Talk:Fencing at the Summer Olympics

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German in medal tables

In makes absolutely no sense of splitting up Germany‘s medals into Germany (post Unification); West Germany and East Germany. There should be one Germany with all medals. After all do we split up say France into Third Republic, Forth Republic, Fifth Republic ? Makes no sense. BoNiLi (talk) 05:50, 29 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

East and west Germany competed as separate entities. While it is not uncommon to combine them when talking about bulk numbers and trends, reporting athlete numbers and medals by country requires that we report the countries that existed when the events occurred. Some continuity across name changes is expected, but East German athletes often could not legally even visit West Germany and vice versa. The two were actually separate countries with separate national Olympic committees.

Just as Russia exists before and after the Soviet Union in our data, so too Germany exists before 1940 and after 1990.

However, it might be appropriate to place the East and West German entries adjacent to the Germany entry in table sort order. That way a cumulative perspective is easier to achieve (and it doesn’t look like Germany just didn’t have any fencers for 50 years).Elriana (talk) 09:08, 29 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can see that it is difficult to combine East Germany and West Germany during the period when they both competed separately. Given that the legal state (with its international agreements) which survived Unification was West Germany (and this includes its committee membership at the IOC) then it is best to have Germany = Germany since 1992+West Germany + Unified Teams + Weimar Republic (incl Nazi Germany) + pre WWI German Empire.

How do we change it ? BoNiLi (talk) 16:51, 29 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We don’t (at least for now). Unfortunately, this discussion goes well beyond this article. Germany, for the purpose of the general Olympics articles in Wikipedia, is treated as not entering from 1956-1988. Your proposed continuity would need to be adopted across the board, starting with Germany at the Olympics. I suggest you go look at that article and talk page. I don’t have a strong opinion either way, but a lot of other editors have put serious thought into it. (Note: If the Germany entries *are* combined, I would add a footnote to the entries from 1956-1988). For now, I have reordered the list to put East and West Germany immediately below Germany.Elriana (talk) 07:41, 30 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pentathalon

Should the intro mention that epee is the first part of the modern pentathlon? That would indeed be an instance of fencing at the Olympics, and has been so for more than 100 years.Elriana (talk) 08:08, 30 July 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Medal table

Is there an agreed-upon method for how to rank the nations in medal tables? Clearly the number of gold medals is the first ranking priority. What's the second criteria after that? Number of silver medals, or number of total medals? Alexthegreat38 (talk) 15:41, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Silver. Pelmeen10 (talk) 17:45, 5 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]