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Talk: Sport

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I have tried to do a classification of sports in categories.

The classification below is neat, but might a more alphabetical list be better? What happens when you want to find a sport, and don't know what category it belongs in? -- Simon J Kissane
You hit CTRL-F in your browser ? - clasqm
yeah, we need a "sports listed by name" as well as by category. The only trouble is when you've got sports with multiple events such as athletics - what's a sport, and what's an event? Robert Merkel


About What is a sport: I think relevant to this question is the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's discussion of the word "game". He asked, what is it that all games have in common? He argues that there is no single thing that all games have in common, but rather something is called a game because of its similarities with other things already called a game; the particular similarities may be completely different for two different games. I would guess the same applies to sport -- there is no one thing all sports have in common, rather something is called a sport because it has some things in common with other things called a sport. -- SJK

Have you got a reference on this topic? That might well be relevant. I disagree, but it sounds like a take on things that deserves mention.
Well, the reference I was thinking of was probably Philosophical Investigations, s. 3, but now I go back and read it and it doesn't quite seem to be saying what I remembered it as saying... -- SJK


Guess this a more general question about lists. I added various categories of motor sports only for them to be removed. We're already listing various categories of bicycle sports, jumping etc. I believe a comprehensive list is better than catgories, especially where there is huge variation within the category. Given that defining sport is difficult, perhaps listing them all isn't? Rjstott

It was me that removed the categories. Maybe I could have provided a more constructive solution. Point is that the difference between a sport and a event is very small, sometimes disputable. So maybe a good solution is to do it like this:

jheijmans


Uh, you're telling me that the religion page isnt "protected" but sports is? whatever fat obstinate american sports media worshipper did this...better undo it.

done. Jeronimo

I had this question working in my mind for long time (about the meaning of the word "sport"). I've end up in some conclusion. Then i read the article of this webpage and the arguments between people on talk page. So now i have this question for you... Is golf a sport? You have to compete other people but it doesn't need any physical condition (i mean it's normal for a casual person to be able to walk some distanses and hold a stick to hit a small ball). So say after some fixed period of time someone knows how to play golf (knows the technic and the swing etc). Does this makes him an athlete?

Thank you (to anyone that will respond)

YS

Moved from subpage:

This content should be moved back to the main page when it becomes an article rather than an argument and commentary

The term "sport" has evolved over the years, as far as I can tell. It seems to have originally been used for the "kill sports" of the English aristocracy, as distinct from "games" which were played by all social classes and didn't involve killing animals. Then it seems to have been broadened to include those activities. However, in the modern world, the term seems to be applied to more and more activities, including some which are traditionally regarded as art, entertainment, work, or boardgame, such as chess, sheepdog trials, cheerleading and ballroom dance. Then there are the largely non-competitive leisure activities like surfing, or bushwalking. So - are these activities really sports? What makes them a sport? Do "battle of the bands" competitions make rock and roll a sport? Is trying to divide things into "sport" and "non-sport" even possible, and is it useful for the purposes of this encyclopedia?

Where might we find a working definition of a "sport", beyond those brief comments in the dictionary? Does the IOC, or maybe the Court of Arbitration for Sport, have anything useful to say on the matter? Are there useful definitions in legislation in any jurisdictions? Are there any philosophers who have spoken directly to the definition of sport, perhaps? I'm aware that everyone from Descartes to Satre's take on things has been applied to sports, but did anybody take a direct bite at the issue, so to speak?

What I think we need here is some kind of discussion of all these issues, and possibly a consensus working definition of a sport. This will be difficult, because I suspect any criteria will either exclude some self-proclaimed "sports" or be so broad as to encompass virtually every area of human endeavour. With that in mind, here are some points that go to the properties of a sport IMHO:

(e.g. swimming).

Opinions?

Be bold in updating pages! Just put some kind of definition on the main page, and lets have it out in the /Talk page :-) --Anders Törlind

I've been bold today. Anybody want to comment?? The following seem to me now unecessary early guides to how the article should go, I put them here for future reference.

