Talk:World Athletics Championships

Discussion

As it stands right now, we can either deliberate on a country by country basis, or try to determine whether or not we want to merge all articles on national performance at the World Athletics Championships indiscriminately. In either case, this wouldn't necessarily represent precedent to determine what should be done for articles of a similar sort for other competitions. I do think, though, that strong participation here would be helpful to spur the completion of those tasks when and if needed. Here's an incomplete list of competitions that we could deliberate on in a similar manner:

CSGinger14 (talk) 22:16, 9 July 2026 (UTC)

Survey

To avoid issues I've encountered in the past, I'll set now that a flat Oppose here would presumably indicate preference for the status quo, or a belief that this should be individually deliberated on the respective pages mentioned here. Best to all whatever their thoughts. CSGinger14 (talk) 04:43, 7 July 2026 (UTC)

Oppose because - is a good organisation: reduces input for each year so that any viewer could think of that year in isolation + a synopsis at the 1st/entry page/main introduction page gives a clue for the whole set / a suggestion of the findings at each result, so the viewer could choose to look through the years or not. There isn't any need for quick comparison [scroll down option] of all the results (as merged version); for example Afghansistan "never achieved any result" so no need to open the page to find a whole page of failures if the viewer doesn't need that input into their consciousness. Better to contain such situations away from immediate input (like a white blood cell carries away infections or unwanted alien bodies without troubling the functioning of the self). The current state - the viewer has the power of control; to open and close certain years + the liberty of choice, for each year. The suggestion "likely to the great improvement of viewer and editor experience" is only an indication of the thing which is the expected good (in any proposed change for improvement) but what exactly are the details of how the merge would improve? How would it benefit the viewer? If a more evident explained expression of the actual advantage of the proposition were made I could then reconsider. Cattenion (talk) 10:09, 7 July 2026 (UTC)

@Cattenion I'm not sure I fully understand your critique. Users may lose out on the choice to view certain results, but I'm not entirely certain why they would want to do so? From everything I've encountered trying to put this RfC together, the results as presented are a bit confounding to begin with, so I can't imagine that any viewer would suddenly accidentally bear witness to a negative result that they wouldn't want to see.

Aside from results at present tournaments, I can't really see any reason that viewers would seek to avoid certain results. They've presumably come to these particular pages to learn about their country's (or another country's) performance at this competition; unless they knew in advance that one particular athlete failed to advance, it doesn't seem like it would really have any impact on them that they wouldn't be equally exposed to viewing those results in isolation on particular pages. The viewer only has the power of control insofar as they know what it is that's there in the first place, and how to avoid interacting with it. We presume they don't, though, if they're coming to read about it in the first place. If they want to avoid particular results, they can easily do so by simply not going to the section with those results, in the same manner as they would avoid going to a particular page.

The merge would benefit the viewer by massively improving the efficiency and ease with which they can access results for particular countries at the competition level, as opposed to having to view it year by year. You would have to assume that a viewer coming to look at the results for Mali at the 2019 World Athletics Championships would probably want to know about their performance at the 2023 Championships as well. I can't really see how having them as separate pages does much else other than make the work of both editors and readers harder. Especially when the best they're getting the majority of the time is one or two results and a single table.

CSGinger14 (talk) 21:39, 7 July 2026 (UTC)

I will have to re-read your reply to appreciate everything (and so provide another reply hopefully) - but on "You would have to assume that - would probably" (last paragraph): that is an impossible/difficult presumption to prove (unless you know of a proof) - in all examples of someone wanting to view: as I showed above - at the 1st page (as an example) Afghanistan at the World Athletics Championships →"has not won any medals at the competition" that article template provides all those years: many people would then therefore proceed to ignore Afghanistan. If anyone is choosing to look at or to not - that is the perception=light as data is input into the retina so into perception so as necessary or not selected input (to thought); a merged: Somalia at the World Athletics Championships, + 1983, 87, 93, (+95) would be visible, if there were information input to those years, a anyone doesn't get the choice if displayed at the immediate opening. In the case at "Afghanistan" "they lost everything" is a guide to all the next possible selected choices. Cattenion (talk) 14:15, 8 July 2026 (UTC)

@Cattenion To respond to your first point, I have no data point backing that up, it's an anecdotal premise that's grounded mainly in rational presumption. Returning to the question at hand, I don't think that Afghanistan necessarily serves as an accurate microcosm of the larger article body, though. I also don't accept your premise that people would ignore Afghanistan or not bother to view other pages upon seeing that they hadn't won any medals. Nevertheless, it's not our place to present the information differently on that account, per WP:BIAS and WP:NPOV. It's not our place to restrict people's access to information on something because it might make that entity look bad, even if I do agree with you that their effort nonetheless deserves some level of recognition.

