Talk:Sweet Adelines International competition

Feedback

Feedback and template improvement discussion while article was still in sandbox mode

EXAMPLE SEMI FINAL SCORE SHEET : This doesn't actually represent a score sheet. It shows a sample of the scores. The score sheet itself contains lengthy hand written notes by each of the judges giving the contestant information on what the judges heard (and saw) to justify their score and also ways to improve and get to the next level. So I think the heading is misleading. Maybe call it "Sample Scoring". The sentence I've written about the score sheet might be good to include to explain the very helpful nature of our score sheets and shows the difference for example other singing orgasations, who don't all do this.

Also, I think the choice of scores included is not ideal. It is showing the top 1% of choruses scores and maybe Melodeers don't want the whole world seeing this anyway? I think it would be better to use an anonymous chorus eg "XXX Chorus" and then list some scores in the 70's - which is much more common.

CHORUS COMPETITION: Suggestion re-wording.

"In the semi-final competition each chorus performs two songs – normally an “up-tune” (tempo song) and a ballad – in the order of their choice. The combined times of both songs must be no longer than 7 minutes. Up to the 1984 competition, this was the only performance required."

Rather than call them "score sheets" next to the various competitions listed over the years, what you actually have listed are score tabulation sheets, showing the contest results. Calling them "score sheets" will be misleading.

L Baker.

Thanks for the feedback! I've now adjusted 'scoresheet" to say "summary" throughout. In the context of a table with lots of links to the regional or international results PDFs they have two parallel columns now - one for 'regional score" and one for "regional summary" etc.

I've also swapped out the Melodeers results from last year as the example score breakdown, and instead inserted an (anonymised) score breakdown from the 15th place-getter at the 2009 competition. Going back much earlier and the PDFs have different formats so it's not consistent with the contemporary look of the results.

I've also replaced my wording with the sentence you gave (about the up-tune etc.). I've linked "up tune" to the article on "a tempo". Is that correct? Perhaps I should link it to "uptempo"?

Finally, I've worked in the sentence about the qualitative feedback too.

Cheers! Wittylama 12:51, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Tables

Hi Liam,

Andy tells me you're looking for comments on the draft article here. I can recommend looking at WP:DTT for advice on how to make tables as friendly to visually impaired editors as possible. It helps screen readers if you identify row headers as well as the column headers and marking up the appropriate scope is helpful as well. This is how I'd set out the start of the list of champion choruses:

{| class="wikitable sortable"
! scope="col" | Year
! scope="col" | Competition location
! scope="col" | Champion
! scope="col" | Director
! scope="col" | Region
! scope="col" | Score
! scope="col" | Second place
! scope="col" | Third place
! scope="col" | Harmony Achievement
! scope="col" | Competition summary
|-
! scope="row" | 1973 
||Washington, D.C. 
| ''Racine''
|Jarmela Speta
|22
|
|
|
| rowspan="18" |
| ''missing''
|-
! scope="row" | 1974
|Milwaukee, Wisconsin
|''Gem City''
|Jean Barford
|4
|
|
|
|''missing''

|}

That would render as:

Year	Competition location	Champion	Director	Region	Score	Second place	Third place	Harmony Achievement	Competition summary
1973	Washington, D.C.	Racine	Jarmela Speta	22					missing
1974	Milwaukee, Wisconsin	Gem City	Jean Barford	4					missing

It's better for a screen reader if we don't include html <br /> in headers, as many screen readers can be set to announce row and column headers before each cell, allowing navigation of the table in any direction. For that reason, it may also be better to simply have a notes section after the table containing the information from the references a and b. Otherwise a screen reader navigating down the "Competition location" column might hear "Competition newline location 1973 Washington DC"; then "Competition newline location 1974 Milwaukee, Wisconsin"; etc. Similarly navigating down the "Region" column might hear "Region link endnote region changea (pause) 1973 22" or something similar. There are many different kinds of screen reader, so keeping headers simple is usually the best thing to do.

Using colours to alone to convey information often leaves visually impaired readers wondering what that part of the article is trying to say. The guidance is at WP:COLOUR. Instead of:

Ribbon color

Competition	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	Achievement
Chorus Finals
Harmony Classic division A
Harmony Classic division AA
Quartet Finals
Rising Star		?	?

How about

Ribbon color

Competition	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	Achievement
Chorus Finals	blue	red	white	yellow	green	violet
Harmony Classic division A	magenta	blue-grey	light blue-grey
Harmony Classic division AA	bright pink	mid pink	pink
Quartet Finals	blue	red	white	yellow	green
Rising Star	blue	?	?

