Talk:List of World Snooker Champions

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Contents 1 Massive edits by 88.104.72.69 2 The secondary tables should be more inclusive 3 Refs vs. footnotes 4 Jackie Rea 5 Possibly bogus anon edit 6 Merge proposal

[edit] Massive edits by 88.104.72.69

Anyone else perturbed by this? 88.104.72.69 removed a very large chunk of material, all on the basis of "Guiness Book doesn't say that", as if that is the only possible source. I propose a revert, backed with authoritative snooker sources. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 22:54, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

I saw it go - roughly agree with you. I didn't revert because I don't really have anything which says otherwise and the edits aren't plainly wrong. That being said the Guinness book of records is not much of an authoritative sources on anything - most certainly not on the definition of what a World Championship is. SFC9394 23:06, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Well, in that case, I figure the WSA and/or IBSF must have stats lists that can be cited. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 23:24, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Done. Source could be more primary, but WWW Snooker isn't known for lying. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 23:45, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

Cheers, Hopefully it shouldn't get changed back. If folks have issues then at most it can get a note at the bottom expanding on what happened during that time period, but it certainly shouldn't be completely wiped. SFC9394 23:52, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

The World Matchplay is not the world championship. It was a separate tournament set up after a disagreement betwen the players and the billiards control council who ran the world championship. That is why there are two tournaments in 1952 - the world championship won by Horace Lindrum and the World Matchplay won by Fred Davis. The BCC owned the rights to the snooker world championship and the world matchplay was never a BCC tournament. If you check the Guinness Book of records which has a vigorous vetting procedure you will see the World Matchplay records are not included in the snooker world championship records - the Guinness Book of records may not be the definitive source but it endeavours to be as factuals as possible, and no doubt checked the official trophy (which is why it cites Horace Lindrum as the first overseas winner as opposed to Cliff Thorburn as is commonly misrepresented by the BBC broadcasts). If you ever bother going to the Crucible in Sheffield and look at the trophy you will see for yourself that the world matchplay winners' names are not on the trophy, simply because it was a separate tournament. If you read the player profiles on wiki you will see there is a disctinction made between the world championship and the world matchplay. They are not the same tournament so please don't treat them as such because it misrepresents the facts. The world matchplay was run by a different administration, in a different location with a different trophy - to all intents and purposes a different tournament. There is nothing to stop another administration setting up an alternative world championship, but would you expect the records to be mixed in here which explicitly refers to the BCC/WPBSA world championship? 88.104.9.216 16:48, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I would strongly advise that you learn more about Wikipedia before running around deleting things. While editors are encouraged to be bold in improving the encyclopedia, removing information from it is generally not an improvement. Massive deletion edits are generally treated as article vandalism and if you do not stop, you will be blocked from editing. It is standard Wikipedia practice to combine related topics which have (or which would only have) very short articles into merged articles that provide more depth and coverage than separate stub articles would, until such time as the two or more closely related topics have enough material to warrant being split into separate articles. Part of the function of WP:SNOOKER (WikiProject Snooker) is to come to consensus on what snooker articles should be split and what should be merged. Just because you happen to disagree with their collective assessment is not justification for deletion of material from the encyclopedia. If you believe that the readership would be better served by two separate articles, then by all means please joine WP:SNOOKER and make a case for an article split at the project's talk page, or do so here. Or, since you've already written up much of it in the course of arguing above, why not simply improve the article by factoring in some of those details so that the difference between the tournaments is more clear? Just repetitively ranting in edit summaries and vandalizing the article is not going to convince anyone of your point of view. PS: I think you may be laboring under the misconception that "World Snooker Champion" can only possibly have one meaning. I believe most people would disagree with you. The term "World Champion" is used across the entire spectrum of sports to mean "winner of a broadly international competition", regardless of whether the words "World Championship" happen to appear in the name of the event. If you understand that, I think you will be less upset with the article. Please also see WP:MASTODON, WP:TEA and WP:DGAF. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 19:25, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

I.e., yes, if some new, competing "International Professional Snooker Union" arose and held new "IPSU World Snooker Championships", we absolutely would put the results of those tournaments in this catch-all article, at least until such time as a consensus arose that each of these sets of tournament results needed separate articles. I think every single party concerned would agree that the organisations and events should have separate articles, of course. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 19:32, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

PS: If you have found that the Guinness Book is conflicting with BCC/WPBSA and IBSF information, please post about that here; it is quite possible that this list is incomplete or that certain facts on it could be disputed. I.e. no one is discouraging you from either disputing facts or clarifying the articles, just from hacking its limbs off. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 19:32, 17 March 2007 (UTC)

There are several facts to consider here:

1) The content is clearly at odds with the Guinnes Book of records, something wiki should take seriously - it is not compiled by internet hobbyists for a start.