There are already a number of fully merged articles written in this manner, and no concern similar to yours has ever been brought up on those respective pages. If I'm getting your main concern, it's that conglomerating a whole host of results might serve as a spoiler for individuals who only want to look at the events that occurred in one or more particular years. I don't see anything that points to that occurring to a significant degree, and that can very easily be remedied with effective redirects to particular sections. I still don't see why we should go out of our way to avoid that anyway, given that it'd likely only briefly prolong their encounter with that same information upon viewing other topic pages. If your goal's the long-term recognition of the achievements of Afghan athletes, I don't think restricting peoples' access to the results that do exist in the most easily accessible format is the best way to go about it. I obviously leave that point open to critique, though. In any case, I hope you're well, and will look forward to your response.

In solidarity,

CSGinger14 (talk) 08:38, 9 July 2026 (UTC)

Support. I'm in favor of a practical and pragmatic approach to collecting nations' performances. Fragmenting this information across multiple/many small articles adds significant volume to us poor athletics editors' workload :-) and does not appear to benefit the reader. (Disclaimer: I did not extensively check how many such annual articles already exist, but noticed e.g. for Pakistan quite a few of the navbox links simply redirect to the main championship article, which is not really useful to get an overview about Pakistan's participation in those older years.) I like the Angola example and agree that it provides a decent viewer experience. The Somali variant could use some clean-up as the empty subsections don't seem useful. The proposal does not mention a threshold for the number of years to consolidate, but the examples suggest around 10 years (so Bosnia and Herzegovina exceeds that number). That raises the question whether a nation's participation should eventually be un-consolidated again after a number of championships down the road, either into annual articles or perhaps summaries by decade? --Xymph (talk) 10:59, 9 July 2026 (UTC)

​ My thinking is that it would be better to do so on the basis of athlete appearances. 17 sections with 1 or 2 tables each is pretty manageable, especially if they can be stacked horizontally, or columned. Bosnia Herzegovina is a little over the unofficial cutoff point I'd used in the counting process of 4 appearances per year. That's the point where I'd say it's acceptable to have standalone articles for each appearance, or at least standalone articles on occasions where their numbers were substantial or one or more athletes advanced particularly far. No sense in leaving a bunch of relatively barren stubs with no capacity for improvement when we can just section off the topic with a heartbeat. I imagine you could yield a number of good articles from the fusions if nothing else. Throw in a few local sources discussing the athletes' appearance and you're pretty much golden, per the Croughton-London rule.

CSGinger14 (talk) 22:29, 9 July 2026 (UTC)

Oppose a sweeping approach to remove merge tens of thousands of articles (or even hundreds of articles), especially for the ones that can be enriched with substantive human-written and well-sourced prose, which is as far as I can see the vast majority of them. This is true even in marginal cases; for example see Guam at the 2015 World Championships in Athletics, which despite only having one athlete was nominated for AfD and closed as keep. --Habst (talk) 15:36, 11 July 2026 (UTC)

​Do note that it's not the removal, it's the merging of hundreds of articles (in this case, as other competitions don't fall under the scope of this RfC). I think your Guam example might be more the exception than the rule. Guam profits from its connection to and coverage by the American media; its relative obscurity and obvious isolation might actually benefit its athletes in that regard. I imagine it would be a little more difficult to find the same range of reliable reporting on the athletes themselves, though, in countries that lack freedom of the press or a significant media infrastructure. As is noted above, though, for subjects/articles where that's the case, we can just section off the topic with a heartbeat.

Best,

CSGinger14 (talk) 01:08, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

@CSGinger14: thanks, I've edited my above comment to be more precise. What do you mean by 'with a heartbeat'? If you mean that it would be quick to recreate the articles, surely you understand it is orders of magnitude more difficult to recreate articles than it is to improve existing articles through editing.