Picking the foreground colour to maximise the contrast with the background colour helps colour-blind viewers, so that's worth considering as well.

You done a lot of work to pack all that information into this draft, and it looks good. Taking account of visitors' possible visual impairments will help as many people as possible to get the most out of your efforts. Feel free to ping me if I can be of any further help. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 19:25, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you very much indeed for this speedy advice! This is what I've done:

• Removed all <br /> tags from the heading rows of tables. There are still deliberate new-lines in the heading rows though (just without that tag). Is that ok??
• Removed all "notes" within the heading rows of tables. As you suggested, I moved them to the prose outside the relevant table(s). There are several notes (and footnotes) that remain within individual cells of the tables, is that ok?? It would be very hard to make sense of things as a reader if I had to remove them...
• Added the official names of the colours on the "ribbon colour" table and made them contrasting colours to the background. This is actually really useful not just for screen readers as the official colours e.g. "hot pink" are listed in the competition rulebook so it lets me be more accurate to the rules.
• I'm currently working my way through the tables to put in " ! scope="col" | " etc.

Wittylama 23:26, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

That's terrific work, Liam. The only change that probably won't work is changing <br /> to newlines - as you can see if you inspect the html output, it makes a new paragraph inside the heading and screen readers that announce linebreaks as newlines will still do the same. Sadly, in this case, there is a tension between the desire to make the page look nice for the sighted and avoiding annoyance to those using screen-readers. A possible work-around would be to set a column width in ems to force the browser to break the line (a screen reader would just ignore that sort of break). Personally, I just use a normal space and let the browser sort out whether to break the heading or not, but I tend to read in a very wide browser window and I know it often doesn't look so good in narrower ones. Hope that helps. --RexxS (talk) 00:07, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks again for the quick reply RexxS! I'm steadily going through and adding the ! scope="col" | etc. to the tables - as you can see in my recent edit summaries. It's not done yet but mostly there (battery almost gone tonight, so will have to finish it tomorrow) They're all done now! (except for the year-specific tables which Andy and I are treating differently, see below). And yes, I can see what you mean about the new lines BR-tag or otherwise. I'll remove them as you suggest. Anything else? Wittylama 00:42, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

p.s. RexxS - what about the other question: is it ok to have notes and footnotes within individual cells in the table? Because I don't know how I can replace that. Wittylama 00:47, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

To confirm, RexxS, I believe I've now put the necesary "scope = "col" etc. and also removed all the forced newlines for all tables - except the year-specific tables which Andy and I are now working on with the template method below (so I won't bother fixing that formatting since we're replacing it completely). Thanks :-) Wittylama 23:32, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

It all looks good, Liam. Probably the most important thing is that you're thinking it through now and you don't need me to tell you you're doing it right. The reason why foot/notes aren't such a good idea in headers is that they potentially could be repeated at each cell for screen reader users and that's very annoying for them. The same won't apply to individual cells, so unless you put the same note in a lot of cells, you won't cause the same problem for screen readers. If you do have the same note in a lot of cells, consider using a separate piece of text giving the same information outside of the table (I know you've already done that in some places). Well done! --RexxS (talk) 23:56, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Templates

One other thing to consider, when you have many similar tables (and you mentioned future pages for other decades) is to use a template for each row; and a second template for each header-row. Then you only need to make stylistic changes once; the date entry is easier, and the editing window is less cluttered for anyone making future updates. For an example, see List of public art in Birmingham.

Converting your work to date to that model would be tiresome, but you could ask someone with scripting ability to do it for you and that shoudl be simpler. Let me know if youd like help aming the templates. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 10:00, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

First template done: {{Sweet Adelines International Competition year table header}} (We can give it a shortcut name, later). sample deployment. Quick question: are the videos always on YouTube? If so, I can hardcode the links.

And now {{Sweet Adelines International Competition year table row}} (another example deployment) - I still have some prettification to do, like commas between the videos. We could probably make the colours switch, depending on the position. Anything to add, at this stage, User:RexxS? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:44, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Only one thing at first glance. The parameter |colour= would logically imply the foreground colour to me; I'd always use something like |bgcolour= for the background colour. If you're going to let editors set the background, you'll need a way to set the foreground to white for when they pick a dark background colour. --RexxS (talk) 20:19, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

@RexxS: Thanks; I've now used a switch to set both colours, depending on |position=. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:51, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you so much for this work today Andy, and for your suggestions User:RexxS.
I've now moved the "achievement" parameter to make the name of the chorus turn violet, not the number of the position. I've also removed the inline note about "achievement" too. It's clearer this way because having the colouration on the position number could indicate to the reader that it is the position which is the determining factor in winning that award rather than the number of people on stage. It was also unclear why it would be moving around - from 7th position one year to 15th position the next. Finally, it removes the possibility of problems if perchance the achievement winner also comes in the top 5, there will be no colour-clash. You can see this in action on the 2014 chorus table at the moment. Wittylama 23:19, 21 February 2015 (UTC)

