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2023–24 snooker world rankings page

I want to start working on the 2023-24 ranking page, but unlike the last season, I can't find either the revision dates, or the lists after each revision. Looks like WST uploaded these to their website last season, but not for the current one. And snooker.org only has the rankings, not the actual points after each revision. Anybody know where to find a good source for this information? AmethystZhou (talk) 08:50, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

There are these pdfs on the WST site: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6], [7], [8] which give the ranking points after each ranking event. WST/WPBSA used to provide a re-ranking schedule like this [9] but I can't find one for the current season. There is this [10] but it's not got the same level of detail. https://wpbsa.com/rankings/rankings-faq/ says "Points from the current season will be removed according to the 2023/24 Re-Ranking Points List" but gives no clue as to where this list is. Nigej (talk) 09:47, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for these! I'll start working on this. I was wondering the same thing about the re-ranking list, I suppose we can work out points from which tournament was removed based on the points, but we still need a source for that. If only the WST website isn't a shambolic mess... AmethystZhou (talk) 09:54, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed the "re-ranking" stuff can be worked out from the points lists but it would be nice to have a proper source. Nigej (talk) 10:00, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I created the page with the ranking points, still need to figure out those cut-off dates, though. AmethystZhou (talk) 14:01, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I'm assuming that if we work out (Points after ranking event N + Money earned in ranking event N+1 - Points after ranking event N+1) (eg for Trump 799,000 (after Wuhan) + 80,000 (winner in Northern Ireland) - 869,000 (after Northern Ireland) = 10,000) you'll find that it matches events at Snooker world ranking points 2021/2022#Ranking points which will be the ones that were lost at the re-ranking (maybe the 2021 English Open (snooker) in this case, not sure). Would need to be cut/paste into a spreadsheet. All exceptionally complicated. Nigej (talk) 14:26, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I am using an Excel spreadsheet to convert the WST .pdf lists into a Wikipedia-friendly format. The tournament winners lose a lot of points so it's not too hard to figure out the drop-offs. AmethystZhou (talk) 14:48, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Good work. I notice that you've added columns at 2023–24 snooker world rankings for two events where the rankings changed (as they always do after a ranking event) but those new rankings were not used for seeding any tournaments. Previously we haven't included such rankings. https://www.snooker.org/res/index.asp?template=25&season=2023 also leaves them out. Personally I'd be quite keen to have these included somewhere, since they help to find a player's highest ranking. I suppose one issue is that this table quickly gets way too wide. Not sure what the best approach is. Nigej (talk) 16:16, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I've hidden the columns for upcoming revision points, and there are a couple more that are not used to seed events. About the table width, I think we can add a single "rank" column to the left, and only have the points to the right, instead of displaying both the rank and points for each revision point. I made one in my sandbox. Perhaps also make the fonts slightly smaller, but I don't know how to apply that to the entire table, without having to add the "style=" attribute everywhere. AmethystZhou (talk) 17:26, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You can replace the opening line of the table with something like {| class="wikitable sortable" style="text-align:center;font-size:90%". 85% is the minimum allowed, per MOS:SMALL, MOS:SMALLFONT, WP:MOS#Formatting issues. Personally I'd prefer a bit the opposite of your sandbox idea, rankings for all events, points for just the first and last; on the basis that the ranking is more interesting than the money. Nigej (talk) 18:13, 14 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think it's possible to collapse part of a table (i. e. make the points columns collapsible and hidden by default). But changing the font size works! I must have been using the wrong syntax for the font size. When the entire table is complete, it'll be about two screens wide on a regular desktop monitor. Not too terrible, I suppose... AmethystZhou (talk) 17:06, 16 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
You could make it a little bit narrower by removing the "Country" column entirely, and putting in a flagathlete wrapper for each player. Just a thought.  Alan  (talk) 09:30, 17 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Yes I plan to do that too, I don't think many people would be sorting that table by country... AmethystZhou (talk) 18:24, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
@AmethystZhou: Also - take a look at the way this table in Formula1 is arranged, particularly with regard to the horizontal scroll-bar and how one specific column is always visible. I have no idea how that is achieved but it might be useful for you to investigate.  Alan  (talk) 17:27, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
That's a nice looking table! And yes, wikitables allow fixed rows or columns, like this one in my sandbox. It looks good but the code has a bug where the borders disappear on Firefox, for some reason.. We can definitely borrow the color coding idea from that F1 table, though. Denoting top 16, top 64, etc. could be useful. I'm using an Excel spreadsheet to generate the wikitable code, so it's relatively easy to tweak styles. I'll find some time next week and figure this out. AmethystZhou (talk) 18:23, 18 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Do you know if WST is still doing these pdf lists after the website update? Those are very handy for creating the world rankings article and can be easily archived for reference. Now since the website update, I can't find them anywhere, and the old pdf links are all broken. :( AmethystZhou (talk) 02:51, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
World Snooker have today (23 November) updated the calendar for this season following the cancellation of the Six Red World Championship, with the 2024 World Open dates changing ([11]wst.tv/updated-tournament-calendar-2/) ([12]PDF Calendar).
World Snooker have also kindly provided a Re-ranking points list as well ([13]Re-raking PDF) Steveflan (talk) 20:41, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you! I added these to the ranking and season page. Although the WST page says the Six-red Championship is postponed, not cancelled, but didn't give a date. The snooker.org page says the same. AmethystZhou (talk) 21:21, 23 November 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Names of some Championship League articles

Three of the Championship League tournament articles have very odd names. I fully understand how this came about, because of the mess COVID made of the schedule in 2020 and 2021. But now that the dust seems to have settled, it would seem sensible to change these now. I would suggest the following:

That would bring them into line with all the others, except for the round–robin which was a one-off anyway. Anybody agree/disagree?  Alan  (talk) 19:23, 29 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

...sorry - just realised that the 3rd one in my list was renamed a long time ago. Only two then.  Alan  (talk) 19:28, 29 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Thing is the first two require no disambiguation, because there is no other event. The reason why we disambiguate 2021 Championship League (2021–22 season) is because there is a 2021 Championship League (2020–21 season) article. As these both have the same title, we disambiguate. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 09:56, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
OK - no problem. I just thought it would be tidier.  Alan  (talk) 10:05, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I totally understand. Article titles are supposed to be succinct, the reason why we don't have (snooker) at the end of every title. They don't have to be internally consistent either. My thoughts are that we should only disambiguate if there is another article with the same name (or, one is incredibly likely to be created). Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:23, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
We have a number of articles disambiguated with (snooker), most of them being home nations events. See for example: 2023 Scottish Open (snooker) but the undisambiguated title doesn't exist. I can see Scottish Open offers a reason for why this is, but until any such articles are made for the other sporting events, I feel we shouldn't disambiguate these snooker pages until it becomes a requirement to do so (and there's nothing to suggest those other sports are getting pages tbh). -- CitroenLover (talk) 19:59, 30 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I kind of agree, but I know the wider wikisphere doesn't so much. There are articles such as 2018 Scottish Open (badminton), as much as we shouldn't need to disambiguate if there is no other article with the same page, it wouldn't be great to have 2018 Scottish Open (snooker) and then the next year have 2019 Scottish Open, because that one is free. Because it's a series of articles, they should probably be as consistent as we can be. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:13, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That being the case, for consistency, should we make the changes to the names of the two articles as suggested in my original post?  Alan  (talk) 10:30, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, the 2019-20 event was never called the 2020 Championship League, so should stay where it is. The second should probably move to (invitational) for consistency. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:33, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think that would be right. The 2019–20 Championship League was the usual format, and I think should therefore become "2020 Championship League (invitational)" to bring it into line with the rest. The 2020 Championship League (2019–20 season) was a one-off round-robin tournament and I think should either be left as it is, or changed to "2020 Championship League (round–robin)" or something similar.  Alan  (talk) 11:56, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would have thought we should the name used at the time the event took place. Whether that's consistent or inconsistent with the names of the other similar events doesn't really come into it. Nigej (talk) 12:07, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No, the 2019-20 Championship League was always known as the 2019-20 Championship League, not known as the 2020 Championship League. See [14] for example. We can't just name it the 2020 event because we just want to. There is two events called the 2020 Championship League, the 2020 Championship League (2019–20 season) and 2020 Championship League (ranking). The first could probably be "invitational", certainly not round-robin, because all Championship League events are round-robins. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 12:08, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think that's right either. Championship League events are not all round-robins. The "normal" invitational version is a weirdly structured mish-mash of round-robins and play-offs, with a final best-of-five match. The 2020 Championship League (2019–20 season) was a complete one-off, all round-robin, with no "final" as such.  Alan  (talk) 10:05, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But to call one edition the "round-robin" one, when they all have a round-robin isn't very descriptive. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 12:14, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That is very true, but its current name isn't descriptive either. I think it needs to be called something that sets it apart from all the others.  Alan  (talk) 12:43, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WST website update

Hi folks, the WST website has been updated to the long-awaited new format. However, WST have failed to introduce a redirect system for all the old linnks, which means every link we have pointing to something like wst.tv/some-named-post-on-the-website-here/ will go to a 404 Not Found. As an example: https://wst.tv/murphy-takes-season-opener/

The new link format appears to involve including the year, month and day when the post was made (eg https://www.wst.tv/news/2023/july/21/murphy-takes-season-opener/ is the new link for the above article). The only way we're going to be able to fix this over hundreds of articles is to either:

  • Manually update every single link [after searching for every single title through the new search box] OR
  • Getting a bot to scrape the pages and adding the details in automatically.

While the new site is welcome, this broken link issue is not very helpful at all. They might introduce a redirect system for all these broken links in due course, but until then, all our WST links are invalid. -- CitroenLover (talk) 18:57, 4 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That's terrible. Perhaps we can use archive links, many of the WST pages are archived. EDIT: It also broke all of the tournament pages. The Masters, for example: old / new.AmethystZhou (talk) 19:19, 4 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Might be worth waiting to see if they do fix the redirects (although in my experience they rarely do). If there is a distinct naming convention, we can fix with AWB, else use archive-urls (you can run IABot on an article). Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 21:57, 4 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The image urls are also broken. If you go to the Murphy link above, the images are all missing. I just sent an e-mail to WST about the broken links and images, hopefully they add redirects, it shouldn't be too difficult to implement on their part. Although, the new urls do follow a naming convention. https://wst.tv/murphy-takes-season-opener/ turns into https://www.wst.tv/news/2023/july/21/murphy-takes-season-opener/, and the added dates are the article publication date. AmethystZhou (talk) 22:34, 4 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's right, but trying to automate making that change relies on knowing the published date, which will kill the task being done by AWB/a bot. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 23:00, 4 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If someone shows me a bunch of before and after URLs (to the same content, before and after) I might be able to work out some kind of scriptable solution.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:11, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think the "news" articles all follow the same pattern as shown above, just insert the publication date shown at the top of the article. The other pages like the tournament pages are a bit more problematic, though. The Masters, for example, was moved from https://www.wst.tv/tournaments/masters/ to https://www.wst.tv/themasters. This is a huge mistake on WST's part IMO, now even Google will show the same broken old links that leads nowhere. AmethystZhou (talk) 22:24, 5 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, at least that one's a simple AWB/JWB substition. As for the others, if I'm understanding correctly, it requires going back to the article (somehow) and finding the date in it? If so, I can't fix that. If citations already have the date, maybe that could be extracted, though. But I guess it would still require manual testing of the repaired URL. Fargh.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  00:24, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@SMcCandlish: You would also need to be careful not to just substitute the URL, because it also appears (in its entirety) within the "archive-url" tag for the citations which have been archived. There are many of these, and thankfully the archives all work OK.
Sure. Hopefully the WST people will fix this on their end. Scripting up some stuff to fix at least some of this would be a lot of gruelling regular expression and JavaScript work (and I'm rather backlogged on that account for a different on-site project).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  18:22, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The more I look at this, the more intractable it seems. There doesn't appear to be any way to reliably distinguish something like https://wst.tv/murphy-takes-season-opener/ from other pages at the site (other than those with standardized directory prefixes like /tournaments/ oder /players/), including ones that would not be fixed by a change to https://www.wst.tv/news/2023/july/21/murphy-takes-season-opener/ format, even after doing a tremendous amount of work to detect and "munge" various date formats. Urgh.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  06:51, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You are right, the new format is actually better in that it distinguishes different categories of pages. But "upgrading" from the old to new is very difficult for us to do. Also, I manually fixed the WST links in the 2024 Masters article, and noticed that some of them had the wrong "date" tag, so using a script to automatically put the date from that tag into the url would cause some errors. Though if you Google the title of the page, it seems to capture the correct original publication date. AmethystZhou (talk) 08:29, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Downright nightmarish.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:07, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A nightmare as you say! It seems to me there are only two options. Option one is to manually go through all of the thousands of citations individually to correct them. Option two is to convince the WST's software suppliers to provide redirects. It would appear that there are two companies involved. One is https://urbanzoo.io/ and the other is https://www.imgarena.com/. Someone who is a lot more tech savvy than me will need to talk to them.  Alan  (talk) 10:36, 7 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
AmethystZhou has sent an email to WST, but my experience is that they will not respond. It might be better to try to contact their software provider, but I have no idea who that is. The ideal solution would be to get them to provide redirects, which I don't think would be too onerous a task.  Alan  (talk) 06:50, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
...also: the WST player template, which is used in the "External links" section of many players' articles, does not work anymore; and the vast majority of the citations in the nicknames template are now broken, although most of them are archived.  Alan  (talk) 07:50, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Most references should be archived. External links will be broken. Any ideas what the naming convention change is for players? Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 19:17, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There doesn't seem to be a naming convention at all. For Ronnie O'Sullivan:
Old = https://www.wst.tv/players/ronnie-osullivan/
New = https://www.wst.tv/players/226c7294-655e-4925-bcde-17330ddfc438
 Alan  (talk) 19:29, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oh wow that's awful. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 22:18, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It seems wst have replaced most SEO-friendly slugs with UUID’s. They guarantee that no two players can have the same name in a url, but it is also a horrible format for public-facing url’s unless you have some specific reason to use them. — CitroenLover (talk) 23:52, 6 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think the easiest thing to do is just change url-status to dead and use the archive if it exists. That's what I'll be doing from now on. I don't suppose WST will ever fix the problem. And they've utterly jumped the shark with that awful new title font they're using. Rodney Baggins (talk) 23:24, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

