Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Snooker/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted 07:46, 15 March 2007.

[edit] Snooker

I (and others) have worked extensively to bring this article up to (hopefully) FA level. It is a nice stable subject that has been meandering a bit aimlessly for quite a while. Now it has all been tied together, extensively re-written, tidied-up, referenced and substantiated. Any problems preventing FA status mentioned here will be quickly resolved by myself or others; in the grand scheme of wikipedia the article subject is relatively straightforward and uncontroversial. Thanks, SFC9394 11:11, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

• I think that this is more like GA or maybe A level work. I still don't quite understand snooker and the article structure could probably be improved and more content be added. Geoking66 17:33, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
• Oppose - confused, needs copyedit, treats references and citations cavalierly to say the least
  • "to pot the balls in the manner described below." - lead should be fairly self-contained; also "pot" is an unlinked jargon term.
  • "multi-million pound": WP:$
  • particularly popular in English-speaking and Commonwealth countries,[2]- er, no. Your source doesn't say that, it instead writes about Britain dominance, one Australian player, and one mention each of one Canada and South African player. The US is a rather notable English-speaking country - does it play much snooker? How popular is Snooker in India or Pakistan, two rather notable Commonwealth countries? Find a source that says what you want, write what your source actually says, or both.
  • and the Far East,[3] - Aiee! your source doesn't say "the Far East", it says one country, China. Yes, China is rather important within the Far East, but hardly synonymous.
  • 1874 [6], televised.[12] [2] - remove space before ref
  • (of which most were due to it being a new game) - rephrase, or (better) just remove
  • new sponsors have been sourced - found?
  • A pretty important bit of history, that Joe Davis popularized the sport, is cited to a list by an unknown author on a fan website? Yikes!
  • "The game quickly became a mainstream sport[13] in the UK, Ireland and much of the Commonwealth and has enjoyed much success in the last 30 years" - again, that ref doesn't say what you think it says, it actually says "snooker reached its peak of popularity in 1985 when 18.6m people tuned in to watch Dennis Taylor and his upside-down glasses beat Steve Davis to the World Championship. That match turned out to be the end of a glorious honeymoon". Your source article also goes on a bit about hairstyles - is that important? Say. I'm afraid to even look at the rest of your sources now, for fear that they differ quite a bit from what your articles says.
  • it is returned to its correct position on the table - what is returned to what position? If there is a fixed position for balls say that - or is that what the starting positions graphic is for? Please be more explicit
  • define or link "pot", as above, "rest"
  • a table a set of snooker balls and a cue - a comma or two, please
  • 12x6 foot... - Wikipedia:Manual of Style (dates and numbers)#Units of measurement
  • The World Professional Billiards and Snooker Association (WPBSA, also known as World Snooker), founded in 1968 as the Professional Billiard Players' Association,[21] is the governing body for the professional game. Its subsidiary, World Snooker, organises the professional tour. - so is World Snooker the whole assoc, or its subsidiary?
  • Currently the Pontin’s International Open Series[38] is organised as one of these additional tournament series by World Snooker. - First, the ref should be at the end of the sentence if possible. Second, is the PIOS particularly important? If so, say so, if not, why concentrate on it? (It would be different if you mentioned several.)
  • 888.com [30]. - ref after period, no space
  • have succeeded at the top level... perform at the highest level. - redundant
  • Reaching and maintaining a place amongst the snooker elite is a tough task, with the standards of the game being such that it requires many years of dedication and effort as well as natural ability - meaningless puffery. Couldn't the sentence apply to basically any game or sport?
  • Certain players have tended to dominate the game through the decades. Ray Reardon is generally regarded as the principal player... -- need more than one person's opinion for a strong statement like "generally regarded". Especially if that person is Reardon himself - would you really think he was an unbiased opinion? Yikes!
  • Reardon, R. "Where does Ronnie rank?", BBC Sport, 21 February 2005, (Retrieved February 25, 2007) - actually that article seems to be at least co-authored by Saj Chowdhury, his byline.
  • Ronnie O'Sullivan has at times shown dominance but has been unable to show a consistency through tournaments or across multiple seasons - need more than one citation for a strong critical statement as general as that. The cite you give mentions something about consistency, but doesn't say "unable".
  • Due to the fact that tobacco companies are no longer allowed to sponsor sporting events in the United Kingdom after 2005, the World Snooker Championship had to find a new sponsor. - that would be a good fact to explain and cite. It was a specific law, wasn't it? Was it specifically targetting snooker, or all cue sports, or all televised sports, or what? Say so.

--AnonEMouse ^(squeak) 17:43, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your constructive criticisms. WRT sources I accept some are half and half and improvements can certainly be made - however I am reluctant to build an article on the basis that any statements within it (on the basis that for FA's everything should be sourced) is nothing but a line up of carbon copies of what the original source said. The problems with sourcing something you know to be true - but for which the exacting words of what you want to say are not in exactly that form in a respected source - leads to nothing but "source hunts" which is what I spent a weekend doing. I will attempt to deal with each point you make later in the week - hopefully the majority are relatively straight forward to correct. SFC9394 23:05, 13 March 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.