We need some form of non-colour indicator for who won the "achievement" award; consider how colour-blind people would find out who that was. I'll have a think about possible solutions. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:22, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

This was indicated with an inline superscript note that said [achievement] (like the way the wildcard quartets are marked in the quartet comp tables. But, this was depreciated with the introduction of the colouring. Wittylama 01:20, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Annual comp template wishlist

Hi Andy, as requested, here's a coupe of things that I think are needed in the {{Sweet Adelines International Competition year table header}} and {{Sweet Adelines International Competition year table row}}:

• For contestants that have a final position/place of 11th or higher, remove the "final score" and "final order" columns completely. If removing them isn't possible (if the way I currently have them disappear is via broken HTML, then perhaps you could 'merge" both cells all the way down the column from 11th to last place? This makes it visually clear to the reader that there isn't any final place/score because they weren't in the final.
  • Similarly for the video column - SAI has not published the semi-final videos for any choir/quartet which didn't make it to the finals, though it's possible that they may start doing this in the future. When there is no video at all for 11th place onwards (which is universally the case) have this cell dissapear/merge with the final column too.
• SAI has only published videos since 2012, acceptance videos since 2014, and only had videos made at all since 2008. So, for years 2011 and earlier the "semifinal video" "final video" and "acceptance video" parameters will be universally blank. Is there a way to make that column disappear when there's nothing put in that parameter?
  • Furthermore, I suggest merging these three parameters so that the end user inserts their choice of one, two or three URLS separated by commas into a "video" field and this displays, in order, external links named "semi-final", "final", and "acceptance". [though in 2012 they only published the "final" video for positions 6-10. Perhaps entering a dash before the first comma would make it display " - , final".]
• Since we've got a switch for "achievement", why not have one for "wild" as well. This is quite common (10 per year, both choruses and quartets). Currently I insert a ref-note template each time, but it doesn't necessarily have to be visualised this way.
• For quartets, earlier than 2014 there is no regional-summary column, only regional-score. It's just one column rather than two columns underneath the "regional" heading (see for example 2013 quartets as opposed to 2013 choruses).The equivalent PDFs to the Chorus tables exist, but they're not published in a directly linkable way (on barbershophistory.com) so I've not included that column. Is there a way to make that column disappear when there's nothing put in that parameter?
• Please make the field names match what the eventual template displays. e.g. the field "position" displays as "place", the field "results_doc" displays as "official results" and the fields "score" and "summary" display as "regional score" and "regional summary".
  • The heading field "summary ref" refers to the footnote which is appears after the "[regional] summary". Corresponding to the point immediately above, I suggest renaming this to "regional summary ref" [struck out, I've managed to do this myself now. Wittylama 20:36, 1 March 2015 (UTC) ]
  • The field "venue" is actually used to display the name of the city (rather than the name of the convention centre - which is the actual venue). Suggest renaming this field to "location" to make it consistent with how the other tables display this info e.g. User:Wittylama/SAI#International_champions_2. [struck out, I've managed to do this myself now. Wittylama 20:36, 1 March 2015 (UTC) ]

p.s. A switch for chorus/quartet is not needed since "contestant" works quite well. The only field which is different is "achievement" so that's fine as it is.
p.p.s. Earlier than 1985 there were actually three rounds in the quartet comp (quarter-final, semi-final, final) and only one round in the chorus comp (just the final). This could make this very tricky indeed (maybe a switch in the header row called "number of rounds (1,2,3) which creates the relevant number of columns??... but perhaps that's "beyond the scope" of this exercise and if we ever get back that far with the data-entry then we'll just revert to doing it with individual tables. This also raises the wider point about how much effort is worthwhile to put into this template, before it becomes easier to simply do it manually (as per the original method). What do you think? Wittylama 11:17, 22 February 2015 (UTC)

I've stuck those I've done. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:24, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Thanks Andy ;-) Wittylama 01:20, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Grand totals

Hi Andy, following some feedback from the fellow behind barbershophistory.com I'm wanting to add in a new column in the "final" section of the template called "score" (between the "order of appearance" and "grand total" columns). I've done this manually here, so you can see what I mean: User:Wittylama/SAI#2013. This is necessary because sometimes a score might be enough to win in the final round, but because of the aggregation of semi and final scores that chorus/quartet doesn't win. This is information is not able to be visualised without this column's inclusion. (In effect, this means the "grand total" column could actually even be an automatic addition of the numbers in the semi-final-score and the new final-score columns.)

