Talk:Effect of COVID-19 on the 2019-20 season

Nationals Cancellation Ambox

There have been repeated attempts to place an ambox (article message box) at the top of the page alerting users that Nationals is canceled, and repeated attempts to revert the change. This shall be an open discussion about this Navbox.

On the side of deleting the ambox, I would argue that the box is not necessary, as Nationals is not the only tournament at stake here, and many users simply come for guidance about their state tournament. The bolding of the cancellation of the National tournament in multiple other places in the article is enough to make the reader aware that the Nationals tournament is an important tournament that was canceled.

Please remember that this is an open discussion, all are welcome to chime in with thoughts on either side, and in the end, no one is "right." Please be respectful and thoughtful in your posts. I would love to hear others' thoughts on this! Thank you. :) ~ Pepperonipi ^talk 20:13, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Support removal of ambox. I agree with pepperonipi, but I'll offer another reason. Non-member visitors to scioly.org, of which there are many, don't realize Science Olympiad is highly decentralized. The cancelation of the national tournament doesn't cancel all other tournaments, but visitors may wrongly believe that their state's tournament may be canceled only based on seeing the ambox's statement about nationals. Although the ambox may be factually correct, we should take caution when the facts are highly likely to be misinterpreted. I would not entirely be opposed to an ambox that includes a notice that "The cancelation of nationals does not necessarily imply the cancelation of your state or region's tournaments"—but this would still be redundant, and it wouldn't help much for visitors concerned only about their state per pepperonipi's reason. gz839918 (talk) 20:42, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

If it can be misinterpreted, then we can add a subtitle explaining that this doesn't mean all state competitions are canceled, and if their state competition isn't canceled, they should keep studying.User:Nurd07

I don't think you fully understood our points. We do not believe that the ambox should be there in the first place, not that people may interpret the ambox on the page in an incorrect way. The ambox is very unnecessary, as it is only one of many tournaments that have been canceled. Please defend your reasoning if you believe that the ambox should still be there. ~ Pepperonipi ^talk 01:02, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, but it is the final competition of the United States. It is bigger than any other tournament. - Nurd07

I understand that, but note that it is already emphasized in the article with bold text. Remember that for many teams, they aren’t coming to the article anxiously waiting to find out the National tournament is canceled. They are coming to the article to find out the status of other tournaments or the state of tournaments in general. ~ Pepperonipi ^talk 01:26, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Ok - Nurd07

Whoops! I realize I submitted a bit late, but ya here's my 2 cents. We understand that Nats is the biggest tournament. However, while Nats is the biggest of them all, not all teams make it; in fact, only a handful (about 60) get bids while compared to states which is about like 1000 teams. For example, my team (Conant) never makes it to the Nats level. However, we have made state for the past 4 years. In this scenario, the team doesn't care about anything related to Nats since they haven't reached that caliper. However, knowing that if the IL state tournament is canceled or not is way more important since they go to state every year. The ambox shouldn't be put up, because it excludes roughly 98% (even more if we also consider those that don't make state) of all the SciOly teams in the nation. -Nydauron (talk) 01:37, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Sources needed!

Hi everyone! There have been a lot of states that have posted responses due to this ongoing pandemic, most of which we never wanted to happen :(. That aside, there are still a lot of sources that are missing. Those that are missing sources or have really non-credible sources include Texas, Alabama, Nevada, Massachusetts, Hawai'i, Rhode Island, and Maryland. Examples of good sources can be pictures of emails from state directors or responses posted on state sites. In general, there needs to be enough context so that it can be confirmed that it was an official statement. Any help will be greatly appreciated! -Nydauron (talk) 20:40, 12 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you to all that have been providing sources! We still need sources for Texas, Alabama, Nevada, and Massachusetts. -Nydauron (talk) 01:57, 13 March 2020 (UTC)

Archiving Links

I recently went down the list of sources and archived a large majority of the sources provided on the page. However, for some reason, when I try to archive Insta posts, the post doesn't load in web.archive. Does anyone have a possible solution to archiving these sources? --_{N^ydauronchit^chat} 22:12, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank for the archiving work - I removed the Link Rot template because most of the links on that page are now completely archived. As for the Insta posts, I simply removed them from the page, while making sure other sources were available to supplement. ~ Pepperonipi ^talk 17:14, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Outbreak Map: WV

I believe West Virginia should be changed to green on the map. The Division B tournament wasn't cancelled, it wasn't scheduled in the first place because WV had no B teams this year. I do see that their website says that "we are canceling Div. B this year" (WV Website), but note that it also says "Div. C will be held as planned on Feburary 29th, 2020" underneath that, implying it was written before Feb. 29. It doesn't appear their website has been updated recently. Tailsfan101^talk 18:14, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Requesting other opinions - This is a tricky situation, because WV is (I believe) the only state that planned to not have a specific division held. This is going to be hard to represent on the map, because at first glance, it would likely appear as if WV cancelled a division because of CoViD-19. I agree that the way I redid the map was probably not the best. However, I'm not really sure where to go from here... if we revert to the light green = one division held, we're going to want to revert back the other states as well. However, this would equate WV holding one division (as planned) with the other states who held one division because the other was cancelled due to the virus.

Honestly, maybe the only fair option is to mark WV with a note on the map after reverting back to the lime green = one division held format? Still want to hear if any other editors have opinions on this. Please share! ~ Pepperonipi ^talk 21:31, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

I think West Virginia should be dark green to signify that its tournament was held, and then there should be a note somewhere that WV only runs a Division C tournament. I agree that marking WV as light green would put it on the same level as tournaments that cancelled one division because of coronavirus, and it doesn't make much sense to do that. The page is tracking the effect that coronavirus has had on tournaments, and there wouldn't have been a B tournament in WV regardless. Marking it dark green makes it clearer that nothing in WV was cancelled because of the disease, there was just never going to be a tournament. --Jaspattack (talk) 01:37, 24 March 2020 (UTC)