On this note, I see that the new match stats page doesn't include century breaks per tournament. I saw Nigej add snookerinfo as a source for this (and it does indeed have the info). I just wanted to grasp if we deem it to be a RS or not. I thought previously we had it down as a situational source. Happy to have a full new thread for this, but it seems most suitable here.
I know if we take anything to GAN or FAC it'll get brought up, so best to have a convo about it first. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 13:00, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
One problem we still have is the that new WST is pretty useless for statistical information. See eg [15] which has the season total of centuries by player (scroll down). This has, for instance, Kyren Wilson with 31 and Zhou with 30, while snookerinfo has 32 and 29 (cuetracker has 32 and 29 too). Personally I happy with snookerinfo. Unlike cuetracker, it's got a very restricted amount of data, basically just the centuries. This have always been 100% reliable from my perspective. If they started publishing other types of data then I might need to reconsider. Nigej (talk) 13:36, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I feel like, at this point, we should probably rely more on alternative sources of statistical data, for anything that can't be found on WST's site. snooker.org is what I've been using [and its generally accurate to my knowledge], so if anything matches up with it, that would be good enough for me. --CitroenLover (talk) 14:57, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that snooker.org is a good source. However it doesn't deal in frame scores/centuries before the semi-final stage. So it's no use for anything relating to century totals. It's true that there is sometimes text like "The 142 in the first frame was Carter's 400th career century", but the suspicion is that this information has come straight out of the snookerinfo site that we're discussing. Certainly there's no indication AFAIK that snooker.org maintain this information themselves. Nigej (talk) 15:06, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, snooker.org is grand, but doesn't actually cover century breaks per tournament. Snooker Scene always used to, but I haven't gotten a copy since Clive left. BennyOnTheLoose might well know though. I think the thing is, if snookerinfo is the only place that covers the info, that doesn't mean we can cite it as reliable. I don't really know what editorial oversight it has, or how we can rely on the info it produces. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 15:26, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've been adding the WST live score pages for each individual match for the Masters, but it's probably not the best option for tournaments with more matches. AmethystZhou (talk) 15:31, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As I noted earlier the WST site is very unreliable on pretty much any basis, but we continue to use it, shutting our eyes to the issues there. At the end of the day reliability is judged on a track record, and I've got say that snookerinfo passes that, based on matching statements in other sources that we regard as reliable (generally someone reaching a particular milestone). Nigej (talk) 15:35, 14 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Snooker Scene doesn't include century breaks as a distinct list, but does have them all in the match details. In some years, they used to do "career prize money" and "career century breaks" lists, but I haven't seen one for a while. No source is perfect, and it seems like snookerinfo might be good as we can get. Is there any appetite to try to get some tpyes of info from Cuetracker (excluding the known issues) accepted as reliable? I'm happy to draft up something for the Reliable Sources Noticeboard. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 11:38, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Am I correct in thinking that the consensus on CueTracker's unreliability comes from older data, and whether they include events that may not be considered professional tournaments? If so, something like a date cut-off and limit to tournament stats of official WST professional events could be good. AmethystZhou (talk) 11:42, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure it really comes from just older data. The issue initially related to the use of composite data (mostly career totals) that were added (mostly uncited) in player infoboxes. This was commonly centuries totals, prize money totals, non-ranking wins. We removed the latter two from the infobox (since we couldn't find any reliable source for these) and centuries totals are now stored in a central location. Obviously the cuetracker totals are simply the sum total from the data that's in it. Some events are not and some events that are in it (as professional events) don't seem to regarded as such by others. I suppose the other issue is whether we could usefully use the information relating to a particular match or tournament (say). There's such a lot of data and we've not idea where it all comes from (mind you, you could say that a lot of other sources). Is there a compelling reason to use it? Nigej (talk) 12:59, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know whether or not it's a "compelling reason", but CueTracker is always my first port-of-call to check the century breaks totals for ongoing tournaments. For instance: cuetracker.net/tournaments/masters/2024/5965 agrees with SnookerInfo which agrees with our total for the Masters. This is, pretty much, always the case. Also CueTracker is the only site that regularly records the referees for matches. Our primary source (WST) is totally unreliable in almost every way.  Alan  (talk) 09:31, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If we did petition to use cuetracker, we'd have to do so on a very strict "situational source" basis, that we only use it for certain items of information. Specificallythat it is used only for tournament total century breaks, and not for things which it was previously used for, such as career century breaks, total career prize money, and that it shouldn't be used to source prose information. Looking back at some old pages, they used cuetracker almost exclusively to source things like career summaries, which we have plenty of better sources to do this. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 14:26, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That sounds like a plan. How do we go about doing that then?  Alan  (talk) 16:32, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A well thought out post to WP:RSN is probably a good start Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 22:24, 17 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I wouldn't have a clue where to start with that.  Alan  (talk) 08:17, 18 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Too wide

There has been a bit of a discussion in Talk:2024 World Grand Prix about the bracket getting too wide. There doesn't seem to be much point in keeping the seed numbers and tooltips in after the first round. It seems like needless repetition and makes the bracket wider than it needs to be. Nigej has also suggested going back to using flagicons after the first round. So - leave the first round as it is, change to flagicons for subsequent rounds and take out the seeding numbers and tooltips for subsequent rounds. Agree/disagree?  Alan  (talk) 09:09, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have commented my opinions there. Tl:dr team width should be 220, flagicon after round 1. Seedings in tournaments such as this, which are restricted fields, really should be going into the seedings parameters and not the player name parameters, thats what it is for. CitroenLover (talk) 13:17, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I disagree. If you look at this previous discussion you'll see that it was (pretty much) agreed to use this style for the seeds since using the seed parameters is "confusing because the seedings and the scores are the same size and font, to the left and right of the players' names". If we just do as suggested by Nigej and myself, then having "team-width=auto" is no longer a problem.  Alan  (talk) 13:51, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What about splitting the last 16 and later rounds into a separate table? It will solve the width issue, and also highlight the later few rounds, which I think most people would be more interested in looking at. It was done this way in the past, especially for the UK Championships with the flat-128 draws, e. g. 2019. AmethystZhou (talk) 07:05, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't much like that style. Anyway - the problem has now gone away, and I don't mind the flagicons so much now that I've got the previews switched off.  Alan  (talk) 07:59, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
[Copy of comment from Welsh Open thread as I hadn't been aware of this thread].
I would strongly favour keeping the seeding numbers throughout, using whichever draw bracket format works best visually. It's confusing having to trace back to the start of a 64- or 128- entry draw to see what seed number (if any) the semi finalists are! I can't think of any examples from any sport in any medium where I've seen the seed numbers hidden once you get part way into a draw. Rio309w (talk) 22:56, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Non-ranking titles

Hi all, someone posted this on my talk page: "Just want to know if the wiki snooker community is considering making a separate section/chart to list snooker players Senior Tour titles count as a whole new category instead of the current practice of listing it under the current 'Non-ranking titles'. I cannot see what justifies the recently finished, single-framed final match tournament - Mr Vegas Seniors 900 tournament being listed in the same category as The Masters or the Champion of Champions or Shanghai Masters etc., they are completely different in importance and difficulties and should not belong in the same category. Even listing World Seniors Championship title alongside The Masters or the Champion of Champions is unfitting. Obviously they are tremendously different in importance, some may argue they would trade dozens and dozens Senior titles to just one Masters. Having a separate category would make it easier for new fans of the sport to recognize the differences in these tournaments and grasp the weight of the achievements of the players."

@Lee Vilenski noted: "Well, I mean 'non-ranking' also contains super low profile events like the Vienna Open or Pink Ribbon events in the same bracket as other non-ranking events. Personally, I don't know why we try to count non-ranking events, as having 20 small non-ranking events don't amass to winning the Masters or the like. As for having a separate section, I'm not sure. Perhaps we should only mention professional titles, and then really notable non-ranking titles, which would include things like the seniors events and the national amateur titles. The issues you'll get would be with setting the inclusion criteria too low, and having John's bar's U25s handicap pairs or the like"

We probably need to set some parameters around what counts as noteworthy non-ranking titles. The Masters, Shanghai Masters, and Champion of Champions are obvious current ones. However, the Steve Davis bio lists his participation in 81 non-ranking finals, which seems excessive.

