Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Snooker

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Wuhan dates

See the tournament talk page.  Alan  (talk) 13:57, 30 July 2024 (UTC)

British Open qualifiers

The WST live-scores site ([1]) appears to be screwed up again. This is getting really annoying.  Alan  (talk) 09:33, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

It seems to have just come to life.  Alan  (talk) 10:24, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

... but there's no frames data for the Thepchaiya Un-Nooh v Alexander Ursenbacher match. Not even CueTracker has them. Does anyone know if there were any centuries?  Alan  (talk) 12:03, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

No centuries. Youtube: [2] Nigej (talk) 13:32, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Thank you - none at all today so far then.  Alan  (talk) 13:47, 31 July 2024 (UTC)

Turkish Masters

Suggest that Turkish Masters be replaced with {{R with history}} pointing to the 2022 Turkish Masters, with any relevant information placed into a category for "Legacy" (namely, the information regarding the non-existent 2023 edition and the presumption that it could have been on the 2024 calendar). We already have similar for the WST Classic and WST Pro Series, although arguably it would be better if we did not use the year-based naming convention for single-edition tournaments, as it implies the tournament has been held more than once. --CitroenLover (talk) 18:51, 3 August 2024 (UTC)

As this hasn't received a reply since being posted, am paging some active editors for opinions on this proposal: @Lee Vilenski @Nigej @AlH42 @BennyOnTheLoose -- CitroenLover (talk) 19:27, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

No objection from me.  Alan  (talk) 19:36, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

We certainly don't need two articles. It's not clear to me which of the two names is best (with/without the 2022). Perhaps I prefer the one with 2022 but WP:PRECISION.indicates (I think) that the other is preferred (assuming there's no other Turkish Masters). Nigej (talk) 20:11, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Looking on Google, there appears to be no other sporting events called Turkish Masters: all the search results are about the snooker tournament. In that case, the ideal outcome — until another Turkish Masters comes along — is to move 2022 Turkish Masters to Turkish Masters and update all links where possible. Precedent with that would then suggest doing the same with the WST Pro Series and WST Classic. — CitroenLover (talk) 22:49, 30 August 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. Title should include the year to avoid confusion, but no we don't need two articles, and a good reminder why we shouldn't create a series article before there's been more than one event. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 05:25, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Really no need to "update all links". See WP:DONOTFIXIT. If an article talks about "the 2022 Turkish Masters" then that may well be the best form, whatever the article is called. Nigej (talk) 06:15, 31 August 2024 (UTC)

Had a look at trying to do the merging of articles, but I just don't have the time to be able to ensure its done to the required accuracy and standards. Can someone who is active look into this please? @AlH42 @Nigej @BennyOnTheLoose et al. -- CitroenLover (talk) 13:11, 14 September 2024 (UTC)

Estimating age-dependent performance in paired comparisons competitions: application to snooker

For those of you with Wikipedia Library access, you might be interested in this article from Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports. From the conclusion: "we identify the greatest ever snooker players. Two candidates stand out: Ronnie O’Sullivan and Stephen Hendry... We find a peak age of betweeen 25 and 30: earlier than might be expected when compared to similar sports." Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 09:46, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

That's an interesting one, considering most people have a feeling O'Sullivan peaked a lot later. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 11:26, 23 August 2024 (UTC)

Jackie Rea and the Irish Professional Championship

Once again I find myself being reverted by an IP editor with a great interest in number of titles. I don't think there is any evidence that the Irish Professional Championship was contested annually by Rea. I'm convinced that it was not; Clive Everton wrote that before Higgins played Rea, it had not been contested for some years. Any views or sources would be welcome at that article's talk page. Also, should the qualifying competition (B section) for the News of the World Qualifying Event be listed as a "non-ranking event" in its own right? I think not. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 22:33, 8 September 2024 (UTC)

@BennyOnTheLoose: The IP user doing the reverting in the Jackie Rea article is, I'm fairly sure, banned user DooksFoley147, and so all of his edits should be reverted.  Alan  (talk) 05:33, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