So, I made a change to the template header (diff) which I think is correct, and also an edit to the template row (diff) which broke it... Can you tell me where I went wrong and how to fix it? Wittylama 11:50, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

Fixed (you needed to change the colspan for the first row of the header) . Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:11, 27 February 2015 (UTC)

I actually think I understand! :-) So, if I'd just changed the 2 to 3, it would have worked as intended? I've also updated the template documentation to match the new "row" parameter names. Wittylama 00:27, 28 February 2015 (UTC)

Post-data conversion feedback

Hi again Andy,
I've done a LOT of data conversion today and managed to bring the whole contents of the chorus competitions and the quartet competitions for all the years currently included (2010-2015). I didn't have access to wifi on the laptop so I did it all on a text-editor slowly find-replacing element by element. It took all day but I'm quite pleased with the outcome :-)
Now that it's done, I can give a post-conversion list of what you would call "cosmetic" changes that are required to the template:

1. The header template has this line of code: |- id="{{{year|}}} chorus" which I don't think is serving a purpose anymore. It used to be a way of providing an anchor link from other templates - and would differentiate between "2014 chorus" and "2014 quartet". That differentiation is now lost because the ID is only asking for the year and appends "chorus" regardless. Rather, I'm intending on using the section heading e.g. ====2014==== which can be called by using [[#2014]] for the choruses and [[#2014_2]] for quartets. I also think this works better when referring to the section heading in a different article (which the annual tables will eventually be). I think the "year" parameter could be kept, no harm in having it, but suggest removing the ID element as it would not successfully differentiate between the two competitions in the same year (its original purpose) wiithout the addition of another chorus/quartet parameter. Wittylama

2. As you can see in the quartet competition from 2013 (and earlier), there is no information in the regional summary column, and it is likely that the 2014 information will disappear from the SAI website soon. Unlike the comprehensive regional qualification scoresheet database that is held by barbershophistory.com for chorus regional competitions, the admin there does not plan to make an equivalent publication of quartet regional competitions. Therefore, I need this column to continue to exist, but to make it disappear when not needed. This also means moving the "regional_summary_ref" parameter to a different heading in those instances. By example, this is how I used to visual that when I was manually coding the tables. Wittylama

2.1. Similarly, for 2011 and earlier there are no videos at all. I would like to be able to make the video column disappear completely in those instances. Perhaps a switch "video = y" to make it visible? Wittylama

3. When there is a final and semi-final video playlist, the Video column header looks nice (e.g. 2014 chourus comp). However, when there is nothing in the playlist parameter, the words "competition video" are visually very out of alignment in the table cell ( (e.g. 2013 chourus comp). Can they be centred? Wittylama

3.1. Similarly, the heading "grand total" is visually very high, not centred, in its cell. There are no other parameters that affect it as far as I can see. I can't understand why it is behaving differently to the other headings. Can this be centred? (this affects all instances of the template). Wittylama

4. For non-finalist contestants (positions 11 and up), the three "final" columns (order of appearance, score, grand total) should either disappear or be merged. Ideally not just have the three cells in the row merged, but the whole set of three columns x 20ish rows merged into one big cell. This is to visually make it very clear that those contestants are not "missing" the information, but that they were not contestants in the final at all. An alternative might be to have an em-dash in each blank cell, in the same way that I have done so for the User:Wittylama/SAI#Most_successful_choruses table. Wittylama

4.1. When I clicked to 'sort' one of the final columns, they drop to right at the bottom of the table. Rather, they should stay at the top if at all possible. Wittylama

4.2. Similarly for the video column, following the finals columns. It is current practice for SAI to only publish the videos for the top 10. It is possible that they will publish the semi-final videos for positions 11+ in future years, who knows. But until that time, I'd also like 11th+ cells to be merged/hidden, rather than merely blank, and in the earlier years for the whole column and heading to be hidden.. Wittylama 22:22, 4 March 2015 (UTC)

1 is removed. 2, 2.1, 3 and 3.1 are done. You'll need to add |show_region_summary=y & |show_video=y to every row in every table where one or both are used, even if the respective cell is empty in the row concerned. 4.1 is resolved by clicking on" sort" a second me, to reverse the order. I'll look at the rest later. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:58, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks again Andy, I've gone through and added the "show video" and/or "show region summary" parameters to all the relevant header and row templates. I'll update the documentation page tomorrow to represent the new system. One strange that this change has generated is weird line-spacing in those years which don't have a "video" column. See, for example the 2011 Chorus competition or 2011 quartet competition (and earlier years) - notice how each row is three lines tall and the 'grand total' is placed on the uppermost line while the other information is in the centre line. I don't understand how what you've changed in the columns could relate to the line-spacing in the rows but it seems to do exactly that! Any ideas? Wittylama 21:25, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Fixed. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:08, 15 March 2015 (UTC)