Thoughts? HurricaneHiggins (talk) 12:21, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Someone, probably the same person, posted to my talkpage asking me to put the seniors televised 900 from pre-new year onto the season page as well. I am not acrive enough here now to be able to do this [and most of my time is spent on a mobile device which is hard enough to post on, let alone edit, considering my screen keeps freezing and not responding to my inputs]. CitroenLover (talk) 13:20, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's not the same user, unless they have an incredibly good VPN service. The one on your talk page was almost certainly blocked user User:DooksFoley147, best to just WP:DENY. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 13:26, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I have not posted under any other ips and I don't have a handle, so whoever it is, it's not me. Especially after reading all the exchanges here, I get the impression that this other person - DooksFoley147 - you guys are talking about, seems to be all FOR the Seniors Tour being listed as a professional event, while I'm all AGAINST it. 2605:52C0:1001:260:E000:68FF:FEFE:D3BC (talk) 18:24, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just to throw in my two cents, it could simple, we can keep it simple and systematic at the same time by following simple rationales, and divide all tournaments into 4 broad categories:
Professional Ranking(most easily defined), Professional Non-ranking, Amateur(also very easily defined), and Seniors Tour. The Professional Ranking and Professional Non-ranking categories must be a WST event to begin with.
I want to elaborate on the ‘Professional Non-ranking' category: it must be 1) a non-ranking tournament is open to all professional players. But almost all professional non-ranking tournaments have qualification criteria such that the number of players cannot be the full 128 players on the tour. However this does NOT mean that these tournaments are not open to all players, for example, ALL professional players have a chance to contend for a place in The Masters, as are ALL professional players have a chance to contend for a place in the Champion of Champions, the CHANCE is open for them, therefore even though The Masters and Champion of Champions only allow 16 players in each of the events, they are still open to ALL professional players.
or 2) invites players without an upper cap to their professional ranking, this is the case with ALL professional non-ranking tournaments, there cannot be a rule saying "a player with a current ranking above top 32 cannot participate". Or both (as almost all Professional Non-ranking tournaments do satisfy both rules)
Therefore, even though Seniors Tour tournaments are WST events, the Seniors Tour does not meet "Professional Non-ranking" tournament definition as I just mentioned, for which I will also elaborate on: In the past, in certain years, players participate in Seniors Tour can NOT be a current professional player to begin with! They must be an amateur or someone dropped off the tour! That puts the Seniors titles in those particular years equivalent to amateur titles at best. Now the current rule is that a player must be ranked 65th on the tour or WORSE to participate in the Seniors Tour, which means, if Ronnie is ranked #1 even if he's 90 years old, he could not participate in Seniors Tour. The rules for Seniors tour had changed so often in the past, some years the age cap is 40, some years the age cap is 45, all these rules were made to keep players like Ronnie out of the tour, then as the class of '92 aged, they realized the age cap alone could not work, so they played around with ranking requirements. So, Seniors tournament under the current rule is not fully amateur either(confusing I know), therefore Seniors titles must be a separate 4th category because it doesn't completely fit into the other 3. The only catch is, when making the general page on Seniors Tour, someone has to research up the participation requirements for each year and explain that to the broad public, so people understand why some players(like Mark Williams) played in certain years and not the other years, and that by itself explains the weight of the tournaments in different years.
Lastly, an extreme example: what if in a particular year, everyone ranked in the top 112 denies to play in The Masters(assuming the #1 seed - reigning world champion is in the top 112 as well), and only players ranked 113-128 participate? Well, The Masters in this case still meets the definition of "Professional Non-ranking", as it satisfies the 2 rules I just mentioned above. It simply means that for that particular year, that particular EDITION of The Masters had a lower quality, but that doesn't take away the prestige of the tournament as a whole, or the tournament in ITSELF being Professional Non-ranking. 2605:52C0:1001:260:E000:68FF:FEFE:D3BC (talk) 20:14, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The problem is that this is all WP:OR. We don't operate that way. Other people decide on the categorisation and we report what they say. Another issue is that you are focussed on the modern game. We're an encyclopedia and cover a hundred year of snooker events. Nigej (talk) 20:25, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We can't just make up our own categories. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 20:31, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But wouldn't you agree these 4 categories would make the most sense? I don't know about wiki rules, but if that's the case, such that we are stuck with only 2 or 3 categories, I'm out of ideas where to best fit the Seniors titles. The Seniors Tour will most likely be here to stay for a long long time ever since its revival around a decade ago, some of the best players are going into retirement soon so I'd say the need for a separate Seniors category becomes more and more eminent and urgent. Sooner or later it has to be dealt with and categorized.
Ps: who decides or how do they decide the need to add a new category?(I had seen the stats part - the gray area on top right - of snooker player's page with their pictures etc. change over the years to include or exclude certain information, so someone must be making the decisions) 2605:52C0:1001:260:E000:68FF:FEFE:D3BC (talk) 20:39, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I must say that I disagree about the World Seniors Tour. As yet it still trying to find its feet and it could go either way. Trying strange new formats like the 900 is a sure sign of desperation. We're not stuck with any particular number of categories - they just need to be well defined and be up to a certain standard, for inclusion. From that point of view I can see that the seniors tour is a good candidate for inclusion. Are there reliable sources listing all the events? As to your final question: The ranking events and the minor-ranking events are well defined - sources exist for them. The others like "non-ranking" are a mish-mash. We've had a few discussions here over the years as to how to resolve the issue but have got nowhere, and that's largely because there's no good sources out there. Nigej (talk) 21:05, 19 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
As per your previous reply and said "other people decide on the categorization" and Lee Vilenski said "we can't just make up our own categories", I still want to be clear about exactly who are these "other people" in the wiki world? It seems like there's a higher power out there but with no direction to contact them? Are these "other people" wiki employees?
Maybe we should take it to these "other people" and have a vote on the need to have a separate category. 2605:52C0:1001:260:E000:68FF:FEFE:D3BC (talk) 14:30, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We summarise what reliable sources say about a subject. We can't just split up items based on our own feelings of the quality of an article. The only real editorial concept we have for inclusion is notability. It's not for us to say an event is more or less prestigious than another, certainly not separate them in this way. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 15:40, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Of course what I explained is not based on my own feelings, it is absolutely by objectively speaking, and according to reliable sources such as WST, Seniors Tour entrance requirement clearly excludes it being listed as "professional" tournament. When you limit entrance requirement to only amateurs and people outside of top-64, that in ITSELF explains that such tournaments are not as prestigious as professional tournaments (ranking or non-ranking). It doesn't need me to say and it is not for me to say, but anyone reading the entrance requirement would draw the SAME conclusion that Seniors Tour isn't as prestigious as The Masters, it can simply be measured objectively. Therefore listing them in the same category for titles count is not right. 2605:52C0:1001:260:E000:68FF:FEFE:D3BC (talk) 16:15, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think we could add a qualifier: "professional" non-ranking tournaments. So invitational events run by the WST or Matchroom and are considered part of the "main tour events" (Masters, Champion of Champions, Shanghai Masters, Championship League, the new Saudi event, etc.) count, while others (pro-am, exhibitions, "Macau Masters", etc.) wouldn't. AmethystZhou (talk) 09:50, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm confused now. Are we thinking about the season articles or the tables in the biographies? If it's the latter we need to consider the last 40 years or so, before WST or Matchroom were even thought of. Nigej (talk) 11:59, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Good question. From a historical perspective, snooker rankings didn't even exist before 1976, and so all tournaments before that point were "non-ranking." Some tournaments have had both non-ranking and ranking incarnations, such as the UK Championship, which began in 1977 but only became a ranking event in 1984, or the Shanghai Masters, which went the other way, transitioning from a ranking to a non-ranking event in 2018. So it's complicated and confusing, even to those who have followed snooker for years. We now have ranking events, non-ranking events, and a new category of tournaments such as the Macau Snooker Masters, which are being billed as "exhibition" events—presumably so they can exist outside the auspices of the WST—but are in reality lucrative tournaments featuring top players and more prize money than most regular ranking events. That said ... we need to consider what the purpose of a snooker biography is, and what counts as notable. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 12:57, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We are talking about both. Also, WST was created as a direct takeover of WPBSA tournaments that existed before, it simply is the tournament / commercial arm of WPBSA. So it doesn't matter if we had WST 20 years ago or not, the modern games since 1977 run by WPBSA can simply relate to WST, one can easily understand that. The organization is just a name, doesn't matter what they call it, they are the same list of events. The point is, they are qualified as "professional". I think AmethystZhou understood my point perfectly, the Seniors Tour is in no way a professional tour and should not be listed under "professional" non-ranking. 2605:52C0:1001:260:E000:68FF:FEFE:D3BC (talk) 14:25, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My point above was that if there was a well-defined list of Seniors Tour events then that would be a possible reason to hive them off into a separate table. However the main issue with the non-ranking table is still what it should cover. Do we know which events were "run" (or sanctioned or whatever) by the WPBSA and which ones were not. Was the 1978 Irish Masters "run" by WPBSA? The article says so but provides no evidence. Or did the organisers in Ireland just ring up the pros and organise it? There's basically no coverage in the British press. Seems to me we're still in the dark about many events. And there's the issue about whether some events were "finals" at all. John Spencer's win in the 1975 Benson & Hedges Ireland Tournament was a single match, how can that be a "final" in any real sense? So many questions and so few answers? Nigej (talk) 18:50, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think we can do our best with what we have. If we know for sure a Senior's event's organizers and format and entrance requirements, we can list it accordingly (such as in the Pro-Am as Lee Vilenski and others suggested). For the events that really lack good sources, we can instead put them under maybe as an "uncertain" category, instead of "guessing" which category it best fits. At least when doing it this way, everything categorized is concrete, and events needing guess-work will be put aside. When an event consists of just one match, in a sense it can be defined as a finals match, this is the case with challenge format events, such as the challenge format of many world championships before the crucible era, and yes, it is correct for those to stay as non-ranking, even though I personally think those would be more fitting to be amateur events. Since "professional" means to practice something as a profession and make a full time living out of it, and pre-crucible era's world championships were largely treated as amateur events and no one could make a full-time living out of snooker as a profession back then, so pre-crucible era is more like an era of bar sport hobbies. But that is a completely separate topic. 2605:52C0:1001:260:E000:68FF:FEFE:D3BC (talk) 21:27, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We kind of already do that, see John Higgins#amatuer finals. There's an argument that the Seniors events should just be listed as Pro-Am events and have done with it. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 12:44, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I support it. I think this should be done ASAP - switching Seniors Tour titles to a Pro-Am table instead of listing them in the current "Non-ranking titles" table in players' biographies. I just noticed cueTracker.net sets a perfect example on how to categorize: it specifically calls The Masters and other Professional Non-ranking events "Professional Invitational", specifically with the word "professional" in it, so it is exactly what my whole point is from the start. It also does not record head-to-head matches on Seniors 900 tour and tournaments alike, since Seniors Tour must not fit into the definition of "professional" in their definition as well. 2605:52C0:1001:260:E000:68FF:FEFE:D3BC (talk) 18:27, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The seniors have a tour the World Seniors Tour,so they should in no way be listed as a Pro-Am. Pros give ams a 21 point start in a Pro-Am, this does not occur in seniors tournaments. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.233.16.177 (talk) 13:00, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And the Seniors Tour in no way is a professional tour either because it does not meet full professional standard in ANY given year, as such, a Seniors Tournament win should NOT be a professional non-ranking title. Please see my reasons above as I listed 2 distinct rules/rationales to consider an event professional or not. 2605:52C0:1001:260:E000:68FF:FEFE:D3BC (talk) 14:32, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
A Pro-Am tournament is simply an event that has both professional and amatuer players in it. Whether certain events have a handicap system is irrelevant. These events do have professional players who take place. It's a bit of a minefield. Personally, I think professional events, and then major amateur/pro-am events are the only items that really warrant inclusion. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 15:44, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
If no new category is being created for Seniors Tour alone, I agree with what you just said, handicap is irrelevant in determining an event is pro-am or not. And Seniors Tour tournaments under the current categorization is best suited for / most similar to Pro-Am category tournaments. 2605:52C0:1001:260:E000:68FF:FEFE:D3BC (talk) 16:08, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think Nigej already answered your questions above about this by saying that he was happy with how theses events are presented. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.251.168.128 (talk) 15:31, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This comment is probably from User:DooksFoley147. Only 1 edit so far so difficult to be 100% certain. The truth is that I'm not "happy with how theses events are presented", certainly not in the biographies. Nigej (talk) 16:23, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Good eye, it was. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 16:39, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal please

The above seems have got past the WP:TLDR stage. If someone could come up with a proposal relating to seniors events, with a brief rationale, I think we can make progress in that area. Ideally that should cover everything at {{World Seniors Championship}} (a template which clearly needs to be renamed). Nigej (talk) 10:29, 21 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

List of events in calendar tables

In a similar vein to @HurricaneHiggins' post above, I'm wondering about the criteria to which we include (or not) events in the season calendar pages (such as 2023–24 snooker season). We currently have a section for Q Tour events, which makes sense because they are run by the WPBSA and are feeder events for the main tour. But the "New professional players" list includes many other events, where the winner gets a tour card. I think those should also be included, but that'd be a lot more events in the list. Is it better if we organize the calendar tables into two categories, professional (main tour events), and non-professional (women's, senior, Q Tour, etc.), or even split the non-professional events to a separate page? AmethystZhou (talk) 09:46, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Personally, I've always thought that when we talk about the "snooker season", we are specifically talking about the WST. I did previously put some work into having larger list articles covering everything cue sport related - see 2018 in cue sports for example, which covers amateur events, women's events and also other cue sports (billiards, nine-ball, etc). Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 12:47, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You'll notice from on there, that events are simply listed, given a location and what the final is. I think keeping the seasons articles as they are (maybe renaming them to 2019-20 world snooker season or 2019-20 WST snooker season) and limiting the scope to just those events and how they interact, and having an article for each year covering all cue sports tournaments (or, at least the notable ones) solves the issue. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 12:50, 20 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Improving the "Performance and rankings timeline" tables in player articles

I'd like to propose some potential improvements to these tables. There are a couple of issues with the current format:

1. Some tournaments changed formats throughout the years, and "1R/2R/3R" may mean different things. The UK Championship for example, the first round in 2015 is the last 128, while the first round in 2023 is the last 32. And in the Northern Ireland Open, the tournament has always had the same format with 128 players. However, in 2020, there's no qualifying and the first round of the main stage is the last 128, but in 2023 there is a qualifying round and the first round of the main stage is the last 64.

