Countdown:Proposals

This page is for making any suggestions of major changes to the Countdown Wiki. This is to try and prevent having a lot of work to undo if other people don't agree with them.

To start a new section, simply type two equals signs around your heading (e.g. ==Heading==), and type ===For=== and ===Against=== to create the subheadings. When adding a comment, please type # ~~~~ under the "For" or "Against" headers, followed by your reason.

New categories

Some new categories that might be worth creating:

Category:480 club members

For

1. TobyMcDonald 19:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC) (Per prososal)
2. The Doctor (talk | contribs) 21:37, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Category:800 club members

For

1. TobyMcDonald 19:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC) (Per prososal)
2. The Doctor (talk | contribs) 21:37, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Category:Jos games

For

1. TobyMcDonald 19:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC) (Per prososal)
2. The Doctor (talk | contribs) 21:37, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Category:Series runners-up

For

1. TobyMcDonald 19:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC) (Per prososal)
2. The Doctor (talk | contribs) 21:37, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Category:Championship of Champions runners-up

For

1. TobyMcDonald 19:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC) (Per prososal)
2. The Doctor (talk | contribs) 21:37, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Category:Contestants in special episodes

For

1. TobyMcDonald 19:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC) (Per prososal)

Against

1. Already covered by Category:Contestants for miscellaneous contestants. The Doctor (talk | contribs) 21:37, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Category:Contestants who debuted under 16 years old, or Category:Under-16 contestant debuts (not sure which is better) – for those who didn't win any games (separate to Category:Prodigies)

For

1. TobyMcDonald 19:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC) (Per prososal)

Against

1. Expand criterion of prodigies instead. I don't think both can co-exist. The Doctor (talk | contribs) 21:37, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Category:Contestants on other television shows – for people who have appeared on shows like First Dates, The X Factor, the news, etc. (separate to Category:Contestants on other game shows)

For

1. TobyMcDonald 19:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC) (Per prososal)

Against

1. Too hard to track? The Doctor (talk | contribs) 21:37, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Category:Contestants with eight prelim conundrum solves

For

1. TobyMcDonald 19:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC) (Per prososal)
2. Can possibly be automated using {{octostats}} but furthermore it will need rewording for people who have e.g. 8 from 9. The Doctor (talk | contribs) 21:37, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Category:Contestants with eight prelim centuries

For

1. TobyMcDonald 19:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC) (Per prososal)
2. May also need 9-round over 60? The Doctor (talk | contribs) 21:37, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Category:Deceased people – other wikis have this, but I understand if people disagree with this one

For

1. TobyMcDonald 19:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC) (Per prososal)

Against

1. Too hard to track. The Doctor (talk | contribs) 21:37, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Move all Letters and Numbers pages into mainspace

Currently, most of these pages are under Johnny Canuck's user page because he was writing most of the recaps. I'd be willing to write some of them, but I don't think it would make sense for me to put them under his user page.

Also, some of them are already in mainspace, so it would make it more consistent too.

Then, I'm not sure whether all the contestants should have pages or not.

For

1. TobyMcDonald 19:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC) (Per prososal)

Against

1. Not entirely sure it is within the scope of the wiki? The Doctor (talk | contribs) 21:37, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Make titles of Co-event pages more consistent

I think that we should do away with the abbreviations on Co-event pages as they are very inconsistent at the moment. Also, I think they should all be by their year (e.g. Countdown in Lincoln 2014), rather than the number of the event (Countdown in Lincoln X).

For

1. TobyMcDonald 19:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC) (Per prososal)
2. BeachBoy99 Agree with this. Retain the roman numeral system for COLIN, since it's really the only one that necessitates it because of its annual repetition. Abbreviate every other event as Co:[location] [year], for example Co:Rugby 2024. I tend to abbreviate the location if it's over 9 letters in length (don't ask why; I'm weird), so Co:Manchester = Co:Man; Co:Birmingham = Co:Brum. For locations made up of more than one word, initial them: Milton Keynes = MK; King's Lynn = KL, etc. 21:18, 02 January 2024 (UTC)

