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WikiProject Eurovision Newsletter - September and October 2009
This is the first edition of the WikiProject Eurovision newsletter in a bimonthly format. Following a discussion on the project talk page this may now become the regular format for the newsletter during the months that the project is less active.
A proposal was made to change Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers) to discourage the use of numeric dates, primarily YYYY-MM-DD (e.g. 2009-08-12 for 12 August 2009), in footnotes as at present it is only discouraged in the main article body. The proposal now seems unlikely to pass due to large levels of opposition, though it could have had a large impact on this project as the date format YYYY-MM-DD is frequently used in Eurovision for reference publication and access dates. Further discussion can be found on the project talk page.
Eurovision News
31 countries have confirmed their participation in the 2010 Contest. ESCToday has suggested that the Eurovision Song Contest may be entering a crisis due to the possibility of a large drop in the number of participants next year with the ongoing international recession hitting the budgets of many broadcasters in Europe.
Luxembourg and Monaco have both ruled out a return to the Eurovision Song Contest for 2010. A decision by San Marino on if to return or not has not yet been made.
Hungary declared it is pulling out of the Eurovision Song Contest due to the financial difficulties of the national broadcaster Magyar Televízió (MTV).
National selection details for the 2010 Contest are now available for sixteen countries. Despite the contest being over six months away, Bulgaria has already announced that the artist that will represent the country in 2010 will be Miroslav Kostadinov (who is frequently referred to as Miro).
It has been announced that the voting system used for the Eurovision Song Contest semi-finals will change in 2010. The previous system was introduced in 2008 along with the first use of two semi-finals; it involved nine out of ten final places per semi-final being determined exclusively by televote, with the tenth place being determined by juries. This will be replaced by a more balanced 50% jury voting, 50% televoting system.
Javine Hylton was also nominated for GA status but was quickly failed due to a large number of concerns. The nominator, Judo112 (talk·contribs), was later found to be a sock puppet of a previously blocked user.
Welcome to the fourteenth edition of the WikiProject Eurovision Newsletter!
There have been quite a few updates to the 2010 Contest article since 1 September. Nine countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Cyprus, Ireland, Macedonia, Malta, Poland, Serbia, and Slovenia) have confirmed their participation, and the article in general has seen many changes. Sadly, whilst some editors have been working hard to provide reliable sources, others have been less thorough and the article has had to be semi-protected again to prevent further disruption. This is a shame, as ideally anyone should be able to edit; however, the talk page is always available to bring new information to light.
The participating countries' section has also been updated to allow the inclusion of information about the language, artist and song (with an English translation as appropriate), although to date this is very much a work in progress. As news comes in, we look forward to enriching this section in the coming months—backed-up of course with sources!
No new country-specific articles have been written these past two months. If you want to add more detailed information about a country's participation in the 2010 Contest, this is the ideal way to do it, and they are very much appreciated by our readers.
Happy Christmas and new year from WikiProject Eurovision.
This is the second edition of the newsletter to be in a bimonthly format. This will probably continue at least up until the next Eurovision Song Contest when the project is more active.
Editors are reminded that some articles covered WikiProject Eurovision are subject to the biographies of living persons policy. This does not just include biography articles such as Alexander Rybak, but any article with material related to living persons. Such information is highly sensitive, and unsourced or poorly sourced material about living persons must be removed immediately. Material which may seen trivial to editors, such as a false claim of participation in a contest, can potentially be highly sensitive to the living persons involved.
Eurovision articles on this project have been repeatedly subject to a form of sneaky vandalism. This involves unregistered users adding false information to articles such as Eurovision Song Contest 2010 (while unprotected). These false claims are then made to look legitimate through the use of "fake references" with false titles and links, example. Cuchufleta (talk·contribs) was blocked indefinitely for creating multiple hoax articles with the same editing technique. Editors are advised to look out for further disruption of this kind, as it seems to be originating from a determined individial or an organised group. More information can be found at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Eurovision#User:Cuchufleta.