Having edited that Guam article and articles about dozens of other countries, including those that lack media infrastructure, I specifically chose that article because it was the most difficult country to find sourcing for of those that compete at World Athletics Championships, and yet despite that barrier there was still enough to justify an article. Thank you, --Habst (talk) 01:25, 12 July 2026 (UTC)

@Habst My point is that we don't necessarily expect those pages to see any editor traffic for a long time, so I don't see it being practical to keep stubs with very little room for improvement separate in the hopes that someone will eventually take up the task; in the interim, it creates a logistical nightmare for maintenance and copy editors, as well as presenting a significant obstacle to readers. I imagine that you're right that are a great deal more pages that can be expanded then I'm giving credit for, but as we both recognize, finding that sourcing is difficult, and a task that most aren't up for. Nothing that already exists would be removed, and we can always keep a file on WikiProject Athletics or similar with the table template data so it's not a pain to recreate pages when it's necessary to do so. Frankly, though, I think that even then most pages could reasonably be kept combined on a single page.

If we remove just one paragraph and the side table from your Guam article and take that to be the average amount that can be written on nations of similar performance / intrigue outside the anglosphere, most would ultimately seem to best be placed and better served as medium-sized header / subtitle 1 sections than individual articles anyway; thus, I feel that even if we take your assessment to be accurate across the board, merging would still stand as the better option.

TLDR in bold,

Best,

CSGinger14 (talk) 23:06, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for your thorough response. I'll address your bolded TLDRs -

1. Pageview statistics, editor traffic, or lack thereof are simply not ever valid points for deletion or merging of an article. The idea that the stubs have little room for improvement is likewise disproven by Guam at the 2015 World Championships in Athletics, even in an extreme case of only one athlete from a small country.

2. With respect to maintenance, I am a WikiGnome, so I understand what it takes to maintain articles. I can say with certainty that there's no maintenance obstacle presented by keeping articles that can be enriched with substantive human-written and well-sourced prose; to the contrary, it actually poses a significant maintenance hurdle to merge all of these articles which necessitates their eventual splitting again when editors get around to adding sourced prose.

3. Project space should not be used as a long-term archive for content. Aside from adding a new maintenance burden by creating more pages to maintain, it sadly wouldn't help with the eventual re-splitting that you and I seem to agree will need to happen for many articles.

4. The Guam article with one athlete competing of course is not an "average" amount that can be written of similar subjects -- it would be better stated as a floor, given the extreme circumstances. Merging was an option when it was AfDed, but that option lacked consensus and the result was to keep. Disagreements make Wikipedia great and you're free to think it would be better as a section, but that doesn't represent consensus.

Thanks, --Habst (talk) 23:34, 14 July 2026 (UTC)

​I don't think that's at all what's meant by host pages that look like articles at WP:PRJ. Also, it's not really content at all, it would be a framework, which is basically exactly what WP:USCITIES is, and I've seen no challenge to its presence. Also, it's not on the basis of pageviews, nor editor traffic. It's in the interest of facilitating easier interactions between both groups and the body of content on the subject, I don't think it serves readers' interests to have material that is list-like in nature spliced out into individual articles, when often the material that's being investigated is often tied to the material present in other articles. As I've said previously, I don't think there are many people that are concerned about the results getting spoiled. As pertains to the Guam article, my point is that I am really confident that a lot of countries are at or below that floor, especially if we're generally hoping for at least some English sourcing, though it's obviously not a requirement. I think we'll have to agree to disagree on other points, but I appreciate the engagement nonetheless.

Best,

CSGinger14 (talk) 03:04, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

Templates like WP:USCITIES are not an issue; we already have templates for athletics articles at WP:WikiProject Athletics/Article templates. The issue would be moving actual article content from hundreds (or eventually tens of thousands) of articles to project space and then deleting or merging them as a way of avoiding achieving consensus on the mainspace content. I agree that having list-like articles with no prose isn't ideal, which is why I propose enriching as many of these as we can with human-written and well-sourced prose.

Articles sources are never required to be in English to meet English Wikipedia notability. Though I don't think I've created any of these "X at Y World Athletics Championships" articles I have edited some, and I'm confident that all of them I've seen can be improved with human-written prose at least as much as the Guam article. --Habst (talk) 12:21, 15 July 2026 (UTC)

• Support. based on the above comments and proposal. I think the outcome will be a benefit to both readers and editors, and I am all for anything like that. I agree that it is pragmatic and practical. Glad someone is willing to do this. ---Steve Quinn (talk) 21:55, 13 July 2026 (UTC)
• Support. This is a practical way to cut down on the endless information-sparse and non-notable stubs we get in this area. Any years that did receive enough IRS coverage can easily be split off, the rest can be redirected to the overview article. It would also discourage the CRYSTAL creation of useless placeholder stubs for future competitions. JoelleJay (talk) 10:08, 14 July 2026 (UTC)