2. While we want to differentiate when a player lost in qualifying versus in the main stage, it's also useful to point out which stage the player made it to. I think it's better to use "L128/L64/L32/L16/QF/SF/F/W" instead of "LQ/1R/2R/3R", etc. Basically, treat qualifying and main stage as the same. Although tournaments with limited entry such as the Masters or Players Series should be noted with "DNQ" if the player didn't qualify because of rankings, which is different from "A" or "WD" for absent or withdrawn.

3. The current color-coding is confusing, an actual color gradient would make more sense, such as ColorBrewer. Since it's a multi-hue gradient, it allows smooth color-coding from L128 to L16, while emphasizing later stages in a different color, like so:

A LQ L64 L32 L16 QF SF F W

4. Is it possible to make these tables into a template, to automatically populate the results and Wiki links? Also to sort the tournaments in order of the season, since it changes slightly every season. It'll probably be a lot of work though.

I have taken part of the table from Judd Trump and created a mockup in my sandbox, please take a look! AmethystZhou (talk) 05:53, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Proposals to revise these tables come up quite regularly, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Snooker/Archives/2023/February#Performance and rankings timeline table, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Snooker/Archives/2022/April#Results tables, but never come to any conclusion. A problem seems to be that making a wholesale revision to the tables tends to lead to long discussions which get nowhere with some people asking whether we need these tables at all, given that they're completely unreferenced. Maybe a step by step approach might make better progress. Nigej (talk) 09:28, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Long overdue changes, but I'm not sure we are looking at the right bits. First, I agree we need to change from the rounds to how many people are in that round. A first round loss at the Worlds isn't equivalent to a first round loss at the English Open.
I'm not sure I like the colours (not specifically ColorBrew). I get that it gives a visual representation of the events, but it could almost be a heatmap of success, which isn't really what we are here to do.
My biggest issue with this section is that it is almost always uncited (aside from the rankings). I think that should be our number one priority on our bios to cite this section properly. It can be done, but no source covered every player for every season (and definitely not every event). Perhaps we should have a whipround and find out which sources we can use for this purpose.
I've also thought for the longest time that we should ONLY include the ranking events (and only when they are full/semi- ranking events. It's what makes these tables massive. I get that people use these tables to find out all of the information about a player, but I don't think we can offer that service. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:10, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Writing out prose for the career performance will take a LOT of work, and adding the references to individual events to the table will make it much wider. Maybe we can simply add all the references at the end of the table. The older events would be problematic, but snooker.org should be sufficient for recent events. I agree with @Nigej that a step-by-step approach is good for improving these tables, and adding references could be the first one. And while going through these, the table can be updated to the L128/L64 format at the same time.
I personally like the color-coding, though. Without it, the table is very difficult to read (see this). AmethystZhou (talk) 12:44, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
You are right, without the colours it's pretty difficult. I do think sourcing the materials is the most important bit.Shaun Murphy for example is unsourced (aside from the rankings), but see what we've done with say Steve Davis#Performance and rankings timeline works with a reference column. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 12:59, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The Steve Davis one is great! I forgot about the player pages on snooker.org, and thought each individual entry needed a reference... Now if only WST can provide such convenient sources, but I digress. The additional row at the top for references is perfect. AmethystZhou (talk) 13:01, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That would be my suggestion, snooker.org only goes back so far, but The CueSport Book of Professional Snooker: The Complete Record & History goes up to 2004, so it overlaps. The only issue as far as I can see is finding all the player numbers for the snooker.org lists if we were to try and automate it. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 13:14, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like I made the last comments at both the discussions linked by Nigej, si I'm hoping this won't complete a hat trick. Joe Davis, John Spencer (snooker player), Ray Reardon, Terry Griffiths, Cliff Thorburn, Joe Johnson (snooker player), Clive Everton, Tony Knowles (snooker player), and Tony Meo also have referenced performance & rankings timelines. If we are changing, can we also get rid of the subheadings like "Former ranking tournaments" and "Former non-ranking tournaments"? As I've said before, I hate seeing the World Championship or UK championship split across different rows (e.g. at Reardon's article). Might also be a chance to improve accessibility (see towards the end of Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/John_Spencer_(snooker_player)/archive1#Support_from_Harrias). Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 14:54, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed with everything Benny said Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 15:38, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agree also - easy to add a note to distinguish ranking/non-ranking instead of those separate sub-headings. Also like the suggested L32 format instead of the current one. Not keen on the suggested colour change though; personally I find it hard to distinguish between them and not sure it would pass the contrast guidelines of WP:COLOR. Aware colours aren't necessary but personally think the current colour scheme works fine visually and assists readability. Andygray110 (talk) 17:16, 23 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I would say one way we can make rhis table better is to do what was done on the season overview: that is to say, split it into multiple tables. I also think we should stop separating tournaments just because one version was non-ranking and then became ranking later, overall it is the same tournament and we could use a cross mark or star to indicate a non-ranking edition.
I don’t know if this next suggestion is possible, but can a cell [ie a ] be split into two within an existing row, when using the mediawiki table syntax? Im thinking that it would help to not make these so unwieldly, as currently if you go to someone like ronnie o’sullivan, the table is massively wide because of a ton of “not held” rowspans over several seasons when the tournament didn’t exist in the first place, making it exceptionally hard to follow.
i agree that this would need proactive minor changes over time. Trying to discuss it all as one overhaul will never go anywhere. Any incremental minor updates to improve the editabilitt of the tables would be a srart. CitroenLover (talk) 17:33, 24 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Regarding the width problem, I think there are two solutions: 1) make it scrollable with a sticky header column (I don't know how to do the latter), or 2) split it into two tables, each one with a max span of ~ 25 years.
I also agree on splitting the table based on types of tournaments. We can have a main table that has current ranking events, followed by current non-ranking events. In the case that a current ranking event was non-ranking in the past, do not split it into a separate row, but denote on the relevant entry that it was non-ranking for that year. And put all the previous events in a separate table. This way, long-running tournaments like the World Championship or the UK will stay in a single row. AmethystZhou (talk) 00:00, 25 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

List of world number one snooker players

I've started a discussion at Talk:List of world number one snooker players#Total days/weeks at number one which may be of interest. Nigej (talk) 14:05, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Dates in draw templates

When was it decided to put the dates of a round in the draw templates for some recent tournaments? Who intends to spend many hours updating every other page [and there are many of them] to use this format, especially when there’s not going to be any information online for some tournaments at all as to when rounds were played? This should stay consistent and simply mention the number of frames that are played in that round, with any dates being in the prose immediately above it.

i’m going to go out there and say it: there has been a lot of extremely minor changes being made lately this season to the snooker articles, seemingly on the whims of one or two users making changes for the sake of it, and its bordering on becoming a nuisance for trying to read any snooker pages on the wiki, because it is creating a wildly inconsistent UX for people who have no idea what logic is being used to justify these changes or why they are being made.