Yes. Clearly DF147, per WP:DUCK. Regarding the Irish Professional Championship Chris Turner's archive says in the Jackie Rea profile "He started playing in his father’s pub and when he won the Irish Amateur Championship in 1947 he immediately turned professional and, straight away won the Irish Professional Championship which he held continuously, apart from losing it briefly to Jack Bates in 1952, until Alex Higgins successfully challenged him in 1972." and in the Irish Professional Championship part "The first Irish Professional Championship was held in 1947 and was won by Jackie Rea. Right up until 1982 the championship was conducted on a challenge basis with the champion deciding who his challenger would be. Jackie lost one challenge, to Jack Bates in 1952, but regained the title almost straight away and beat off all subsequent challenges until he came up against Alex Higgins in 1972." So absolutely nothing about it being an annual event. As to qualifying competitions. DF147 has held the view that if there's just one qualifier for an event then they've won the qualifier and it counts as a win, if there were two or more qualifiers it wasn't a win. It's an argument that's had no support from anyone else. Nigej (talk) 07:08, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

DF147 has also been editing Igor Figueiredo, Jimmy White, and Ken Doherty using 178.167.170.51.  Alan  (talk) 07:31, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

@Nigej: I see you've reverted all those, and I did one I found in the Marco Fu article from about a month ago. Surely there must be some way to automate this process, since DooksFoley147 ( Looks like a duck to me) is fairly easy to spot, but uses many different IP addresses.  Alan  (talk) 12:15, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

I've reverted per WP:Banned means banned. Whether there's some automated system I don't know. Nigej (talk) 12:22, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

In terms of automatic ways, edit filters are the only way, and I can't see it being something that's possible with this type of LTA. It is possible to mass delete a users creations, but I don't know much about mass rollback. I consider this user to be an WP:LTA at this stage. I usually follow Revert, Block, Ignore. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 13:29, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

But DF147 doesn't appear to be listed as LTA.  Alan  (talk) 16:27, 9 September 2024 (UTC)

European Series

Does anyone know what has happened to the European Series for this season? Is it still a thing?  Alan  (talk) 20:26, 15 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi @AlH42 that appears to have been discontinued this year: the BetVictor bonus is only being applied to the Home Nations Series, as there is only the 2025 German Masters being held in Europe this season, so it would have made little sense (it also suggests BetVictor are not sponsoring the German Masters this season either). --CitroenLover (talk) 17:58, 18 September 2024 (UTC)

Ishpreet Singh Chadha

Does anyone know the correct surname for Ishpreet Singh Chadha? Is it "Chadha" and therefore listed under "C" as we have, or is it "Singh Chadha" and therefore listed under "S" as the WST has? Some sources have it the first way and others have it the second way. I wouldn't trust the WST on names since they get all of the Chinese players' names wrong, listing Ding Junhui under "J" instead of "D".  Alan  (talk) 06:37, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

...and I just noticed that the WST has used both ways in this article:

Selby had opportunities to complete the comeback in the final frame, but couldn’t convert them. Singh Chadha eventually got his chance after depositing an incredible opening red. He held himself together with a break of 41 to win on the final black.

It was an emotional victory for Chadha, who showed his relief at the table after depositing the last ball. Meanwhile his mother, who has moved to Sheffield with him to pursue his career, was in tears in the stand.

 Alan  (talk) 06:52, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

There are other Singh Chadha on Wikipedia: Baljit Singh Chadha, Sarbjit Singh Chadha, Jagjit Chadha, Ponty Chadha who seem to be treated as Chadha. Doesn't prove anything of course. Nigej (talk) 09:46, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Well at least we seem to be consistent. I wish the WST was.  Alan  (talk) 10:10, 21 September 2024 (UTC)

Revival topic: the performance and rankings timeline

I previously raised a discussion in Feb 2023, which was later re-raised by another editor earlier this year with regards to this unwieldly table of performance and rankings for every player.

For some of our players, this table is an utter abomination to edit, with tons of colspans and widths that need to be corrected every single time a new season begins, with all sorts of abbreviations that make sense to some and mean nothing to others. Not to mention, wide colspan cells for "tournament not held" or "non-ranking" when put against a tournament which began as ranking and changed to non-ranking, and vice versa. Of course, because of the "enormity" of changing this, no action was taken on this.