2) The World Snooker Championship is an officially sanctioned WPBSA tournament - the World Matchplay was not. If you want to include the results of the world matchplay the onus is on you to provide the an OFFICIAL source by an OFFICIAL BODY representing the PROFESSIONAL PLAYERS that the world matchplay is now accepted as a world championship tournament, not a link to a Dutch fansite.

Any further reversions without at least the second of those criteria being met will result in you being reported to admin and it will be left in their hands, but I seriously doubt they will take the non-Guinness line on this. 88.104.19.238 01:24, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Before making admin noticeboard threats, please actually read the policies. No one here (not even you) has violated WP:3RR. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 01:57, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

A couple of points of order. Firstly I have reverted back - I would not view the revert as permanent, but temporary - restoring the article to its state before this disagreement erupted until an adequate solution can be found. Secondly, I am confident a solution can be found - it is not a vastly complicated issue, and simply requires the appropriate wording to be hammered out. Thirdly, to best facilitate that hammering out it is best that good faith is assumed - "reported to admin" doesn't happen here - this is a content dispute, bearing in mind the rules on maximum reverts and civility, there is not much for admins to do - they are not gatekeepers for articles. I would propose a sensible compromise to be reached - it doesn't seem difficult to incorporate a marker or label into the list denoting that some specific years were World Matchplay not WPBSA. SFC9394 01:47, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I think I've taken care of that in a very basic way, though it could probably use a lot more explanation. 88.104.whatever: It would have taken you 5 seconds to make such an edit yourself, instead of editwarring over massive deletions against consensus. There's a guideline/essay I could refer you to with regard to this sort thing, but I'd be a WP:DICK if I did so. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 01:57, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

88.104.whatever.it.is.today: Good job on the table splitting. I think the new version works very well. The only quibble I might have is in a new topic, below. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 19:32, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The secondary tables should be more inclusive

I think that the "By player" and "By nationality" summary minitables should come at the end and include both events, otherwise they are of reduced usefulness. One could argue that both tournaments should have both of these sections, but a) there weren't enough WM events to warrant this, and b) it would create redundant headings that break the ToC (i.e. there would be two [[#By player]] links, which is a no-no). — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 19:32, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I will have a look at that now. 88.104.47.35 19:38, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I think it looks okay. There is now a distinction between the two events which I think is necessary. Because some links on the other pages link to the 'World Matchplay (snooker)' then maybe a redirection link should be set up to come to this page.

Looks good to me too. However, I'm skeptical about redir'ing World Matchplay (snooker) (which can probably really just be World Matchplay as the name isn't likely to be ambiguated) to this article, since WM is given very little attention here. The entire controversy and the resulting events really deserve their own article, but redir'ing to this one will very likely keep that from happening, possibly for years. Redlinks inspire people to write articles, while poor (for the subject matter sought; I'm not making an overall value judgement abut this list!) article often do not. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 21:35, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I don't mind either way but the World Matchplay references are already slightly messy in other articles noticebly the Pulman/Fred davis entries were some of the links are in red inka nd the others just link to the world championship page. I suppose it doesn't matter really but they probably should be consistent so that the links do actually point to the same place. 88.104.47.35 22:05, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. My vote is for redlinking all of them, unless the instance in that particular case is about winning the World Matchplay event, in which case the link to this article would be apropos. If it's just a mention of W.M., or mention of less than a runner-up placing in the W.M., it should redlink to the W.M. not-yet-article. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 23:29, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Refs vs. footnotes

I further propose converting the extant commentary footnotes into {{Ref label}} and {{Note label}} pairs, in a ==Footnotes== section, then citing sources (organisation websites or publications, Guinness Book with ISBN and other details, etc.) with <ref ...>...</ref>, <ref ... /> and (under ==References==) <references />. I have observed a general, though not utterly absolute, consensus that the Cite.php <ref ...>...</ref>, <ref ... /> and <references /> features should be reserved for reference citations only, especially since the <references /> feature can only be used once per article, while the ref/note system was designed to be for both reference citations and informative footnotes. Oh! Actually, use {{Footnote label}} and {{Note label}} instead of {{Ref label}} and {{Note label}}. See Template talk:Footnote label for why (short version: bots might otherwise later mistakenly convert it back to <ref> format). — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 21:35, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

If you want to alter the aesthetics then I really don't a have a problem, just so long as the distinction betwen the events and the notes on how the records are usually interpreted are maintained. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 88.104.47.35 (talk) 22:27, 18 March 2007 (UTC).