While i appreciate all editors who contribute to the wiki, I personally can not fathom the logic for this latest change to the pages, which i didn’t notice until just now. Thanks. CitroenLover (talk) 14:32, 31 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not so worried about what we did in the past. What matters to me is whether the change is an improvement. Is it better for our readers than the old system? If it is better we should keep it, if it's worse or no better we should keep the old style. Personally I don't find the "best of 9" that useful, since it's obvious from the scores, but then I'm not sure the dates are that useful from an encyclopedic point of view. We need to include what's important but generally no more than that. Nigej (talk) 14:55, 31 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The problem i see with the dates in draw templates is that it can be very confusing when more than one round is played in a day. When was it played? Was it in the morning, afternoon or evening? Were two rounds played in the same session? Are there other sporting articles that put dates in draw templates? Personally, having the best of X frames removes any of those kind of issues, since that kind of additional context can be included in the summary prose above the template. — CitroenLover (talk) 15:03, 31 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The question is whether it is useful from an encyclopedic point of view. Does someone look back at an event from 2000 want to know that a match took place on the Wednesday. Probably not. Do they want to know whether it took place on the Wednesday afternoon, even less so. For many years we have put the dates in the World Championship article, see eg 2023 World Snooker Championship#Main draw, but I find it just visual clutter. I'd be quite keen to get of those dates. Nigej (talk) 15:13, 31 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
For what its worth, I think having the top of a bracket explaining the amount of frames is helpful, simply because it gives you a basis for what happens below (and, if the event is in progress, and you look at the draw, you know how long the match is).
I don't think having the dates of when it happened actually helps you to understand what the bracket says, it's just more information. In the prose, I always like to give the dates of when the rounds takes place, but outside of that it's not really all that relevant. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 15:15, 31 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Nigej I do recall the case of the Worlds, but that for me is an obvious exception: matches take place over multiple sessions and often over multiple days, so the dates are necessary to provide the context of when a match starts and ends. This is unlike other tournaments, where matches are short and only the final takes place over multiple sessions [but also only in a single day]. The questions above from me in my first reply were rhetorical, entirely designed to point out the rabbit hole that we would end up going down by putting dates in the draw template, for any other tournament that isn't the Worlds.
@Lee Vilenski Agree on this point. I will leave it a few days and if no one opposes, I'll restore the "best of X" to the pages which had them replaced with dates. -- CitroenLover (talk) 19:26, 31 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@CitroenLover: Not really a big deal for me either way. I put the dates in the bracket headers for the German Masters since I thought it was useful additional information, rather than the endless repetition of "best of" which is obvious from the scores anyway, and is always stated a number of times in the prose.  Alan  (talk) 08:15, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The thing about the scores is that it isn't super obvious to a non-snooker reader. "Best of" is only really pertinent to our sport. There's plenty of other sports that have time limits, or scores that can go over the limit (say bowls, where it might be first to 11, but it could finish 12-1). I get to the general reader the info is "obvious", but I don't think it hurts to give this context (especially if the number changes between rounds). In a lot of the articles we write with prose, it's less of an issue, but even then it's no big deal to include.
I'm just not a fan of the dates as after it happens, it doesn't matter what date the match itself took place, and we aren't a TV Guide to show when matches are happening during the event. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 09:28, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Lee Vilenski: I thought it was useful additional information (but not as a TV guide) because in this case, as with some other tournaments, there are "overlaps" where rounds 1&2 are played on the same day, and rounds 2&3 are played the following day. I don't mind either way, so CitroenLover can go ahead and restore the "best of" repetition with no objection from me.  Alan  (talk) 09:52, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've just put the "best of" data back into the brackets for the German Masters, but left the dates info in. Please feel free to revert if you like.  Alan  (talk) 21:10, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Constant tinkering is more than just a nuisance — it's a deterrent to other editors contributing. The quality of tournament articles is markedly deteriorating over this, to the point where many will struggle to reach GA or FA status in the future. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 22:33, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've now gone ahead and removed the dates from draw templates where they appeared in this seasons' articles. CitroenLover (talk) 19:41, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Fully agree with this. The content and presentation of most tournament pages (especially the Worlds) has been both excellent and consistent for years. But in the most recent pages there have been several minor changes that have really jarred as a frequent reader.
Please can we at least keep this year's Worlds page to the same excellent standard and format that's been reliably used for many years now? Rio309w (talk) 01:12, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've got to say that I disagree about whether our tournament pages have been "excellent" in the past. Personally I find the "final" table at, say, 2023 World Snooker Championship#Main draw extremely poor. Boxes, numbers, symbols, bold, brackets, etc. Just confusing. Also the original post here was a complaint about the inclusion of dates in the draw templates. But for some unknown reason we include the dates in the World Championship. What's the logic in that? No logic at all, we're just doing it because we did it last year. Nigej (talk) 08:24, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The thing about the big table is that it's accessible. A lot of our finals tables are strings of frame scores that are reasonably difficult to follow, even if they look nice (In comparrison with say 1999 World Snooker Championship#main draw. I can't say I have any thoughts on whether or not we include the dates in the draw template, it does seem a bit overkill, but it's hardly super distracting. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 09:01, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've been writing the summary section of the German Masters, instead of linking them once at the beginning and referring to them using their unlinked family names afterward, I added Wiki links to all the players' names in each section (Last 32, Last 16, etc.). MOS:DUPLINK says: "Generally, a link should appear only once in an article, but it may be repeated if helpful for readers, such as in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes, and at the first occurrence in a section." I think this is clearer, as the linked names are a bit more visible. Also, readers may jumps directly to read the later sections like the final, and would have to scroll all the way up to find a Wiki link to click on. What are your thoughts on this? AmethystZhou (talk) 02:56, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, duplink only just changed (it used to read once in lede and then once in body). I still read this to mean once per level 2 section (so, overview, summary, draw, etc.) rather than per every header. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 07:08, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Tend to agree with that and with the OP's point: avoiding people having to go "name hunting" is a large part of why the RfC about DUPLINK concluded to soften it. Many readers do arrive at particular sections, or jump to them from the ToC, and we can't depend on linear reading from the top. But we also do not want to create a "sea of blue". It's a balance.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:39, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I brought this up at another location, but this doesn't seem to effect first and last names though. Until now (at FA at least) if you introduce someone, you then refer to them by their surname throughout. However, this consensus suggests that users might not understand a name if they click a specific section. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:43, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I was still referring to them with last name, but just adding a full name with Wiki link at the beginning of each "section" rather than at the beginning of the entire article. Although it'd be nice if the MOS clarifies on what level of a header is a "section". AmethystZhou (talk) 13:07, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:SECTIONLEVELS says ==Section== and ===Subsection=== so Lee Vilenski's reading of the MOS would appear to be correct.  Alan  (talk) 13:30, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, have a look at the 2024 German Masters article, which is now indeed a "sea of blue" after determined editors have repeatedly linked players' names in every sub-section of the tournament summary. This can't be a rational way forward. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 14:52, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
MOS:DUPLINK says links may be repeated at the first occurrence "in a section", but it doesn't clarify to which WP:SECTIONLEVELS. Maybe repeating it at each of the last 64, last 32, etc. is too much, and we can instead do it at the "early rounds", "later rounds" level. AmethystZhou (talk) 15:12, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's got to be level 2 headers. The main reason for the change is that mobile users can skip to section heads without expanding the rest of the article. However, that's not true for level 3 (or lower) headers. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 15:35, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've put a thread on the talk page of MOS:DUPLINK Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 15:39, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you Lee, I'll clean up the article later if the way I'm linking them now is too much. AmethystZhou (talk) 15:44, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What's a level 2 header, though, @Lee Vilenski? It would be far more sensible to have each player wiki-linked only once within the "Summary" section of each tournament and referred to by surname only after that. I appreciate that editors are trying to abide by the ambiguous language of the current MOS, but there is too much unnecessary linking. Si Jiahui's name is currently linked six times in the Summary section of this article alone. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 16:43, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WP:SECTIONLEVELS basically says the section level is how many equal sign is in the Wikitext of the title, e. g. ==section== is level two, which correspond to the "Summary" section of the tournament articles. Currently the 2024 German Masters article has player names linked once per level four section (last 64 level), and I agree that might be too much. But since the "Summary" section is the bulk of the prose and can be quite long, perhaps a better middle-ground is to link once per level three section (qualification, early rounds, later rounds level). AmethystZhou (talk) 17:06, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In that case, wiki-linking names once per Level 2 section (i.e., once only in the Summary section) is what I'd advocate. This is how we've always done it in the past, and to my knowledge it has never caused any issues, while helping articles be free from "sea of blue" over-linking. As for conventions like "Early Rounds" and "Later Rounds" headers, these are not strictly needed, and many tournament articles have been written without them. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 17:30, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Actually, historically, level 2 headers would actually be overkill. It was historically once in the lede and once in the main body. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 17:40, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well, there are also wikilinked names in the main draw, qualifying draw, century breaks section, etc., none of which I take any issue with. I think once in the entire main body might be too restrictive for that reason. But linking a player's name in every single round in the summary is overkill, in my view. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 17:53, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
tables, captions, templates and the like are generally exempt from DUPLINK. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 18:00, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Fair enough! HurricaneHiggins (talk) 18:48, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
This [16] should resolve it. The consensus in the RfC on the matter was one link per major section, not again and again in every sub-section and sub-sub-section, and sub-sub-sub-section, forming a sea of blue. Everyone should have understood that already.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:14, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think there is any Wikilayering going on here. That word change makes all the difference. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 05:45, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I did not intend to cause any drama, and I'm not sure what exactly is "Wikilawyering", that's not what I'm trying to do either. I honestly thought that linking the names more frequently than once per level-two section would be better, but wasn't sure of the exact meaning on MOS:DUPLINK, so I started this discussion for some clarification. I have now removed the extra links in the German Masters article per consensus here. AmethystZhou (talk) 05:48, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's fine. Good work. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 05:54, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WST player template

Now that we're stuck with the new WST website, and I don't suppose they'll ever provide redirects, the WST player template which is used in the "External links" section of many players' articles, does not work anymore. Using Jimmy White as an example,

it is clear that there is no easy way to sort this out. However, the List of snooker players article has references for 262 players, all of which now have working archives. Please feel free to use this as a resource in order to add the archive numbers to the WST player template call. Again using Jimmy White as an example, {{WST player|jimmy-white}} would become {{WST player|jimmy-white|archive=20200622102041}} and at least the archives all work.  Alan  (talk) 14:44, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I've just updated Jimmy White's article as above, and it works OK.  Alan  (talk) 15:18, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
We probably need to get a template editor in. As this is a bit of a change, we could probably rework the template to request the info from Wikidata, rather than define it locally. I'll see if I can grab someone. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 16:29, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I put up a thread at WP:URLREQ Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 19:42, 2 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The response there doesn't look very promising. Looks like there's a lot of changes that have to be made manually. However, for the WST player template it's easy to use the archive numbers from the List of snooker players article. Of the 616 players in the list, 262 have references with working archives.  Alan  (talk) 08:40, 3 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I do think we should send an email through to them. I'll see if I can send something through this week, it's important for their website visibility that links from Wikipedia are live. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 15:41, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm fairly sure that you won't get any response from WST. It might be better to contact their software suppliers direct. There are two companies involved. One is https://urbanzoo.io/ and the other is https://www.imgarena.com/.  Alan  (talk) 17:32, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I e-mailed them a month ago about the broken links in their news articles and specifically mentioned the problem with Wikipedia, but no response. :( AmethystZhou (talk) 22:34, 4 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not surprising. I've sent them a number of emails since this nightmare started, and have never had a response or even an acknowledgement.  Alan  (talk) 09:30, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Should we implement a new "snooker.org template"? Many of the past player pages have disappeared from WST, and they also don't have player profiles for non-main tour players. AmethystZhou (talk) 21:04, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's a nice thought. You would need access to Hermund Årdalen's database, since he assigns a number for each player. i.e. Jimmy White is number 20.  Alan  (talk) 21:43, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's actually less of an issue than you'd think, as those numbers are (I believe) already handled on WikiData. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 21:52, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, it's this one: P4502 I'll see if I can figure out how to make the template... AmethystZhou (talk) 00:01, 12 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks to the existing {{WST player}} template, I have created the new {{snooker.org player}} template! AmethystZhou (talk) 02:43, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just tried that out - works well.  Alan  (talk) 09:01, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
...and I've added it to the "External links" section of the Jimmy White article (with no parameters) and the Class of '92 article. Works perfectly.  Alan  (talk) 19:31, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, it pulls the article name and cross-reference it to Wikidata, so unless there's some error in Wikidata or the entry doesn't exist, you don't need to manually specify the snooker.org ID. Same as the WST player template! AmethystZhou (talk) 20:46, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Redundancy in match descriptions

There's a tendency in tournament summaries to give redundant information when reporting scores. E.g., constructions such as "Trump whitewashed Ding 5–0." If we know that the match was best of nine, and one player won by a whitewash, then the scoreline by definition has to be 5–0. So it's adequate to say "Trump whitewashed Ding" without adding "5–0". Same with deciding frames. E.g., "O'Sullivan won the deciding frame to win the match 5–4." If a best of nine match goes to a deciding frame, then the scoreline has to be 5–4, by definition, so it's perfectly adequate to say "O'Sullivan won the deciding frame" or similar. Also, there's a growing tendency to explicitly remark on every single break over 99 as being a century break — "Higgins made a century break of 127" rather than "Higgins made a 127 break." Fine on first usage, so as to wikilink "century break," but not every single time. These may seem like small points, but repeated numerous times over a tournament article, they add up to a lot of redundancy for a reader that quickly becomes tiresome. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 18:05, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Excessive use of seedings in tournament summaries?

Just looking at the summary section for Welsh Open qualifying. I'm noticing a lot of seeding being listed, often for players well outside the top 16 or even top 32. Sample:

"The 80th seed Daniel Wells defeated 37th seed Thepchaiya Un-Nooh 4‍–‍2. ... The 31st seed Pang Junxu made a century break of 103 in the second frame to lead 46th seed Graeme Dott 2‍–‍0, but Dott won three frames in a row for a 3‍–‍2 lead."

I would propose that it's entirely unnecessary to identify players as seeded 31st, 46th, 37th, and 80th like this. I see the seedings as noteworthy in a tournament summary only when a lower seed beats a highly ranked player or does especially well in the event overall, e.g., Si Jiahui reaching the semifinals of the World Championship while ranked 80. Otherwise, listing the seeding for every player like this leads us to get bogged down in minutiae that is off-putting to a general readership. The question I'd ask is what the justification is for this? How relevant is it that the 31st seed beat the 46th seed in a qualifier? HurricaneHiggins (talk) 16:08, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Agreed on your point, maybe limit such discussions with certain thresholds, such as when a top-16 seed is defeated by someone outside of the top-64? AmethystZhou (talk) 18:34, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Something like that would work, @AmethystZhou. It's definitely noteworthy when world champion Brecel loses to Ishpreet Singh Chadha, ranked around 100th in the world. It's noteworthy when a top-16 player gets knocked out of an event, especially at the earlier stages. But I don't think it adds anything to note the seedings of numerous mid-ranked players, especially when rankings/seedings are constantly shifting anyway. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 23:44, 7 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I can't say I do it all that often. The qualifiers for these tournaments are often pretty dry, as the summaries in the RS are just "this guy beat this guy", or it's just a score from an RS. Personally, I'd rather we just covered things that happen in the qualifiers, we don't need to make any attempt to cover all matches or anything. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 08:04, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Good point, @Lee Vilenski. The qualifiers for the World Championship are a bigger deal, with four rounds and best-of-19 matches, so I've tended to give that more space. I'd prefer to focus on the main points or notable happenings in the qualifiers for smaller events. E.g., Bingham and Zhou potentially getting fined after the Welsh Open qualifiers for conceding frames without requiring snookers is an interesting story, because some readers may not know about that rule. Broadly, we should aim for more varied and interesting tournament summaries, beyond dry repetition of (as you put it) "this guy beat that guy", which is all in the draw table anyway. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 08:34, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah, we do need some sort of prose, and covering some upsets is very suitable. The World's naturally gets more coverage, so we have the luxury of more coverage. I'll tell you now there's a lot of pain trying to write up a summary for the 2020 Snooker Shoot Out for example. Some are easier to source than others, but I'm not the biggest fan of stating info that's not all that relevant to what's happening (such as seedings if the match goes with the favourite). Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 08:38, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Fully agreed. More broadly, the goal should be to write summaries that are informative and engaging, but don't get bogged down in arcane details that a general reader will find off-putting. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 21:54, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The overuse of seedings in prose is definitely a problem. I agree that we should only use seedings when necessary, but remember that the only point of seedings is to make sure that the defending champion is marked as 1 in the draw, with the reigning world champion marked as 2, after which its just the world rankings in the order they appear at the cut-off point (after withdrawals). The entire purpose of this seeding format is just to make sure that neither the defending champion or the world champion can meet each other until the final. Beyond that, seeds are mostly just the players' world ranking plus 2. We are better off just saying "World Champion Luca Brecel was defeated by the world number XXX Ishpreet Singh Chadha in the first round of the German Masters in a match that was held over to the Tempodrom" or something like that, rather than referencing seeds. -- CitroenLover (talk) 19:32, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Timeline graphics in season pages

I decided to be WP:BOLD and added a timeline graphic to the 2023–24 snooker season page under the calendar. But as @Nigej and @Betty Logan have raised concerns over the usefulness of similar timeline graphics at List of world number one snooker players, I want to ask your opinions on the calendar timeline.