Having thought about this recently, I would like to concur with a proposal I raised in the more recent discussion, which is that the massive table be split up into a lot of smaller (possibly collapsible and/or column divided) tables that segregate the information into a more controlled format, so each piece of data is more easily readable, rather than the current mess of mixed formats. This also allows us to better handle the small number of "exclusive" events which have only been run a small number of times (eg the one-off WST Pro Series, WST Classic and Turkish Masters, as well as the twice-run Hong Kong Masters), by not giving them equal weight to long running events (which presently lead to huge amounts of colspanning because these events haven't been held very often, I mean just look at how bad that looks on the Ronnie O'Sullivan and John Higgins pages for example!).

My proposal is therefore the following:

• The ranking that a player starts the season with is separated into its own heading with a small table. To make it easier to edit and read, the format of the table used here should be more equivalent to a roll of honour that you see at some events, rather than lots of columns that stretch off the page, need a horizontal scroll bar, or create excessive length. Two columns: left is the season and right is the ranking. Reference notes should NOT be used to indicate whether the player was an amateur or a new professional: instead, clear and unambiguous text should be displayed. Of course, the "two column" table layout would be repeated if a roll of honour was required for players who have long careers.
• The Triple Crown events are hived off into scrollable tables (if scrollable tables are not possible in the wiki, then collapsible would work, defaulting to being collapsed) under a "Triple Crown Series" heading. One table is used for the UK Champs, another for the Masters and another for the World Champs. These are then arranged in a 3-column layout, similar to how we create the layout on events such as the Snooker Shoot-Out so that they don't create excessive page length. The table should contain three columns: the first column should be the year the event was played in, the second is the round they reached (with a relevant colour code) -- or if they did not enter, it should say so, without abbreviations -- and the third is a link to the page which is masked with the display text "Report".
• Ranking events which are still being run (and haven't gone on a single-year hiatus) should be categorised under a heading for "World Ranking Events" with a large collapsible table. This table should contains 4 columns: the first is a rowspannable column for the event the player was in, with the remainining 3 being multiple rows for the edition, round reached (as per triple crown) and a link to the event. If the table is very long, this could be split up into a two-column set of tables, with the events equally split across both. This section should NOT include the UK and World Championships, as they've been separated into a Triple Crown Series section. One-off ranking events should not be included here.
• All non-ranking events get the same treatment as ranking events and structured the same way. Again, this should not include the Masters, but it should not include "one-off" events either.
• Any tournament which has only been run once or twice is moved to a heading for "one-off events" (or similar name). As this only includes tournaments which don't run often, this should be a simple table using the same format as the ranking/non-ranking events, with limited rowspanning (at most, up to 3 rowspans, if its been disparate editions with multiple lengthy gaps between them).
• All former tournaments -- which does not include events which have skipped one year due to scheduling restrictions, or were clearly a one-off -- should be separated with a similar table, with one addition: a column specifying the "type" of event (ranking or non-ranking).

Below is an example of table that demonstrates this "rowspanning" behaviour, which should look a lot better than what we have so far:

Event	Edition	Reached
some event	1999	Quarter-Final
	2000	Winner
	2001	Round 1

In terms of tournaments which began as non-ranking and changed to ranking -- or vice versa -- the tournament should be entered twice into the respective tables for the respective editions (eg the Snooker Shoot-Out should be included in both ranking and non-ranking headings: the data for the non-ranking edition should only record results for players who participated in the non-ranking edition; the same holding true for players who only played in the ranking edition, and so on). Please let me know your thoughts on the below, thanks. --CitroenLover (talk) 19:03, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

As I don't know who edits the pages on a regular basis nowadays, I've pinged the following users who I think are active, based on talkpage posts and edit history of a randomised selection of articles: @HurricaneHiggins @Nigej @AlH42 @Lee Vilenski @BennyOnTheLoose @AmethystZhou. If there are others, please feel free to @ them into this conversation. Thanks. --CitroenLover (talk) 19:09, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

I agree that the current timelines look very unwieldy. Your proposal gets an agreement from me. Just one question, using your table, if a player plays in the 1999 and 2001 editions, but missed the 2000 edition (due to not entering or losing their tour status) would this row be excluded from the table? Steveflan (talk) 21:29, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi thanks for the question on this @Steveflan. I would say that if the tournament was held, the player was a tour member and they withdrew from the event [and we have a source to confirm they withdrew], we should record that. But if the player was not a tour member and did not compete as an amateur top up, or they simply chose not to enter the event, we shouldn’t really bother including this because it would make no real sense from the context of that individual.