Certainly. The content of the notes wouldn't change at all. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 23:29, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

Hi All. The bottom link in your "references" section is out-of-Date (404). Looks like that site (www.worldofsnooker.co.uk) has almost nothing on it any more except league results. Someone might want to correct :-) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.233.192.195 (talk) 17:31, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Jackie Rea

Since he was Northern Irish Professional Champion for every year until 1972 (or so it says in his page), surely he should be given Northern Ireland nationality for his final appearance in 1957, whilst he still played for Northern Ireland? Alex Holowczak 13:17, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Possibly bogus anon edit

            old                                      new
| align = "center" | 25–12      +        | align = "center" | 25–21

Diff. Someone please check that with a source. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 02:46, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge proposal

I have proposed that List of champion snooker players (formerly List of notable snooker players be merge here into List of World Snooker Champions, on the basis that the former serves no encyclopedic purpose.

Hi, I would partially oppose the move. The page has had a patchy history, first being AfD'ed when it was titled "notable players" due to potential POV concerns. The compromise was "champion players" which, now that I look at the page, I am not really 100% with. The aim (and I think it is a very sensible aim) is to get together a article with the "names" of snooker. I would use the word notable but it has been stricken from the record as being POV. Essentially we want an article that highlights the big names in snooker - but not at the preclusion of having won the world championship. People like Jimmy White - and a more recent example in Ding - I think are important to be included in the ensemble without only having a mention in the ridiculously long List of snooker players. Thoughts welcomed (this can be cc'ed across to the article talk page if there are more noises, but they are pretty low traffic pages and issues). SFC9394 (talk) 20:27, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

[I have moved the discuss to here, since others might want to participate; better safe than sorry. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› ]

The problem is that such an exercise as you describe is POV, by definition. At least being World Champ is an objective criterion. The "champion snooker players" list is almost certainly destined for AfD as soon as someone notices its subjectively inclusive nature. The World Champions list is safe, since it is documentable and objective, so no one can attack it on the grounds of it being nonencyclopedic.

I've looked around and so far can't find a list like the champion players list at issue for any other sport or activity. No list of baseball greats or brilliant minds in chemistry or top-dog race car drivers or world's most influential rock albums. This strongly suggests to me that such lists aren't encyclopedic per WP:NPOV, and where they have been created they've either been deleted or converted to objective criteria like world record holders in baseball, Nobel prize-winning chemists, winners of the Indianapolis 500, Billboard Chart No. 1 albums, etc. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:44, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

PS: An additional problem is that the merge-from article goes into stub-level depth about everyone on the list, making it redundant with the individual articles on each of the players. The merge-to article (this one) sensibly does not do that, and looks just like other Wikipedia list articles. WP:SNOOKER also has way too many lists of players; someone just created another one 5 days ago (for all top-16 players ever; I have been thinking of AfDing it myself on the basis that it is tatamount to trivia and is what WP:OVERCAT calls a non-defining intersection (so it wouldn't even be good to convert it into a category): "almost a champion" is not a defining characteristic of an article subject. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:44, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Brought this up for broader discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sports#"Top-X" and "legends" articles. PS: If the subjective list is not encyclopedic, as I suggest, there really isn't anything to merge. Same probably goes for the new Top-16 snooker players article, created I think on Dec. 1. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:42, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I say we should just redirect it: don't see how it's our position to say who are the names of snooker. And there's nothing stopping us from expanding the lead in the world champions list and mentioning that Jimmy White has been runner-up 6 times and whatnot; in fact it should be actively encouraged, let's improve the content we've got before diffusing it further into more reams of electronic listery. Flowerparty^☀ 21:58, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I vote it is left as it is. The list of snooker champions doesn't explicitly refer to players that have won the world championship. They have different purposes - that list is for players that won a major snooker tournament supposedly. Would the likes of Jimmy White and and Marco Fu be scrubbed if it were merged. I think it is a good idea to have a list of players that have won a ranking title or major invitational. WalterMitty (talk) 11:19, 26 December 2007 (UTC)