Eurovision News
The EBU released their participants list for the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest on 31 December 2009. 39 countries will take part. Five of these qualify directly to the final, with the 34 remaining countries each competing in one of two semi-finals (seventeen per semi-final).
Five countries have declared they will be withdrawing from the contest in 2010. The Czech Republic are withdrawing due to three semi-final failures and a lack of interest from Czech viewers. Andorra, Hungary, Lithuania, and Montenegro have all declared they are withdrawing for financial reasons.
Georgia is the only country that has declared it will be returning to the contest.
No debuts are planned either with Liechtenstein's only broadcaster 1FLTV having ruled out joining the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) for December 2009. This made a debut by the country for the 2010 Contest no longer possible.
Despite the 2010 Contest being many months away countries are now actively declaring which artists and songs will be representing them at the contest. A table for this can be found at Eurovision Song Contest 2010#Participants. Nearly all of the declared participants now have dedicated entry articles.
Welcome to the fifteenth edition of the WikiProject Eurovision Newsletter!
Another decade has past for the Eurovision Song Contest. The naughties will probably be remembered as a decade of both success and controversy for the contest.
Televoting reached its peak in the early 2000s. This gave the contest a more democratic edge, but by 2008 it was widely believed to have made Eurovision resemble a political and geographic football match rather than a song contest. The EBU took action in 2009 by reducing televoting to having only a 50% weighting in the results of each contest.
Many new countries have joined the contest in the last decade, bringing the number of participants to a new high. Among this some countries withdrew while others returned, though one of the major missing countries, Italy, did not make a return as was hoped by many.
There was not a shortage of controversy either. Two participants went to war, and the buzz over the planned participation of Kosovo put Eurovision in the middle of a political storm. One also cannot forget that this decade saw the introduction of two spin-off contests - the Junior Eurovision Song Contest and the Eurovision Dance Contest. It is still not fully clear on how these fit into this project, perhaps we will work that out during the tens.
The articles by quality table has been changed for all WikiProjects as a result of changes to the WP 1.0 bot. Due to these changes editors are encouraged to add the {{EurovisionNotice}} banner to the talk pages of categories, files, templates, portals, disambiguation pages, as well as articles and project pages. This has the benefit of making the table more complete and covering such pages under article alerts.
An FAQ has been created for the Eurovision Song Contest 2010 page in an attempt to mitigate repetitive discussions on the talk page about content in the article. This has not been previously done for a Eurovision article, though they are also used in other high profile areas such as Barack Obama and global warming.
There has been persistent problems on Anna Vissi related articles with a disruptive IP hopping editor making repeated sweeping and unwanted changes to the articles despite being asked to stop. An account that displayed similar behaviour, JORJKIE.AV (talk·contribs), has now been blocked indefinitely and some pages have had to be semi-protected for long periods.
On 7 February 2010 a draw was held to decide which semi-final of the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest each country will participate in. The draw also decided, for countries qualified straight to the final, which semi-final they will vote in.
Notable confirmed changes to the format of the Eurovision Song Contest this year include that the semi-finals will now be divided into two halves, and that voting will be open throughout each show rather than only after all entries have preformed.
It was announced in January 2010 that the Third Eurovision Dance Contest has been postponed a second time. It was originally due to be held in 2009, but was then postponed till 2010, and may now not happen at all, at least within the next two years. The EBU have justified the decision by saying there has been a decline in the popularity of TV dance shows.
Do you have news for the next issue? Submit it here!
Innocent Heart was nominated for deletion at AfD and was deleted. Due to disruption the page was also protected to prevent re-creation. Users may consult an administrator or make a nomination at deletion review if they wish to make a good faith attempt at re-writing the article.
Je ne sais quoi (song) was nominated for deletion at AfD and kept. The participation of WikiProject Eurovision members was commented on during the discussion.
Welcome to the sixteenth edition of the WikiProject Eurovision Newsletter!
We're in full swing now! Although the Eurovision Song Contest is around 2 months away, this is probably one of the busiest times of the year for the WikiProject, with a whole load of semi-finals, quarter finals, heats as well as national finals to see who the country chooses to represent them at this years Eurovision Song Contest.