I think it adds a visual representation of the season, and the Wiki links to each event can be convenient. But I had to use EasyTimeline instead of making an .svg image to include the hyperlinks. I'm not completely satisfied with the EasyTimeline template as its functions are quite limited, and the output image doesn't look nearly as good as .svg graphics.

Do you find the timeline useful? Should we keep it? If so, is there any way we can improve it? AmethystZhou (talk) 23:45, 8 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I can't say I understand why we'd have a timeline for a series of events. Only a handful of the events overlap, which is when a visual timeline would be helpful. (Generally it's for things like different memberships that is a bit covoluted). Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 07:30, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't understand the need for this either when the tournaments are presented in chronological order in the table? HurricaneHiggins (talk) 11:45, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Not a fan myself. Works ok for things like geological time periods but here it doesn't add anything here. (my impression is that they were much more used in the early days of Wikipedia, but have really fallen out of fashion) Nigej (talk) 12:17, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, the EasyTimeline template really shows its age, it’s quite clunky to work with and the resulting graphic isn’t all that great. I’ll remove the timelines then if no one supports them. AmethystZhou (talk) 15:48, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I saw this earlier in the week but have been busy so unable to properly reply to this until now. Yes I agree this timeline is not necessary and relatively redundant since the table above it is in date-order. -- CitroenLover (talk) 19:29, 9 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Opinions please re: "fluff"

I was going to add yesterday's 147 made by John Higgins to the list in the Championship League article, only to find that the list (and all its references) had just been deleted completely by User:Mrloop, with the tag "Removing fluff".

This data has been in the article for a long time, but I changed it from prose to a list and added missing data and a number of references at this edit last July. I also added the 147 made by Kyren Wilson a few days ago.

I have not reverted Mrloop's edit as I don't want to start an edit war, so I put a message in User talk:Mrloop but have had no response.

So my question is this: Is the list "fluff" or not? The footnotes and the detail about opponents and groups could be regarded as being a bit "fluffy" and could easily be removed, but I think the list is valid, properly referenced, information that should be restored. Opinions please.  Alan  (talk) 07:34, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looking through the list on Maximum break, many of the tournament pages have a paragraph describing the maximums made throughout the tournaments' history, such as Scottish Open, British Open, Masters, Paul Hunter Classic, etc. But many don't have such a paragraph, such as UK Championship, German Masters, China Open, etc. Personally I think it's worth including. AmethystZhou (talk) 08:06, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why would we want a list of maximum breaks on an article about a tournament? Whilst some sources are going to say "wow, there's been only X number of maximum breaks at the Masters/World Championships", we wouldn't individually list them in a bulleted list. The location for the list should remain at maximum break and not become a content fork. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 08:51, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I get your point about a content fork. So, that being the case, should the other tournament pages containing data about maximums, as detailed by AmethystZhou above, also have this data removed?  Alan  (talk) 09:04, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
...alternatively I could just change the list back into prose like the other tournaments, the way it was last summer, getting rid of the detail about opponents and groups, but retaining the references.  Alan  (talk) 11:25, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've just done that, and I think it's an improvement.  Alan  (talk) 21:20, 11 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I recently made a new {{snooker.org player}} template, which works just like {{WST player}} to pull the page name and cross-reference Wikidata to get the snooker.org player profile ID, and generate a link to that page. I'd like to add this to the "External links" section on player pages where applicable. However, this section in the pages seem a bit of a mess, with various websites linked (or not), such as WST, GlobalSnooker, World Senior Snooker, etc. I did a search in the archives of WT:SNOOKER and didn't find much discussion on this.

Can we establish a "standard list" of links for the player pages? I'd like to propose including WST and snooker.org, and removing GlobalSnooker, as the website has been defunct for many years and the links are all very old archives. The {{WST player}} template works great for current players, as well as previous main tour players whose pages are deleted (thanks WST!), where archive links are used instead. WPBSA (e.g. [17]), World Women's Snooker (e.g. [18]), and World Seniors Snooker (e.g. [19]) profile pages could also be included. AmethystZhou (talk) 07:35, 15 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I don't remember any previous discussion on these. See WP:EL. My impression is that a large number of Wikipedia external links sections are way out of date, so it would be a useful exercise to go through these. Tend to agree with you that WST and snooker.org are useful. Probably not GlobalSnooker. We should consider WP:ELNO #1, ie if they don't contain useful information "that is already or should be in the article." then they shouldn't be included. Nigej (talk) 08:46, 15 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WST and Snooker.org is all we need, provided they only play snooker. As Nigej said, ELNO is the place to check. Things like official websites are fine, and say they also played pool, their Matchroom sport/AZBilliards profile would be suitable. These can get very long if you just let any old link live. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:27, 15 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with all above. When I added the snooker.org player template to the Jimmy White article, I noticed that there's a lot of entries in the "External links" section that should probably be removed.  Alan  (talk) 11:29, 15 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes. Something like https://seniorssnooker.com/player/jimmy-white/ fails ELNO since it's just a brief biography. Quite a few links got added as a form of advertising (although that's clearly not allowed). And random youtube videos make so sense at all. Nigej (talk) 13:27, 15 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the explanation! What about IMDb for players like Ronnie O'Sullivan? AmethystZhou (talk) 20:56, 15 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Personally I'd leave it out. WP:IMDB-EL says its ok, but also says it's not a reliable source. The question I suppose is whether the link contains sufficient extra information that isn't "already or should be in the article." I'm not sure it ever will for a snooker player. Nigej (talk) 21:08, 15 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It was probably added to Ronnie's page because of the several documentary films he was in, but they are not significant enough to need the IMDb link. I'd agree that it's better to leave those for actors, etc. AmethystZhou (talk) 21:53, 15 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It's a "use best judgement". If he was also an actor/director, sure. Him having some credits isn't really enough. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:27, 16 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Just had a look through the IMDb pages for ROS, and I don't think there's anything there of any value that isn't already mentioned in the prose. I think it should be removed.  Alan  (talk) 11:00, 16 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, I'm going through the category of snooker players by nationality to clean up the external links section. Although I'm leaving the British and Chinese last as there are A LOT of those! AmethystZhou (talk) 20:56, 16 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Talkpage archives for this page

I've noticed that we have a lot of discussions on this main page, and we're due an archiving exercise. However, I also notice we have two archiving formats: one which seems to be old-style [eg Archive 1, Archive 2, Archive 3 etc] and then a new style where each month of discussions is archived and categorised per year. Personally I find that the style of archiving by year and by month to be much more cluttering than just creating "mega-archives" like the old system. Also, the old style keeps the order of discussions rather than splitting them out into lots of smaller archives. Could we look to clean up our archives a bit, just to make finding discussions a bit easier? Looking through a bigger archive is easier than searching lots of tiny archives. 👍 -- CitroenLover (talk) 19:00, 17 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The order doesn't exactly change. They just get archived when they get stale, the same as another type of archive. I much prefer it being set up by month so I know where to look. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 20:02, 17 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Tournament Final: 50+ Breaks in Frame Scores

Recently I have spotted some differences in the treatment of 50+ break scores in frames during finals of tournaments: namely putting the break on the right of the frame score, which I will call it "the old way" (example: 2019 Tour Championship); and putting the break on the side of the player who made the break (example: 2024 German Masters), which I will call it "the new way".

From what I have seen, past tournament articles all used the old format, possibly due to relying websites such as snooker.org or cuetracker.net as unofficial sources for frame scores. The new format has only emerged for this season. Unfortunately, this has caused some inconsistencies between old and new articles.

Personally I would favour the old format because I don't think the new format is much of an improvement, and more importantly, changing the formats for the old articles to match the new format would be a hassle. However, I would like some consensus on this issue. Ui56k (talk) 16:17, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

As ever, we shouldn't worry too much about what we did in the past. The question is which is better? If equal then it's generally best to use the old style. Changing a few hundred "finals" with WP:AWB is not a big job, honestly. I'm happy to do it if that's the consensus. Personally I'm in the "no big deal" category with this one. It does save a little space when there's an ambiguity about which player made the break(s): now it's (56) before and (51) after, whereas previously it was (O'Sullivan 56, Trump 51) afterwards. Nigej (talk) 16:30, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think what you're calling the "new way" is clearer for readers and saves space. Also, it lines up with the way the breaks and scores are displayed by WST on their live scoring pages. compare the update I just did for the Welsh Open with this.  Alan  (talk) 17:18, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
However snooker.org uses the old style https://www.snooker.org/res/index.asp?event=1456 and cuetracker uses something else. So "(98) 98–1, (52) 74–44, (55) 102–0" or "98-1 (98), 74-44 (52), 102-0 (55)" or "98(98)-1, 74(52)-44, 102(55)-0" Can't really the space saving aspect or any of these, except as noted above. Nigej (talk) 17:36, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
In this particular case there is no space saving, but in many cases there is. Anyway, my preference is for the "new way". I'm interested to know what others think, and am happy to go with the consensus.  Alan  (talk) 18:08, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
... and I've noticed that User:Ui56k has today been changing some articles back to the "old way", before any consensus has been reached.  Alan  (talk) 18:30, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Why exactly do we count "50+ breaks". Do sources also do this? Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 19:18, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WST, snooker.org and cuetracker all report 50+ breaks. Whether we need the "count" below is a good question. Personally I can do without it. Does anyone talk about x making n 50 breaks in the final? Nigej (talk) 19:28, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Good point! I'd be happy to see them left out altogether. Alan  (talk) 19:36, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
... so this afternoon's score would just be: 98–1, 74–44, 102–0, 106–5, 23–73, 67–4, 59–45, 1–92 Tidier!  Alan  (talk) 19:42, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
What about century breaks? Nigej (talk) 19:44, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well they're noted in the row below, and of course in the centuries section.  Alan  (talk) 19:59, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But you wouldn't know in which frame they made the century breaks, though. I'm neutral towards removing the 50+ break count row, but I'd say keep the century break row and 50+ breaks in parentheses in frame scores. AmethystZhou (talk) 21:01, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But which style do you prefer?  Alan  (talk) 21:28, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Definitely the "new style" as it was me that started writing them this way.. AmethystZhou (talk) 21:29, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
WST does, snooker.org does and CueTracker does.  Alan  (talk) 19:28, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The question asked above by Nigej: "Does anyone talk about x making n 50 breaks in the final?" is a valid one. I don't think that 50+ breaks are of any interest to most readers, but centuries probably are. So why not just include centuries, and since there can only be one century per frame, then the left/right argument becomes moot. So the final for the Welsh Open would look like this:
Afternoon: 98–1, 74–44, 102–0, 106–5, 23–73, 67–4, 59–45, 1–92
Evening: 24–59, 101–19 (100), 21–101, 68–44, 82–0
 Alan  (talk) 09:45, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with this - I think 50+ breaks are not required for the 'casual' reader and anyone with a deeper interest in snooker will be able to find 50+ breaks elsewhere (whether that is at the World Snooker Tour, Snooker.org or Cuetracker sites) if they really want to know. Steveflan (talk) 10:51, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Also, Snooker Scene (Clive Everton era at least) recorded all breaks above 50 with the break in parenthesis after the frame score for the individual player. So the 2024 Welsh Open final would be:
Afternoon: 98(98)–1, 74(52)–44, 102(55)–0, 106–5, 23–73(66), 67(52)–4, 59–45, 1–92(92)
Evening: 24–59, 101(100)–19, 21–101(85), 68–44, 82–0
Of course, earlier editions of Snooker Scene used to record 30+ breaks (centuries were much rarer than recent) - but that would be taking things too far. However, the scoreboard in the commentators booth (known as a fruit machine) does also record 30+ breaks (see bottom right hand corner at https://amazon.clikpic.com/andychubb/images/commentary_box_3422_1.jpg) Steveflan (talk) 11:11, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Honestly it depends on how much information one wants to convey. The 50+ break count indicates how well a player is breakbuilding and hence playing. On the other hand, 50 is kind of an arbitrary cut-off point as one would usually need at least a 60+ break to clinch a frame in 1 visit. And I suppose non-casuals can just refer to cuetracker for such information.--Ui56k (talk) 10:33, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
All of these numbers are arbitrary. You actually need 74+ to secure (I don't like the word "clinch") a frame.  Alan  (talk) 11:12, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
It may relate to cricket, where a half century (ie 50) was traditionally regarded as a good achievement and the number of those was reported in a player's career stats. Indeed, the crowd applauded the achievement. In modern snooker no one even notes when a break reaches 50. The only real target is the snookers required stage. As such I'd be quite keen on deleting all the stuff on 50+ breaks (at least in the last 50 years or so) from the "final" section. I'd be keen to retain the centuries. Of course, the text can mention significant breaks of any size. Nigej (talk) 12:52, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That makes perfect sense to me.  Alan  (talk) 13:02, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Nigej: I've removed the 50+ breaks from the Welsh Open final. See what you think and feel free to revert my edit if you like.  Alan  (talk) 08:44, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm still keen on this, if that's the consensus. Nigej (talk) 09:10, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Looks good! I made a minor edit to simplify the century break notes. AmethystZhou (talk) 09:12, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal

