definitely made a decent fist of it, and I'd like to think that pretty much every summary of each final I've written is as good, if not better than those in the individual articles. Everyone's a winner baby. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:57, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

On column widths in the main table, I agree with Parutakupiu that there was far too much white space, but for readability, I think you do need a little space in the winners and particularly losers column, which for the longest names crams right up against the venue. In general, columns with comparable content should be the same width as each other, it looks sloppy otherwise; so the winners/losers columns should be the same, and in the results by nation table, the finalists/winners/losers should be the same. I've had a go at tweaking them, see what you think.

    • Looks fine to me if it looks fine to you. Wasn't convinced it looked "sloppy", but nevertheless, you've fixed it. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:14, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • "Sloppy" was overly crude: my apologies. But if the Results by nation table were published in a book, they wouldn't set the finalists column twice as wide as the winners with the losers a different width again. They'd format the headings or whatever so that the columns could be laid out evenly. Easier to read and more professional in appearance.
        • I'm conscious of trying to avoid unnecessary markup should it compromise the ability to access the data. As a non-expert in that area, I would try to adopt the simplest approach... The Rambling Man (talk) 12:51, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
          • I'm no expert either. Presumably you're just making the general point, not saying there are possible accessibility issues with adding a width parameter, which is all I did? Struway2 (talk)
            • Yes, I'd like to guess that a purely visual tag like setting width column should make no difference. The Rambling Man (talk) 13:39, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
        • Addressed those. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:51, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Should Germany and West Germany sort together?
  • In the lead, you really can't say "The team that wins the penalty shootout is then declared champions." In an article written in British English, is there any good reason not to use the normal discretionary plural with the collective noun "team"?

cheers, Struway2 (talk) 11:06, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]


  • All comments resolved. It's too soon to support yet, before anyone's read through the prose, but I expect to. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 19:07, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thank you Struway2, I believe we've now got a doubly good article thanks to your review. Much appreciated. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:14, 6 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  • Couple matters arising, sorry.
  • For consistency with the style adopted with the BBC and UEFA references, you need to include as much detail for the new references, e.g. work and publisher, publication dates where these have been omitted, press agency name for agency pieces, ...
    • Well, they're all consistent now as far as I can tell, but you mentioned "omitted" publication dates, can you specify? The Rambling Man (talk) 12:21, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
      • The one I noticed was #17 Sporting Life (it's in the URL, which is their house style). ##11, 18 and 25 are AP agency pieces so should include agency=Associated Press.
        • Ok, I've never heard of "interpreting" the URL as a publication date (although I'm sure you're right, that's what it is) but will address that and the others. The Rambling Man (talk) 12:44, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
          • It's fairly common practice to structure websites in that way, particularly in newspaper archives, e.g. Northern Echo, old icBirmingham site, though also elsewhere, e.g. the Football League, though most publishers include the publication date on the webpage as well.
            • Yes, I can see it's common practice, it's certainly so in my own industry, but I'm not sure if that's the publication date, the date it was originally written or submitted for publication, the date it was last updated, or some other filing date. I dare say you're right, but this is the first time I've encountered an expectation to decode a URL to form a publication date. I'm also not entirely happy when attempting to decode an "international" date format which could be 10 February or 2 October... but as I say, I believe I've done what you asked for. The Rambling Man (talk) 13:39, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
              • Yes, I finally :-( see your point. Having been used to sites where the URL date always was the same as that appearing on the page itself, or on the index page that pointed to it, I'd never considered the alternatives. If you'd prefer to remove that publication date as possibly original research, I'd be fine with that. Struway2 (talk) 13:58, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Support All comments resolved, thanks for dealing with them all (not just mine) so promptly and co-operatively. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 13:58, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]


Resolved comments from Giants2008 (Talk) 01:03, 9 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Comments –
  • "The team that wins the penalty shootout are then declared champions." "are" → "is"? That's how it's handled earlier in the paragraph, and it seems to me to be the better method.
  • History: Comma would be nice after Bruno Bellone.
  • "Five minutes into extra time, Bierhoff scored his and Germay's second". Typo alert.
  • "Despite never having won a match a 'major tournament'". Needs "in" before the second "a". Giants2008 (Talk) 23:26, 7 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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