We don’t need to know what events they didn’t enter that they weren’t eligible to enter in the first place [therefore, players who have never competed at the Masters don’t need a table about how they never played in it, thats just pointless text on the page and people can work it out for themselves]: we should just record the events they could enter that they did enter, unless they withdrew from them due to unforeseen circumstances [which can then be noted in the table]. Hope this helps.

As an aside for others, qualifying rounds should be clearly distinct from main-stage rounds. Therefore, a loss in the first round of Qualifying is not the same as losing in Round One of the main stages of an event, so should be recorded appropriately [using the new format]. CitroenLover (talk) 22:14, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

CitroenLover, could you do a mockup (maybe in your sandbox) of what this would look like on a player's page, with the ranking info? I'm finding it difficult to visualise from just the three lines in the example how it would look and how much space it would take up. As I've said before, I think that editions of events that have gone from non-ranking to ranking (or vice versa) should be listed together, not separately. (Especially the World Championship!) If it's line by line there could be a column to indicate whether it's a ranking event. Thanks, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 22:43, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't look at individual players' pages very often, and hardly ever edit them, but just looking at the timeline table for ROS, it seems to me that the table is horrible, difficult to edit, and totally unnecessary. It has no sources and so smacks of original research. I would be happy to see these tables eliminated altogether.  Alan  (talk) 10:34, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

...OK, there is one source, just for the ranking history from snooker.org, but that is all.  Alan  (talk) 10:40, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi @BennyOnTheLoose sure thing, it might take a bit of time to make a sandbox to demonstrate this, but I can certainly make one and link it here in a day or two :)

@AlH42 I think the problem with removing them is that a lot of regular readers, who do not edit the wiki, are likely to raise a fuss over them being removed. While I agree they are partially OR, we could easily fix the OR issue by referencing news articles. However, that would over-populate the tables with references, when a lot of this can be easily assumed as truthful without a million references on the pages. -- CitroenLover (talk) 12:40, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

I think these tables are pretty much the definition of original research, and you can't have too many references.  Alan  (talk) 13:00, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

While they are probably the definition of OR, referencing every single tournament -- some of which might not even be possible to do without using banned sites like CueTrack -- would likely lead to over-referencing, and clog up the references section with an unnecessary number of links. While its important to have references, common sense is a thing: not every single thing needs a reference, especially when it comes to obvious facts (like we do not need to reference when someone was born and where, because thats just accepted to be factual without one; neither do we need to reference every single start-of-season ranking because we have a single reference that covers the players' history). However, its up to the community to decide how much referencing it would like to do, but I don't think "you can't have too many references" is true, as you definitely "can" over-reference a page into oblivion, causing the page to be nothing but references, which makes it unreadable for those who just use the site to read up information.

Anyway, I have set up a sandbox of my proposal. It is deliberately limited so as to reduce how much work I would put into a concept, but you should be able to get the idea from the little that I have put there [which covers all of the earlier mentioned parts of the proposal]. -- CitroenLover (talk) 13:18, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

Performance timelines provide a good visual overview of players' careers, which are especially useful in the many instances where the "career summary" section is patchy. I'd be totally opposed to removing performance timelines entirely, but supportive of any endeavor to rework them as @CitroenLover proposes. As for the claim that the performance timelines consist of "original research"—each entry in the timeline is linked to that event's tournament page, which has references that should make it easy to verify the information. The concern about over-referencing individual players' pages is legitimate in this instance. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 13:24, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

I think it's better to include references on the page. Some of the refs on linked pages are dodgy (e.g. for Pot Black). See Cliff Thorburn or Terry Griffiths for examples where the table is referenced - although the refs are for results, not for statements like "Tournament not held". For a much worse looking example, check out John Spencer (snooker player) where during the FA review, the tables were split out to avoid having column headers in the middle of a table, for accessibility. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 10:38, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

@BennyOnTheLoose having thought about it, i think we could make a case for having a reference column on the new tables, but i think to avoid it getting out of hand, it should be one meaningful reference about that players’ progress and not endless references. The alternative is that the references could be stuck to the event name, where more space is likely to exist for a copious number of references, though over-referencing should still be available imo. — CitroenLover (talk) 11:55, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the sandbox example, CitroenLover. I think one disadvantage is that in the current version it's easier to look see how a player has done in a partcular season as well as in a particular event. I think I'd prefer something like this one in my sandbox; a simplified version of the current model. Maybe we could have the triple crown events as the first three lines. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 13:05, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