We now know which of the 35 countries will vote and perform in which semi-final. With the 'Big Four' and host country, Germany and Spain voting in the first semi-final and France, Norway and the United Kingdom in the second semi-final.
With 22 out of the 39 countries decided, we are just about half way through, with a whole lot more to come!
So when creating new articles about a performer or song, please remember to add sources either from Eurovision.tv, ESCToday or other reliable sources.
Please get involved, and contribute anything to articles whether it's a little spelling mistake or a whole new paragraph, and remember to look at the talk pages and have your say on any discussions that may be present.
The project currently has 80 members, with two joining and two leaving in January and February. One user left due to retirement, another due to being blocked indefinitely.
Want to invite new members? Place our invitation template on the talk page of anyone you would like to invite to our project.
New Members
We would like to welcome the new members who joined in January and February (by date joined):
Due to the article alert bot being out of service indefinitely, it is now much more difficult for newsletter staff to keep up-to-date with all project activity. If editors wish to be sure that an article achievement or Eurovision news story is included in the newsletter, it is important that they let the newsletter writers know about it.
Project News
There is currently a proposal to restructure this WikiProject and further define its scope. All members are strongly encouraged to comment.
The Newsletter Department is looking for editors who are willing to help publish the newsletter. Once published every month, a lack of help forced it to be published less and less often. Interested editors are welcome to suggest news, gather information, and suggest improvements.
Looking for something to do? We have a large quantity of articles tagged for clean-up. Even addressing one tag would be a great help. You can see the full list here.
According to our quality statistics, most articles are assessed. It is important to point out that articles are edited everyday! Take some initiative and confirm that the WikiProject Eurovision assessment for the article you are working on matches its condition and update it if necessary. We use the general assessment scale created by the Editorial Team.
Members have been joining very slowly. A good project has as many members as possible and this helps in discussions and editing so that members are not overwhelmed. If every member could invite a friend or acquaintance using our invitation template, it would make our project much more efficient. One little edit on a friend's talk page? Why not, it takes two seconds!
The membership list was recently re-organised with five usernames removed from the list due to these accounts being controlled by blocked or banned users, and to deal with cases where editors had added themselves to the list twice. Some usernames were also moved from the active to inactive list, and vice versa.
Spain's 2010 performance was stage crashed by Jimmy Jump and they were given a second chance to perform their song following the last song of the final.
Germany also became the first country to select its performer for the 2011 Contest, with Lena Meyer-Landrut set to defend her title.
Austria announced it's return to the Contest for 2011, with its last appearance being in 2007 when it placed second to last in the semi-final and did not progress to the final.
In late July, Liechtenstein submitted its application to join the EBU. With EBU membership, Liechtenstein would be able to take part in the Eurovision Song Contest. Managing director Peter Kölbel stated that there were "good chances" for a participation in 2011 if admittance is granted to the organization.
Do you have news for the next issue? Submit it here!
Welcome to the seventeenth edition of the WikiProject Eurovision Newsletter!
I apologize for the lack of a newsletter these past few months as I had gotten quite busy in life. Adding to that, the lack of group participation by editors made me feel like my efforts were a waste of time that no one appreciates.
I think it is important that we behave like a "club" of sorts and have fun editing Eurovision articles. Eurovision is a fun event and we should be able to discuss the results, talk about Contest related possibilities and work to expand knowledge of the Contest to those who may not be familiar with it. When I edit articles, I hope that someone will come along later and say "wow, all of this happened and I didn't even know it!" Come on guys, get each other's instant messenger name and team up to make an article great!
The project currently has 82 members, with seven joining and one leaving during the last five months. Note that the membership list was recently re-organised (see left), and that in the future only members listed as active Eurovision editors will receive this newsletter.
Want to invite new members? Place our invitation template on the talk page of anyone you would like to invite to our project.
New Members
We would like to welcome the new members who joined between March and July (by date joined):