The development of sport is studied in a science: sport and sociology Feel free to fill these in, or add more dot points, or reorganise totally.

-)

TonyClarke 00:26, 12 Nov 2003 (UTC)

When the article mentions Ireland in the last century, does it mean the 20th or the 19th? - SimonP 21:28, Nov 21, 2003 (UTC)

20th Simon, if its clearer we can put that in.

TonyClarke 16:22, 22 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Hi Cunctator

Thank you for your positive comments about my work. I disagree with your re-writing of the article.

I feel that the reworking of the article requires justification, and more basically perhaps deserved some explanation or discussion at the time. The absence of either of these led me to think that the reworking was an act of vandalism, whose reversion needed no explanation. Howere, it obviously does need some discussion now, and I willrevertit again unless I am convinced by you or some other that it should not be reverted.


The article has lost something in being broken up, even though I accept your assurance that all of the original material has been preserved. There is a certain synergy in keeping all of the elements of the article together, e.g. the cumulative evidence in the original article that sport evolved from everyday activities or skills is now lost, as the art and history sections are not now read together by the casual reader. I also think that the History of sportand art and sport are now less likely to be read, as they are more specialist subjects whish are less likely to be looked up, even though they may be areas of of question for some readers. There is also the fact that each section wasnot originally written to be self-conatained, but the article was written to be a whole. There are many other reasons against the splitting up, not least perhaps that IMHO Wikipedia etiquette was not observed. I see that user:WhisperToMe has similar issues with something you did recently.

All in all, thank you for the work you did, but unless there is some over-riding Wikipedian policy or principle involved, I would prefer the original article to be re-instated.

Tony: it's important and necessary to summartize and extract information from articles periodically. If we did not do so, their length would grow without bound.

I understand that you may have had a particular vision for how the article should be expressed when you wrote it, but the question of whether "each section was not originally written to be self-contained" has no bearing on whether the sections can be self-contained. The judgment should be on whether the new subjects are successful as self-contained entries.

Clearly, history of sport deserves its own entry, distinct from sport. It's certainly true that for the best understanding of our present conception of sport one should be a scholar of its history. But it is not our job to force readers to do so by putting everything in one linear narrative. It is our job to be clear and concise, and to establish a network of knowledge which gives the readership some degree of choice.

We also must have on eye on the basic functionality of the Wikipedia process. The process of Wikipedia interlinks works best when there is a one-to-one correspondence between ideas and entries. Sportsmanship, the history of sport, professional sports, asthetic appeal of sport, nationalism and sport, and regulation of sport are all distinct concepts. By lumping all of the details of these concepts into one entry we may create a more comprehensive linear narrative for "sport". But when someone is interested not in "sport" in general but, say, "sportsmanship" specifically--see the link from Ultimate frisbee for example--lumping all of the details of these concepts into one entry decreases the quality of that link.

So, with these two opposing principles, what do we do? The only answer is that we have to apply editorial judgment, which is a subjective process, and will thus always cause some level of disagreement. But we can find common ground if we agree to allow for the reasonable summarization of subtopics into their most important elements within an entry.

Let's look at a specific case: when discussing the history of sport within the context of our entry on sport, we want the discussion to involve the most important lessons from that history. Some specific examples might be helpful, but every specific example certainly would not.

The lesson that I considered most important was the one you mention: "that sport evolved from everyday activities or skills"--and thus

Sports often (perhaps always) evolve from activities with a non-recreational purpose. A few examples from the history of sport: gladiators in Rome fought and killed for the delectation of the audience, rather than to protect the Empire or to procure food; yachting is the travel across water for enjoyment or competition rather than e.g. for transport or commerce; running is done on a course for a fixed length of time or distance, rather than to catch prey or evade predators or enemies. Fantasy sports are an interesting development in which sports fans compete with each other in simulated sports games based on the statistics of actual players--it is evolution of the activity of sports fandom into a sport itself.

It's possible that most readers would benefit from having more than four examples of such an evolution, but it's unlikely. Now--are their other crucial lessons from the history of sport which are not reflected in the present entry on sport? There may be, and if you believe so, you should include that information.