Before this discussion peters out, I'd like to propose that we adopt the idea above that we remove the 50-99 breaks from the frame-by-frame scores in the "final" section and also remove the "50+ breaks" line in that section. The logic behind this is that the 50-99 breaks are not very important to our readers and just clutter-up the section. Under this proposal, information on 100+ breaks would remain as it is now. Nigej (talk) 15:48, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I think that's a very sensible proposal, already adopted in the previous and current tournaments.  Alan  (talk) 15:59, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, the 50+ breaks just adds clutter in most cases and makes the frame score hard to read. However, it perhaps is ironically useful for the 2024 Players Championship to illustrate the poor play from both players, with Allen only making two 50+ breaks in the whole match. How about if we don't include 50+ breaks in parentheses, but keep the tally for both 50+ and 100+? AmethystZhou (talk) 00:11, 26 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Surely that can be dealt with in prose.  Alan  (talk) 06:38, 26 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. If it's notable, put it in prose. I think this is sensible. Let me know if I can help with cleanup (I have AWB downloaded somewhere) Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 12:56, 26 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've removed these for the ranking events for the current season, to see if I get any complaints. Slight glitch with someone using a tab instead of a space. Also some centuries are before and some after the frame scores, but I've left those for now, won't affect earlier seasons. Nigej (talk) 15:38, 1 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Brilliant! I've just sorted out the before and after centuries, and added frames for highest breaks. All events for this season are now done.  Alan  (talk) 13:28, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

WP:SAMESURNAME

In the semi-final section of 2024 Welsh Open, I initially wrote it referring to Gary Wilson multiple times with his full name because MOS:SAMESURNAME says "In an article that is not about either unrelated person with the same surname, continue to refer to them both by their full names." @HurricaneHiggins changed it to only use "Wilson" after the first mention of full name in the same section. I think it's much better than the repeated full names, without causing any confusion. What do you think? Is this worth a discussion at the MOS for a potential change for pages like these? AmethystZhou (talk) 21:19, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We have to be careful when we have more than one player by the same last name (Higgins, O'Sullivan, Robertson, etc.) Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 21:48, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes that's why I brought up this topic (Gary Wilson / Kyren Wilson). Kyren was knocked out in the last 64 so there's minimal mention of him in the prose, but we have to keep using the full "Gary Wilson" throughout per MOS:SAMESURNAME, and it's a bit silly in the semi-final section where his name comes up multiple times. AmethystZhou (talk) 21:56, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree, @AmethystZhou! HurricaneHiggins (talk) 21:58, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
After we say that Higgins and Gary Wilson faced each other in the semi-final, we don't need to keep referring to "Gary Wilson" repeatedly throughout the match summary. It's clear that we're talking about Gary Wilson here, not Kyren. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 21:58, 18 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Update: I have created a topic over at WT:MOSBIO, your feedback is welcome! AmethystZhou (talk) 01:40, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Main stage centuries vs Qualifying stage centuries

I'm not sure how this is being handled so seeking clarification!

Currently, the WST holds qualifiers at a different venue several weeks before the main event. But qualifiers featuring highly seeded players are typically held over and played at the final venue during the first day or two of the tournament.

When players make centuries in held-over qualifying matches, do we categorise those breaks as Main stage centuries or Qualifying stage centuries? Because they are sort of both ... they are qualifying stage centuries, but they are made at the final venue during the early stages of the event. This can be confusing to explain, so it would help to have clarity. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 15:36, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

It is confusing. We have the Main stage vs Qualifying stage centuries split because that was how WST split them in the old web site. Personally I take the view that there is no such thing as a "qualifying round" (although snooker.org uses that terminology). We have qualifying matches and held-over matches which make up round 1, and then the rest of the event. So I wouldn't use terms like "held-over qualifying matches", I'd use "held-over matches" or "held-over first round matches". See eg https://www.wst.tv/news/2024/february/12/day-one--murphy-feels-the-pinch-/ which doesn't mention qualifier/held-over at all, just "first round" and "last 64". The trouble is that WST is sometimes quite inconsistent in its terminology. Nigej (talk) 16:04, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I see your point, @Nigej, although WST definitely does refer to "qualifiers" on their Tournaments and Calendar pages. It's been a mess since the flat-128 draws were introduced and then walked back so that the round of 128 became variously "qualifiers," "held-over matches" and "round 1". But maybe it's better not to have a Main stage vs Qualifying stage centuries split at all, but to list all the tournament centuries together as one section? This is especially true now that the highest break prize usually goes to the highest break of the entire tournament, regardless of where/when it was made, so there is little meaningful distinction anymore. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 16:23, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
https://snookerinfo.co.uk/2023-24-centuries/ uses the split, with "Welsh open" and "Welsh open qualifiers". The split does help perhaps if someone wants to understand the chronology of a player's centuries (given that there are generally other events in between). But I guess that that's not really our role and we don't list the centuries chronologically anyway. Nigej (talk) 16:33, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Exactly, we don't construct chronological timelines of players' centuries, instead tracking what centuries were made within tournaments and overall stats like the number of career centuries. So the split doesn't seem to matter much in practical terms for our needs. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 17:23, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Personally, if the sources don't make a difference, neither should we. It doesn't even need to be consistent. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 20:25, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
However as I noted snookerinfo does make the difference. Nigej (talk) 21:27, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
When did we make snookerinfo a reliable source for everything? I thought we'd just suggested it would be ok for total century breaks. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 11:46, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Well we are only really using them as a double check on totals, and they are pretty much all we've got since the WST are totally unreliable, and CueTracker is banned.  Alan  (talk) 11:57, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I had the same question regarding the century breaks section, as well as the prose. Currently we count held-over century breaks as qualifying, but the prose is within the qualifying section. I tend to agree with @Nigej that it's clearer to just call those matches "first round" or even "last 128" because that's what they are. Also combine the century breaks into a single section, as WST no longer distinguish them when it comes to high break prize. AmethystZhou (talk) 22:20, 19 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
(think there's a typo here - presumably "Currently we count held-over century breaks as main stage). I can see that the high break prize covers all centuries, so perhaps that does lead us to a combined centuries list. However WST doesn't seem to provide a complete list now, so we've become more reliant on snookerinfo for this information. Either way it's no big deal to me and perhaps a combined list does avoid awkward questions about why held-over match centuries are in one list or the other. Nigej (talk) 08:55, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Oops that was indeed a typo! And yes I wish WST could simply centralize these stats to a single page. AmethystZhou (talk) 09:10, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think there's much of a problem with this. The split we make is the same as that made by SnookerInfo which is currently our main source for centuries. This split is down to location, Barnsley and Llandudno for the Welsh Open. So we could just clarify "Main stage centuries" to "Main stage centuries (Llandudno)", and "Qualifying stage centuries" to "Qualifying stage centuries (Barnsley)".  Alan  (talk) 11:32, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The issue is that heldover matches are technically part of the qualifying stage, but centuries made in heldover matches are being categorized under "Main stage centuries" rather than "Qualifying stage centuries." Which is confusing, to say the least. My preference would be to find an encyclopedic way to explain this to readers not necessarily familiar with the ins and outs of how WST does things ... and from that perspective, grouping all the centuries made in a tournament together makes more sense. The exceptions might be the World and UK Championship, where the qualifying stages are more distinct from the main stages. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 14:41, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
OK - so write a sentence to explain it. Let's not make a mountain out of a molehill.  Alan  (talk) 15:04, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There's absolutely no need for this kind of attitude here, tbh. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 16:36, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I apologise if I offended you. Not intended. I just don't see this as being a huge problem.  Alan  (talk) 16:52, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I'm still not convinced that "heldover matches are technically part of the qualifying stage". There are "qualifying matches" and "held-over matches", which are played at different times/venues. Nigej (talk) 17:00, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I thought held-over matches were qualifiers that are delayed only because they feature a highly seeded player and/or a local wildcard who may be of interest to audiences at the final venue? I think this is a matter of convenience or cost ... e.g., for a Chinese tournament, it's impractical to fly dozens of low-ranked players to a Chinese venue, only for many of them to crash out without winning a penny. Hence the routine of holding qualifiers at Barnsley or wherever. But ultimately it's all part of the same tournament. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 17:59, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
To me, they're not "qualifiers that are delayed", they're "first round matches that are delayed" Nigej (talk) 18:02, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
World Snooker Tour generally considers that any held-over matches played at the final venue are "Round One" matches and aren't part of the qualifying round. In general, if a match is played at the defined venue of that tournament and not a separate "qualifying" venue, then its considered to part of the "main stages".
FWIW, against the original topic, the only tournament where there are two "high break" prizes is the World Championship, as thats been the convention that the qualifying rounds are a mini-tournament in of itself, so if someone gets a 145 in the qualifying there, thats deemed the "high break" for qualifying, and doesn't put someone out of pocket if someone gets a 146 in the Crucible. For every other tournament, the high break prize includes any pre-qualifying round that is played. -- CitroenLover (talk) 19:37, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
My understanding is that the WC has one highest break prize of £15,000 awarded to the player who makes the highest break of the entire event (either qualifiers or main stage). But there are separate bonuses for 147s; last year, it was £40,000 for a maximum at the Crucible, and £10,000 for a maximum in the qualifying rounds. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 21:54, 20 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

