Template talk:F1stat

I'm wondering about the usefulness of the "seasonpoints" and "seasonposition" stats. The "obvious" places to use them would be in a driver's career summary and F1 results tables. But we don't use them there (and I don't think we should, because if we did, then the "points" and "championship position" columns of those tables would often be out-of-synch with the other columns in those tables, which are updated manually). And these two stats are not as useful as I thought they might be in article text - commonly when a driver's current season points total/championship position are mentioned in the text there is additional text which may need to be updated manually, e.g. Charles Pic currently says "He is currently {{F1stat|PIC|seasonposition}} in the overall drivers' standings, four positions behind his teammate." So I propose that we ditch the "seasonpoints" and "seasonposition" stats for now (noting that we could always add them back in later if necessary). Thoughts? DH85868993 (talk) 23:16, 19 November 2012 (UTC)

I agree, I'm not sure they're all that useful to be honest. I appreciate the work that went into them, but it seems there's quite a lot of work to do in keeping them up to date and there aren't too many people willing to do it. Bretonbanquet (talk) 00:03, 20 November 2012 (UTC)

Take a look at Formula One drivers from France for an example of where it is actually quite useful. violet/riga _^[talk] 18:21, 22 November 2012 (UTC)

Howdy! Would it be feasible or reasonable to expand this template from drivers active in the past 2 seasons to all drivers of all time? I'm thinking F1 should have a central place where historical stats could live. The other 2 sites I consult for these stats often have incorrect or missing information. I think Wikipedia is our best bet for a complete and accurate repository of unbiased historical stats on F1, and the template would facilitate the usage and dissemination of these stats in articles, while safeguarding the integrity of the data. Thoughts? Real tlhingan (talk) 02:21, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

Seems to me the data is already here, we just need to make it referenceable. Real tlhingan (talk) 05:34, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

It would be feasible but I'm not sure it would really be worthwhile. As you point out, all the information for past drivers is already located at List of Formula One drivers. The main advantage of the template is that it allows us to update all the current driver infoboxes and List of Formula One drivers quickly after a race, by editing a single template rather than 23 separate articles. (It has also markedly reduced the occurrence of current driver infoboxes being partially or doubly updated after a race - something which doesn't occur for past drivers). Other factors to consider:

• it seems like a lot of "dead weight" (i.e. info which is never going to change) for the template to carry
• if we added all former drivers to the template, we'd need to come up with about 750 different keys to distinguish them
• on the assumption that the expanded template would be used for all drivers in List of Formula One drivers, then that article would transclude the template about 5000 times (i.e. approx. 750 drivers x 7 transclusions per driver) which I suspect might exceed the maximum number of template transclusions allowed in an article and/or might impact how long it takes the article to load/render.

I appreciate the data integrity aspect (i.e. multiple articles accessing the same value from a common location), but I think any single value would be used by a maximum of 4 articles (e.g. a driver's number of poles might be used by the driver's article, List of Formula One drivers, List of Formula One driver records and List of Formula One polesitters) and it seems like an awful lot of effort to go to for values which are never going to change. Also noting that in List of Formula One driver records values are often "shared" between multiple drivers, e.g.

	Driver	Seasons	Entries	Poles	Percentage
1	Michael Schumacher	1991–2006, 2010–2012	308	68	22.08%
2	Ayrton Senna	1984–1994	162	65	40.12%
3	Lewis Hamilton	2007–2016	182	56	30.77%
4	Sebastian Vettel	2007–2016	173	46	26.59%
5	Jim Clark	1960–1968	73	33	45.21%
	Alain Prost	1980–1991, 1993	202		16.34%
7	Nigel Mansell	1980–1992, 1994–1995	191	32	16.75%
8	Juan Manuel Fangio	1950–1951, 1953–1958	52	29	55.77%
	Nico Rosberg	2006–2016	200		14.50%
10	Mika Häkkinen	1991–2001	165	26	15.76%

DH85868993 (talk) 12:51, 19 September 2016 (UTC)

But most importantly, Wikipedia is a general-purpose encyclopedia and not a statsbook. If you want a detailed F1 stats database, wikipedia is not the place you should be coming to.Tvx1 20:13, 14 November 2016 (UTC)

It will be better if you update the data in Wikidata, then other language Wikipedia can use these data too. SEA99 (talk) 20:22, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

I'm not in favour, for several reasons:

1. At the end of each race, there are at least 47 data items to be updated ("starts" for all 22 drivers, "wins" for the winner, "podiums" for the 3 podium finishers, "seasonpoints" and "careerpoints" for the 10 points-scorers, "fastestlaps" for the driver who set fastest lap and usually "seasonposition" for several drivers). As I understand it, wikidata would store these values as separate items. I think it would be more effort/take longer to update 47 separate wikidata items as opposed to 47 items within a single template.
2. Having the data in a single template makes it easier to confirm that all the values have been updated correctly after each race. With the data distributed as separate items, I think it's more likely that there will be partial or duplicate updates, as used to happen before we had the template (e.g. if an editor's favourite driver scored a podium finish, they would often increment just the number of podiums in the driver's infobox. Then some time later, another editor would come along, see that the driver's points total hadn't been updated and assume that none of the data in the infobox had been updated and increment the number of podiums again).
3. In my experience, wikidata is typically used for "static" data, e.g. a person's date of birth, place of birth, etc. Whereas the data in this template sometimes changes on a weekly basis.