I think one important principle to remember is that we are not the best judges of what every other reader can best understand and appreciate. What I did was read the sport article and think, "I'm not sure if I understand and appreciate what the point of this article is. So I'm going to edit it into a state in which I can understand and appreciate it." And then another, and another reader can go through that process until hopefully every reader can understand and appreciate it.

If, on the other hand, we have as a general rule one person "in charge" of the entry, who has made a decision about what the entry should be, then only that person is guaranteed to understand and appreciate it.

So--the basic concept is that of compromise. If you feel that too much information was redacted, then include it back in--but try to consider your goal now being to make both yourself and myself equivalently satisfied. If you do that, and don't do wholesale reverts of changes I made, I will likely be satisfied.

And if both of us are satisfied (at least equivalently), then it's likely we'll have significantly increased the quality of the entry.

Finally, the best way to work together is to work on the entries themselves first, and only try to hash things out in theory on the discussion pages if necessary. It's better to work in practicalities than in hypotheticals. --The Cunctator 21:21, 14 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Thank you for replying to my note so promptly.

I still feel that the article should not be broken up. This is partly for the reasons I gave you earlier, and also the history of this page shows that the work I did was not initiated only by myself, I was following suggestions of people who had posted before me, and none of them have been in touch to comment on what I had done.

I think it is right that overly long articles should be broken up, but nobody has suggested this about this entry. Also, some of the bits have vanished without trace, no link has been left at the original site. Since the sections may have referred to failrly esoteric subjects (e.g. Art and Sport), I think it is firstly important that they are read, as they broaden the understanding of the subject, and secondly that they should remain with the original article, as people are unlikely to look them up independently.

There are many other article I have looked at and worked on, which are constituted by semi-independent sections, but there is no move to dis-agglomerate these. I am regrettably still in the dark as to why you did this, and so I insist on re-instatement.

The point and purpose of the original article (which you are unclear about) was to deliver a concise but broad understanding of the subject of ?Sport?, and I think this had been achieved after some initial floundering about by all of us who worked on it.

Thanks again for your contribution. I haven't yet had the time to go through ti to allow me to use it to amend the original article, I am sure that this will be possible. : )


TonyClarke 16:10, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

My edits should be taken as a suggestion that the entry was overly long :) . I'd love for you to read User:The Cunctator/Agglomeration and the comments in the related talk page and make your own contribution to the discussion. --The Cunctator 16:17, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

I agree with Tony -- I left comments at User:The Cunctator/Agglomeration, so I won't repeat them all here, but the short version is:

Thanks, BCorr ? Брайен 16:52, 15 Dec 2003 (UTC)

____

Thanks for your comments, User:Bcorr The consensus so far, unless anyone else would like to comment, is that the original article needed work, to make some of the sections less detailed and shorter, and the overall purpose of the page needs to be stated clearly. Also, some sections or topics could lead to stubs for further work. I will rework the original article with that in mind, unless someone has further objections. TonyClarke 01:05, 16 Dec 2003 (UTC)

Why has User:Maximus Rex reverted the external link added by 66.239.235.36 ? Jay 19:32, 13 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I removed this from the main artcle, it needs some work to fit in with what's there, and it has POV issues. Nevertheless, it touches on important issues for the subject.

Sport or Hobby or Game? There are people that immediately consider everything athletic a sport. Here are some guidelines to help you decipher the difference

Sports= these are activities that not only involve athletic ability but skill. *There must also be a scoring system not based on someone's opinion(for example:cheerleading, ice skating, gymnastics, etc.) these are all hobbies because no one in the stands can figure out what has happened until someone in a suit tells them.

TonyClarke 11:56, 9 Mar 2004 (UTC)


Just a question. Does anyone else think it odd that sports are listed under "culture and fine arts" on the main page? (talk)--BozMo 12:12, 10 May 2004 (UTC)

Strange definition, this: " Sport consists of an everyday activity carried out with a purpose and in an environment different from everyday." Sport need not be "everyday". Mandel 13:34, Jun 13, 2004 (UTC)

What is a sport? - lots of interesting comments.

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