1972 Park Drive 1000

The 1972 Park Drive 1000 has been added to John Spencer's page, without a reference. Apart from it being on Cuetracker, the only reference I've found is in Ireland's Saturday Night for 25 March 1972 which says that eight professionals would take part in the tournament on 26 and 27 April at Belle Isle WMC, Leeds. It was due to be shown on Yorkshire Television that Summer. The other details are consistent with the quarter-final draw on Cuetracker. Does anyone have a source for the result of the final being Spencer 3-2 Rea? (It's not listed in the 1972 (or maybe 1973) Park Drive Snooker & Billiards Year Book, which does include the 1972 World Championship.) Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 22:28, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Only references I've found are from newspaper TV listings: 25 June 1972 Sunday Sun (Newcastle) says the second semi-final of the Park Drive 1000 was to be shown that day between Jackie Rae (sic) and David Taylor; the 1 July 1972 Newcastle Evening Chronicle has a TV listing (at 2.20pm) for John Spencer v Jackie Rae; and the 1 July 1972 Lincolnshire Echo has a TV listing (also at 2.20pm) for The Park Drive 1000 from Belle Isle, Leeds. These likely support the final being broadcast between Spencer and Rea on 1 July but haven't yet been able to find a source listing the result. Andygray110 (talk) 23:33, 21 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've reverted that edit since its clearly banned user User:DooksFoley147 per WP:DENY. Feel free to re-add it if you think it's suitable. Couldn't find any extra details myself. Nigej (talk) 10:19, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Some details on the prize money here [20]. Also a German wikipedia version de:Park Drive 1000 which is entirely based on cuetracker but strangely has it in 1973 not 1972. Nigej (talk) 11:10, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Remove as unsourced. Something being on a unreliable source is as good as having no sourcing. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 11:13, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Until recently cuetracker had this event taking place in 1973 (see https://web.archive.org), hence the confusion noted above. First archived in 2016 but no indication where the information comes from. Clearly the event took place but, as Lee says, we've no source for the results so it shouldn't be added unless we find something. Nigej (talk) 11:36, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Andygray110 removed the 1973 Park Drive 1000 in 2019 ([21]). DF147 has added it back in with the corrected year of 1972 but still no source. Nigej (talk) 13:52, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There were a few more 4 or 8 player tournaments in 1972-73 that are mentioned in Snooker Scene but where we don't have articles. I created one for 1972 Ford Series Tournament recently, as that at least had coverage in multiple sources. The others probably don't merit their own articles, but what do people here think about adding them to the season and/or to the finalists' Career Finals sections? (Examples: 1972 Castle Professional, a round-robin between Reardon (winner), Higgins (second), John Pulman and Bernard Bennett; 1972 Marackville international (Australia), where Charlton defeated Higgins in the final; Pulman and Paddy Morgan were the losing semi-finalsts). BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 22:21, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Given that we don't have any inclusion criteria at the moment, I don't see a problem with adding them to the player articles. I'd be more worried about creating the tournament articles which would little more than stubs with little or no prospect of expansion. The approach at Park Drive 2000 is a good one, where that's possible. I'm wondering whether the Park Drive 600/1000 events could be combined or even added to the "2000" event article (which would then need a rename), although they were not really part of the same series. Nigej (talk) 08:42, 23 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
There was more on the 1972 Marrickville Professional than I expected, so I made an article for it. I've added a couple of others at 1971–72 snooker season and 1972–73 snooker season. The Castle Professional events seem to have typically been Bernard Bennett plus two others; I'm not sure they even merit a mention in season articles. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 22:53, 25 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
That's really good work. :) Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:12, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Anyone able to track down sources for the Willie Smith Trophy in 1971 and 1973, apparently won by Higgins? We have an article for the 1968 edition and mentions in the season articles for 1971–72 (the source for which says Higgins was the defending champion) and 1973–74. Looks like they were all played in Leeds. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 15:32, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Archiving Eurosport URLs

The recent nightmare caused by the WST changing their website shows the importance of archiving references. Eurosport is a useful resource as they often have detail missed by others. But whenever I try to archive any Eurosport page it always captures the geoblocked page instead. This page has over 99,000 captures, so it seems that many people have the same problem. Some Eurosport links have been successfully archived though, like this one. I had a conversation about this with AmethystZhou a while back, but we were unable to resolve it. Does anyone know a way around this?  Alan  (talk) 12:45, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I assume that archive.org has some servers in places where eurosport.com is available and other servers where it's not. Whether this is under any sort of user control I've no idea. Maybe other archiving sites are available, based in Europe perhaps, which could get round this issue, but I've no idea. Nigej (talk) 15:38, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
See m:User talk:InternetArchiveBot/Archives/2023#Links going to a Geographic blocked pages where I reported this before. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 23:29, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I've never been able to manually archive Eurosport links without it getting geoblocked. But their automated crawls sometimes were able to archive it correctly. Must be due to servers in different locations. Fortunately for us Eurosport doesn't mess with their urls and the links stay up, similar to the BBC. AmethystZhou (talk) 23:37, 24 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
The .com links are different to the .UK links. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 00:14, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
But eurosport.co.uk just redirects to eurosport.com.  Alan  (talk) 08:27, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Yes - the links stay up, but that might not always be so. People are always messing with stuff best left alone.  Alan  (talk) 08:25, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I just tried ghostarchive.org and it seemed to work OK.  Alan  (talk) 09:08, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
...interestingly - other than the ones I just did, there are only a few other Eurosport pages archived there; some football, a couple of motorsport pages, and two "geoblocking" pages.  Alan  (talk) 10:09, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
FYI archive.is works for Eurosport, for example: https://archive.is/KnDdK AmethystZhou (talk) 11:28, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Good - it's nice to have a couple of options.  Alan  (talk) 11:36, 25 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I think it would be a good idea to keep an eye on the Eurosport URLs that I have archived using ghostarchive.org and change them to web.archive.org archives if they become available. This would be tidier (I'm pedantic).  Alan  (talk) 13:14, 26 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I can't say I care where the info is archived too - so long as it is archived. My knowledge of actually doing this is sending IABot to archive what exists. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 13:46, 26 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Winning margin in the 1955 World Professional Match-play Championship final

Hi, I've started a discussion at Talk:1955_World_Professional_Match-play_Championship#Score_in_the_final; it would be great to see some discussion there. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 21:26, 2 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Pinging Lee Vilenski, Nigej, and Armbrust as the three largest contributors to the article; if you would like to express an opinion on this please do. If there is no objection after a few days, I'll make the change I'm suggesting there. Everyone else is welcome to chip in too! Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 13:36, 29 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

"f" is for female players?

A discussion has just started in Talk:2024 World Snooker Championship. More opinions are needed.  Alan  (talk) 14:36, 8 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Music

Did anyone know Music at sporting events#snooker existed? Seems like a weird list. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 14:52, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

History of World Mixed Doubles

A 1993 entry was added to the World Mixed Doubles page, and I recently discovered that apparently there were more mixed doubles events. However, they seem to be non-professional: Metro article by Phil Haigh mentions four of them in the past, including one in 2008 with Neil Robertson and Reanne Evans playing. The 2022 and 2024 events are "professional" events organized by WST, but would the 1991 and 1993 events count as "professional"? If not, maybe we should split the table into two sections. Does anyone have more info on these? AmethystZhou (talk) 05:09, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

  • AmethystZhou the 1991 event was promoted by Barry Hearn as part of his deal with the WLBSA - Snooker Scene for July 1990 says he "hopes to promote [it] with the joint sanction of the WLBSA and WPBSA". It looks from the Tunbridge Wells Courier clipping like the 1993 one was a successor to the 1991 event. (Hendry and Hillyard v John Parrott and Karen Corr, and Davis and Fisher v Jimmy White and Tessa Davidson were shown on Eurosport in September 1993, so looks like it was a tournament rather than a single match.) The four mixed doubles title referred to in the Metro article are probably the ones run by the WLBSA - they are listed in the Team finals section of the Reanne Evans article. There are some press references to Allison Fisher winning three mixed doubles titles - I guess these are the 1991 and 1993 events, plus the one at 1991 World Masters. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 11:58, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you for finding the information! I don't have access to the Snooker Scene magazine so perhaps someone else can add those to the Mixed Doubles page. AmethystZhou (talk) 07:11, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Gratuitous tinkering and introducing errors

I'm usually fairly careful when writing prose for snooker articles, both in terms of grammar and style, and also factual accuracy. But there are a couple of recent editors (and yes, we all know who they are) who seemingly aren't happy unless they've rewritten and tinkered with every single sentence contributed by others, often introducing errors in the process.

E.g., in the 2024 World Snooker Championship article, I wrote that Bai Yulu "forced a re-spotted black in the 17th frame after requiring two snookers, but Kendrick potted the black to win 10‍–‍7". This was changed to "forced a re-spotted black in the 17th frame after acquiring foul points from two snookers, but Kendrick potted the black to win 10‍–‍7". However, the source article notes that "Kendrick hit the black when escaping a snooker on the last red and let Bai back in to force a re-spot." In short, Bai didn't acquire "foul points from two snookers" but obtained 7 points from one snooker when her opponent hit the black, which were enough to tie.

I added a photograph of Fergal O'Brien with the caption "Irish player Fergal O'Brien (pictured) retired after his 8–10 defeat to Mostafa Dorgham. O'Brien had played on the professional tour since 1991." The photo (of course) had to be changed to a different photo, and the caption (of course) rewritten to "After his 8‍–‍10 defeat to Mostafa Dorgham, Irish player Fergal O'Brien (pictured) retired from the professional tour, which he was a part of since 1991." Why? No rationale given for the changes, no actual improvements made to either the image or the prose — it's just endless, gratuitous tinkering driven by a seeming obliviousness to the efforts of others and a stubborn refusal to leave well enough alone.

I could go on at length about all the changes (none of them constructive) made to just one paragraph, and all the errors introduced therein — "Michael Holt lost 6‍–‍10 to Xing Zihao" was changed to "he wad defeated 6‍–‍10 by Xing Zihao" — and material deleted without explanation. But the wider question is this: what's the point in contributing to articles anymore, only to deal with incessant meddling that only degrades the quality of articles? There's no point in engaging in time-consuming efforts to fix issues, only to deal with even more meddling in return. This is all time that could be invested in improving articles. Constructive editing is always welcome, of course, but nothing about any of this is constructive. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 09:42, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Fwiw, I think "Fergal O'Brien (pictured), a professional since 1991, retired following a 8‍–‍10 loss Mostafa Dorgham." As it gives a reason upfront (his career length and retirement) why we care, and then the details of why.
Whilst it might be hard to see your hard work be changed, it does come a bit with the nature of being on a callaborative encyclopedia.
I think you are doing a grand job. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 13:35, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I made the account in 2011 but only started editing last year, maybe I still don't quite get how one should contribute to Wikipedia exactly. But I see editors (including yourself) come in to an article and make these type of changes often, sometimes not without introducing some small errors such as typos. Also often with minimal discussion or explanation as to the rationale behind why they think it's an improvement. The bottom line here, however, is they are trying to improve an article. Do you honestly think nothing about my edits is constructive?
I find it quite insulting to declare others' good faith efforts as "incessant meddling". I could say the same when others "tinker" with what I have contributed, but I won't, because that's what comes with a collaborative process. Not to mention just because my edit is the last one doesn't mean I own the content and it cannot be changed. AmethystZhou (talk) 06:16, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@HurricaneHiggins: You say "and yes, we all know who they are". Well I for one have no idea who you are referring to. If you are accusing someone of something, I think you should tell them directly. If you are referring to me, then say so.  Alan  (talk) 14:03, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
...also, I tend not to edit article prose much, since I'm not very good at it. I concentrate on getting the numbers right in the scores and the century breaks, and correcting errors where I find them. You (HurricaneHiggins) seem to have scared everyone off with your post, since nobody has edited or added to the prose in the World Championship for a couple of days.  Alan  (talk) 07:52, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Eh? I'm not trying to "scare off" anyone from making contributions — I'm expressing frustration at having repeatedly seen my own contributions gratuitously rewritten for no good reason, in a manner that often degrades the prose and introduces errors. This has been going on regularly for months now. I see no point in spending my valuable time contributing to articles, only to have that material entirely rewritten within hours, without any effort to explain why the changes were deemed necessary. That is neither a collaborative nor a collegial way to approach the process. So I'll be taking a backseat from now on — I'll likely spend more time watching snooker and much less writing about it. Enjoy the World Championship. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 12:18, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Edit summaries

This is a general request to all editors: Please, when making an edit, put something in the edit summary line to indicate what the edit is for. This is particularly helpful with regard to adding century breaks, especially when there are a number of matches in progress at the same time. Just the name of the player and the score will do. This then makes the "Revision history" page a useful "blow-by-blow" history without having to look at each individual edit, and helps to keep track of the centuries. Also, just putting "ce" or the like in the edit summary line is not very helpful. A little more detail please.  Alan  (talk) 18:15, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Season infobox

Did something change recently at a source level with the season infobox? Up until recently, on the mobile skin on en.m.wikipedia.org, the season infobox has been displayed normally as it would on desktop. As of now though, it now looks like this (aka the infobox is now stretched across the full width of the page. This obviously makes it difficult to read due to the ridiculous amount of whitespace, which doesn’t sound like it was intended, but i can’t find any recent edits to the template itself that would cause this. — CitroenLover (talk) 21:52, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

This seems to be extending to various infoboxes, including ones that have nothing to do with the snooker project, my guess is thar someone changed some css at site level. — CitroenLover (talk) 21:55, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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