Sorry - the same issue still appears for me - weird row spacing in 2011 and earlier (especially the 'grand total' column). I've checked in two browsers too. @Pigsonthewing:. Wittylama 17:01, 16 March 2015 (UTC)

Final list

@Pigsonthewing: In the absence of being able to "merge" the blank cells in the "final" columns, I've now added in "—" for all the non-finalists in the final columns, to indicate that they did not take part. I've also made the "video" column unsortable and have included a bunch of images that were recently made available to me. The only things that now remain before I can publish this are items that require your assistance, please:

1. The row-alignment in years that don't have a video column are weird. Something in the absense of the |show_video=y element causes each row to be three times taller than needed, and for the text in the final cell to sit at the top of the cell rather than centered. See, for example: User:Wittylama/SAI#2010.
2. When there are videos that exist for the top 10, I still need to include the |show_video=y element on all the other rows. I would like to include the "—" but the template assumes that this is a youtube.com suffix and takes me to "youtube.com/watch?v=—" which of course doesn't work. I don't want to leave the cell blank though. Can you either make the blank cells merge, or suggest another way to visually indicate that no video exists?
3. I tried to make the "regional summary" column unsortable but was unable after several attempts. Can you do that please?

Once those things are in place then I can launch, promote and begin to break out the annual table into sub-articles by-decade. Wittylama 16:26, 2 April 2015 (UTC)

1. I'm stumped. Maybe User:RexxS or User:Alakzi can kindly check my recent edits, and help?
2. Done. Dash will appear automatically, if no video set.
3. Done. (You had nested the " mark wrongly)

"Two out of three ain't bad." Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 20:38, 20 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for having a look Pigsonthewing. Item 2 is indeed now fixed - cheers! But item 3 isn't - the regional-summary column is still sortable. See User:Wittylama/SAI#2015 for example. It's not a big deal if that's unfixable but the diff you linked too didn't seem to solve it.

As for item 1, yeah... weird problem isn't it!?! User:RexxS or User:Alakzi, can you see the issue I'm talking about here? See for example, User:Wittylama/SAI#2010_2 - all the rows are three lines high for no reason, and text in the final "grand total" column is appearing at the top of each cell rather than the middle, like the others. Wittylama 15:46, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

I didn't get a ping earlier, fixed them both now. Alakzi (talk) 16:09, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

@Alakzi: Thanks; neat trick. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:15, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

@Alakzi: I don't understand what you did, but you and Pigsonthewing did it! Thanks :-) I'll now make some final tweaks to the content and launch the article soon. Very happy to get this one out the door! Wittylama 18:11, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Good job, Alakzi! I should note for completeness that removing the |show_video= parameter for a row stops the template from outputting a <td>...</td> cell, but that's just a minor irritation (it needs a | even when the #if: test is false). Having said that, it still took me 6 attempts to get it right! Check to see if it's working to your satisfaction now. --RexxS (talk) 19:58, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

@RexxS: thanks for jumping in to help too - but something you just did broke a feature of the template. If you see User:Wittylama/SAI#2010 you'll note that there is no |show_video=y (and therefore no heading for that column), but each of the rows now has a cell with "—" in it. The reason that the video column is a switch is because they only recorded and published competition videos for the last few years - prior to that there are no videos at all so there's no point in having a video column going all the way back through earlier decades. Can you restore that feature please? Wittylama 20:01, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

I just realised that myself when I scrolled down the page. I've restored the previous version - but now you'll have to insist on having the |show_video= in each row when the column is activated in the header template. Otherwise you get a missing cell in the table (check User:Wittylama/SAI#2013 where the last row is missing the |show_video=). --RexxS (talk) 20:25, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Thanks - yeah, it's a necessary requirement of the 'switch' for this column. It's an esoteric template for an esoteric purpose :-) Wittylama 20:31, 23 April 2015 (UTC)

Harmony Classic Ribbon Colors

In 2022 Harmony Classic champion choruses in both Division A and Division AA received medals on blue, red, and white ribbons, same as in the main chorus contest. 2600:1700:6990:7CE0:44B4:D3E0:9FAD:8908 (talk) 17:18, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

Uncategoricalize (talk) 17:25, 24 January 2023 (UTC)