@BennyOnTheLoose thanks for the feedback. On one side of the coin, I get your point; on the other side, we're not a statistics site and should only be presenting the information in a non-statistical manner. While I do like your sandbox format, the problem is that it is still dependent on a column-based layout and also needs to be extended width-wise every new season the player is in, and also has the significant issue of "Tournament Not Held" empty space if a new tournament appeared many years after the player joined the tour. But, I do like your format because it does not separate all the events like our current table does, and we can always use reference notes or other indicators to denote a "non-ranking" edition or similar: the only thing I would suggest in your sandbox is that Triple Crowns should be listed first (UK -> Masters -> Worlds), due to their higher prestige in comparison to all other tournaments on the calendar. -- CitroenLover (talk) 18:10, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

@BennyOnTheLoose @AlH42 @HurricaneHiggins @Lee Vilenski if no one here has objections to Benny's table layout, this should probably start to be updated on pages which see lesser amounts of traffic before getting to the bigger pages. -- CitroenLover (talk) 17:17, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I much prefer Benny's style. Not sure what the green background on some of the events is for though Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:38, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

The idea of the green is in a bulletpoint above the table in my sandbox; I've tweaked it and actually added the symbols in. No doubt we can phrase this better once principles are agreed. Do we want triple crown events at the top of the table, or to try and keep it roughly in season order (e.g. world championship would be probably the penultimate row for players who competed in Pontins events)? I'm not sure that something like "UK Championship†‡" is very user-friendly but we should also try to make the tables as close to complying with MOS:ACCESS as we can. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 21:25, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I would suggest grouping matches based on types: Triple Crown Series should be at the top, then all ranking events, then all invitationals. Former events, or one-offs (eg WST Classic/WST Pro Series/Hong Kong Masters), should be at the bottom of the table, or separated into their own -- similarly designed -- table imo. -- CitroenLover (talk) 16:58, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, exactly that. The three Triple Crown at the top, then anything that has ever been a ranking event, and then invitationals (minus the Masters, naturally). Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:06, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

References

Archiving

Just a heads-up: since the Wayback Machine is still down following a DDoS attack, I have been using Ghost Archive very successfully.  Alan  (talk) 18:16, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

For information: the Internet Archive is now back on-line but in read-only mode for now. See this.  Alan  (talk) 13:54, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Reminder! Names and scores in tournament articles

Hi all, I've noticed in recent tournament articles that a couple of longstanding editorial conventions are being disregarded. The first relates to scores. If representing a match score from the losing player's point of view, give the loser's score first, e.g., "Trump lost 2‍–‍6 to Si." Do the reverse from the winner's point of view, e.g., "Si defeated Trump 6‍–‍2." Saying "Trump lost 6‍–‍2 to Si" is inconsistent with other articles and with the manual of style. The second relates to names. The player's wikilinked full name should be given only on first use in a major section (e.g., Shaun Murphy or Judd Trump). Thereafter, refer to the player by their family name, unlinked (so, Murphy or Trump). In cases where confusion may arise (e.g., two players in a tournament have the same family name, such as Neil Robertson and Jimmy Robertson), continue to use the player's full name, unlinked. Recent articles are stating all players' full names throughout. Thanks for being mindful of the above. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 11:06, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Here here. We do actually have a style guide for this, but these two items are exactly right. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:46, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @Lee Vilenski! HurricaneHiggins (talk) 11:48, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

@HurricaneHiggins it isn't surprising to me that the style guidelines are being ignored at times. In defence of the users who do so, they may be unaware of them: however, its probably more likely to happen because so few regular editors are around nowadays. But agree that the style conventions are there to be followed and should be enforced at all times, so if you do see people ignoring them, tell them to read them tbh. :D --CitroenLover (talk) 17:16, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi @CitroenLover, I don't think it's down to people being unaware. These issues have been discussed more than enough on this page and elsewhere. It's more that certain editors seem to believe that they don't need to abide by style guides or past conventions. Bluntly, it feels like an effort to make up new rules and repeat them frequently enough that they become ingrained. Just now, I had to correct "Judd Trump was beaten 9–3 by Kyren Wilson" in the Northern Ireland Open article, exactly the issue I pointed out above. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 21:19, 27 October 2024 (UTC)