DH85868993 (talk) 23:22, 19 November 2016 (UTC)

I want to use these data in russian wiki. Can you advice simplest way?--SEA99 (talk) 21:45, 20 November 2016 (UTC)

I don't think you can directly transclude this template into the Russian Wikipedia (I did try!) You could create a copy of the template in the Russian Wikipedia and just copy-and-paste the contents of the English version into the Russian version every time the English version is updated (typically within 10 minutes of the end of each qualifying session and race), but of course the parameters would still be in English rather than Russian (e.g. you would still have to write {{F1stat|HAM|careerpoints}}), so that may not be especially useful. I'll keep trying to think of other solutions. DH85868993 (talk) 20:56, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

I'm a bit late to this discussion. I just had a talk with an editor who uses this template but on the Dutch wiki. Because right now this person does the same work you do, this creates redundancy. WikiData could be a solution, in particular for language versions with even less editors. So that's why I wanted to respond to your arguments.

1. I believe you are totally correct with your first argument, it takes more time. However, because more projects use it, that might be worth it. Because more editors might be willing to help out.
2. I get your point, it is easier to verify on Wikipedia with this template. However, one could also create a Sandbox or Project space where you import all these seperate values. That way, you can check which values are incorrect, and thus need fixing.
3. I think this is more of an observation rather than an argument. I believe WikiData has the most potential for data that changes often. Because manually writing a person's date of birth on 100 language versions is fine, but weekly updating statistics on 100 language versions simply is to taxing for our shrinking editor group. That is the benefit of WikiData, we can keep more articles up to date with less effort.

Anyway, I just wanted to leave this here. Maybe it creates new momentum for this option (or not, fine as well).— Preceding unsigned comment added by Dajasj (talk • contribs) 19:08, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

I agree with DH85868993 that English wiki should stick to using the template. Quite apart from the reason (s)he listed, Wikidata is less accessible to editors than the current system. Given how quick we can update one page at the end of the Grand Prix (compared to 60+ pages) I also question how useful it would be for the extra work. How many languages are actually going to use the data.SSSB (talk) 22:56, 25 September 2021 (UTC)

19 wikis have the same template linked through WikiData. If it is maintained through WikiData, probably more will follow. I agree that WikiData is less accessible. That is something which WikiData has to improve. I do want to note that the current template is probably also inaccessible for completely new users and might take some time getting used to. Dajasj (talk) 08:54, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Given that there would be 70 wikidata items that needs updating, we would need at least 40 (possible 60) languages before we start saving on time. The current template is unaccessibly for new users, but very accessible for users who know what the template mark-up is.
Anther problem with Wikidata is that it means we would need to keep an eye on another watchlist.

For me to get behind this idea the wikimedia foundation would need to introduce inter-wiki watchlists (so I can watch wikidata items from my English wiki watchlist) and allow one wikidata item to house multiple data points. Otherwise it just seems like more work. SSSB (talk) 11:36, 26 September 2021 (UTC)

Hi! I have just discovered this, and I would like to know a little bit about the accuracy of these stats. I guess these are updated manually race by race. If I am not mistaken there is not a fully official database of drivers provided by the FIA, is it? So, we cannot compare with it. Hash5514 (talk) 14:09, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

@Hash5514: It is updated after every race, the template contains an "accurate as of" field. And there is not an official database, but we can always compare with unofficial databases (both those from F1, and third parties. Bare in mind though, they may set different standards, and therefore have different data values (from each other and us) SSSB (talk) 15:25, 3 January 2022 (UTC)

@SSSB: Thank you for the info, but what do you mean with " they may set different standards, and therefore have different data values". What differences did you notice? Hash5514 (talk) 18:02, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

@Hash5514: 2001 Belgian Grand Prix is a good example. We consider Alonso, Raikkonen, Irvine and Burti as not starting, where as other sources consider them as retirements (eg StatsF1. Therefore, we list Raikkonen as having 349 starts, but StatsF1 has 350 (accurate at time of writting). That kind of thing. SSSB (talk) 19:08, 4 January 2022 (UTC)

@SSSB: Oh I see. Thanks Hash5514 (talk) 19:59, 7 January 2022 (UTC)