Against

1. Completely disagree as we should use "official" titles and abbreviations where possible. If needed, ask FOCAL for advice. The Doctor (talk | contribs) 21:37, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Delete the minor online tournaments

Since there are so many online tournaments, would everyone agree to just keep the more well-known/current ones and delete some random ones, such as:

• Goatblitz 2010
• Apterous FA Cup
• All pages in Category:Apterous Summer 2009 and Category:Apterous Winter 2009
• Aptobash
• Asian Cup Tourney 2011
• COGST 2008
• COLT
• COOT 08
• COOT 3
• Summer Open
• Apterous World Cup

For

1. TobyMcDonald 19:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC) (Per proposal)

Against

1. Strongly against. If anything creating more articles for online tournaments would be a good thing. This is a legacy of the pre-tourney system days when the Wiki remains the only way you can keep records of these tournaments. The Doctor (talk | contribs) 21:37, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Weekly featured articles

There's two possible ways I've thought that this could work:

1) Using {{CURRENTWEEK}} and 52 templates called "Template:FA week 1" to "Template:FA week 52". The only problem with this is that they will fall behind by one day every year (and two days every leap year).

2) Putting the featured articles in fixed weeks so they won't fall behind. This can be done in two ways:

a) Utilising 1 April as an April Fool's featured article and then having "Template:FA 2–8 April", "Template:FA 9–15 April" and so on.

b) Or by starting with "Template:FA 1–7 January" and making one of them eight days long.

If option b, I'd propose Countdown to be the eight day featured article on the week covering 2 November. The only way I think this will work is if the Main Page has {{FA {{CURRENTDAY}} {{CURRENTMONTHNAME}}}} with all the individual dates as redirects.

We'd also need about 20 more featured articles, so some suggestions from me are:

• 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown
• Calendar Countdown
• Carol Vorderman
• Charlie Reams
• Conundrum and numbers game (since letters game is)
• Episode 1907
• Episode 4473
• Episode 5654
• Episode 6287
• Goody bag
• Gyles Brandreth
• Oxford English Dictionary
• Richard Whiteley
• Series 69, 63 and 41 (the three strongest series according to Eoin Jackson's analysis).

For

1. TobyMcDonald 19:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC) (Per proposal, using option 2b)
2. Not fussed how this is delivered, but any markups will need reviewing by peers. The Doctor (talk | contribs) 21:37, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Succession templates at bottom of pages

I think templates like {{series winner}} and {{series runner-up}} should be placed at the bottom of each page, as this is what Wikipedia does. Template:S-start says "A succession box is the box you see at the bottom of articles that show what the predecessor to the article you're reading is."

For

1. TobyMcDonald 19:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC) (Per proposal)
2. BeachBoy99 Love this idea. 21:22, 02 January 2024 (UTC)

Against

1. Not in favour; keeping them just above the episode tables creates more notability than they would otherwise. We have {{CofC}} which is more Wikipedia-style and I like as a good bottom-of-page thing. The Doctor (talk | contribs) 23:43, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

Page names of non-regular series

I think that individual series of Calendar Countdown, Countdown Masters, Celebrity Countdown, and 8 Out of 10 Cats Does Countdown should have the series in brackets with a lower case s, and a lower case p for pilots, as shown here.

For

1. TobyMcDonald 19:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC) (Per proposal)

Against

1. Shouldn't titles be in Title Case? The Doctor (talk | contribs) 21:37, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

Add hyphens to pages/categories including "n-round"

I think that phrases like "15-round" and "9-round" should have hyphens in them, as they seem like compound adjectives. This page on Wikipedia seems to confirm this too. This would mean changing Category:Octochamps of the 15 round era, Category:Octochamps of the 9 round era, and moving all the format pages.

For

1. TobyMcDonald 19:44, 30 December 2023 (UTC) (Per proposal)
2. BeachBoy99 Again, another thing that should be done. Doesn't look right without the hyphen. 21:31, 02 January 2024 (UTC)
3. Suspect there were reasons at the time why it was created this way but if not, agreed. The Doctor (talk | contribs) 21:37, 4 January 2024 (UTC)