Talk:Upset (competition)

Categorize by sports?

Given the extensive list of sports upsets in this article, should we divide the list of events up according to sport? Just throwing it out there and seeing what you guys think. Usharimau (talk) 19:53, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

VCU

vcu over duke wasn't one of the biggest upsets in sports history! it was a regular, 11 seed over 6 seed upset. 20% of people predicted it. WIZARD826 19:49, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

Remove

1) UCLA v. #2 USC Reason: it is an pset in that the result was unexpected, but it is not prominent enough to merit inclusion; plenty of times #2 will lose. In fact, this occured ~6 time in the 2007-8 season. 2) ALCS red sox and yanks Reason: an upset occurs when a team disfavored from the beginning wins. Going into the series, the teams were evenly matched, so the result is not an upset. It's akin to a team losing despite leading by 5 runs in the ninth inning, also not an upset. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.104.160.40 (talk) 02:42, 9 December 2007 (UTC) 3)Boise State vs. Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl. A #8 Team beating a #10 team is not an upset Frank Anchor ^{Talk to me} (R-OH) 01:20, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

1999 Rugby World Cup

I wonder about including the semifinal match of the 1999 Rugby World Cup between New Zealand and France. New Zealand we're heavily favored, but France beat them in a match that the BBC referred to as: "Without question this ranks as the greatest game in World Cup history". ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/rugby_union/rugby_world_cup/history/2966114.stm ) Peoplesunionpro (talk) 19:11, 29 January 2008 (UTC)

2007 Rugby World Cup

I'm sure Argentina's run deserves a mention, beating half the of Six Nations and reaching the semi finals, despite not being part of any of the other regular international competitions 82.13.190.199 (talk) 20:33, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

US Bias (Politics)

Surely there have been political upsets outside the USA? 1992 UK general election perhaps?

Recentism

This whole article is a mess and suffers terribly from recentism as well as parochialism. The Indianapolis mayoral race? Give me a break! Theshoveljockey (talk) 18:30, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Dire need of sources

I proposed wiping anything unsourced and readding verifiable text. Any thoughts? --neon white talk 18:49, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

"cupset"

I've added a mention of the term "cupset" which has been used somewhat often in reference to the FA Cup, in the Association Football section. Not sure that's the best place on the page, but I think this - and any other specific terms for upsets in specific sports or competitions - do merit inclusion on the page. 94.194.66.92 (talk) 21:17, 26 January 2011 (UTC)

Terrible Article

This is such a bad article it's difficult to know where to start. The one significant fact on the page (the surprising defeat of the horse Man o' War by the horse Upset being the root of the term) is uncited, and possibly untrue as the article admits itself. The rest is a massive list of "examples" where the only thing verifying them as "upsets" is the opinion of the editors who contributed them. Consequently it's all original research, 90% of it is POVs. There are a few examples that may stand up to some scrutiny and may be citable, but as the article isn't List of events that some may think are an upset I'd delete practically all of it. --Escape Orbit ^(Talk) 23:15, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

I've removed this list, for the reasons listed above. --Escape Orbit ^(Talk) 11:34, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Restored the list on the account that the reasons for deleting it are too arbitrary. You said that the upsets on the list are a matter of opinion; your notion that the article is "terrible" is an opinion in of itself. Making the list better and only including the best of the best upsets is one thing, but the bottom line is, the article is much better and far more interesting with the list than without it.75.81.197.59 (talk) 00:29, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

The article being "terrible" is not a matter of opinion, it's a matter of its adherence to Wikipedia guidelines and policies. I think my reasons were quite clear on this and not at all arbitrary. Please refer to the guidelines and policies linked in my summary below.

• Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information. This article is 99% listcruft.
• Verifiability - Content should be cited. For such an oversized list, that dwarfs the rest of the article, it has only 8 references. Links to other articles within Wikipedia are not cites.
• Neutrality - whether these events are "upsets" is not for contributing editors to decide. There are frequently no evidence of the term 'upset' on the linked articles, and some don't even mention the incident at all.
• No clear criteria for inclusion. An upset is, by definition, a matter of opinion. This huge list has no clear criteria for defining what should be included and what shouldn't. Essentially it is down to the contributing editor. If, in their opinion, it's an upset they are free to toss it onto the heap.
• Your reasons for restoring the list amounts to "I like it". Your opinion is noted, but is not a reason for keeping this list.
• Examples - are you seriously suggesting that this article needs literally hundreds of "examples" to illustrate the article topic? Do you not think the reader may have got the idea after the first few? Do you seriously believe anyone is going to read them all? This article is not List of Upsets, and any article attempting to be this would be totally unmaintainable.
• Improving the article. Improving the article would be to remove 99% of these superfluous "examples" and retain a handful of clear, unambiguous cited, examples. As it is, this list swamps the article with trivia that does very little to inform the reader on the article subject, and indeed may be off-putting.

--Escape Orbit ^(Talk) 09:34, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the article is a massive list of information and I can be part of the blame for it. I feel that a description of what an upset is and the origins of the term (man-o-war example) are sufficient for the article. Even shorten it to a stub. You bring up some good points as to what constitutes an upset and what does not. With "Upset" being an opinionated term, it is hard to make a list, so I would support either removing it or massively trimming it to very few examples of the greatest upsets in sports history - but even there, there is debate as to what these greatest upsets are - so I think its best to simply remove the massive and always-growing list. Frank Anchor^Talk 20:08, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, I did point out that a good compromise solution would be to only include the very best, most memorable examples of upsets. It's better than deleting the whole thing.75.81.197.59 (talk) 20:43, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Great, then we are agreed. Can I start by removing that which is uncited? Then we'll see what we're left with. If any particularly good examples are lost in this we can look at retrieving and citing them. A good target to aim for would be one solid example from each of the walks of life we have represented; Sport (maybe splitting this into one team and one individual), Politics, TV competition. Any other suitable competitive examples? --Escape Orbit ^(Talk) 20:44, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

I've started on this. Rather than just going with what was cited (very little) I've tried to pick a few reasonable examples (totally arbitrary, I realise). If you think any of these could be replaced by a better example then please do. They all need cited. --Escape Orbit ^(Talk) 09:19, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Giant-killing (disambiguation) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 13:02, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress

There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Upset (disambiguation) which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 13:02, 11 January 2018 (UTC)

Heading back to where the article was before

Unfortunately, this article is heading back to the state it was 13 years ago (see above discussion). It's again becoming dominated by an arbitrary list of events, when all it should contain is some examples. There is no established criteria for inclusion, so editors keep piling on examples that they believe qualify.

The article needs to decide what it is. Is it a list of upsets, of an explanation of what an upset is? A list, I would argue, is a futile endeavour that would be difficult to define and impossible to maintain. Thousands of events can be called an upset. It also seems inappropriate to be including sports and politics in the same article.

So again, I would suggest that this article is pruned back to contain a few, extremely well known, examples, and stop pretending it can be an article documenting every event that has ever been called an upset. Escape Orbit ^(Talk) 19:40, 11 August 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. The examples section should be split into multiple articles such as "List of notable sports upsets", "List of notable political upsets" etc. That would allow for the information without turning this article into a list of things considered upsets. CharlieEdited (talk) 00:21, 3 September 2024 (UTC)