Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Snooker/Archive 2

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This internal Wikipedia page is part of WikiProject Snooker, an attempt to improve Wikipedia's coverage of snooker. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Shortcut:
WT:SNOOKER
Archive This is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.
Archive
Archives


Contents

Project revived!

I've archived the old talk, since it's probably mostly irrelevant by now. Yay, fresh start! Flowerparty☀ 00:18, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

New infobox

Resolved.
Steve Davis

If Steve Davis were a pelican...
Born August 22, 1957 (1957-08-22) (age 50)
Nationality Flag of England English
Nickname(s) The Nugget,
Interesting,
The Ginger Magician
Professional 1978–
Highest ranking #1 (7 years)
2008/09 ranking #15
Tournament wins
Ranking 28
Non-ranking 24
World Champion 1981, 1983, 1984, 1987–1989

I've started a new infobox, {{Infobox Snooker player}}, to replace the anachronistic table that's currently being used for biographies. The infobox is in use in Joe Davis and John Parrott's articles. I've tried to cut out some of the cruft, but it looks like it could still do with some trimming, if it's ever going to be feasible for use in Steve Davis' article, for instance. I'm thinking it might be more sensible to list the tournament wins in a table within the article, rather than in the infobox. What do other people think? Flowerparty☀ 05:05, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Super nice! I agree, they could do with a lick of paint to take advantage of a lot of the newer formatting styles that are now available and make them look a bit less "html table" ish. I see what you mean with the tournament wins. For big winners (Davis, Hendry etc) it would probably look nicer to list separately, but for less successful players who maybe have 2 or 3 wins then they could happily fit inside the infobox. That solution has the unfortunate side effect of creating two classes of infobox, and I don't know if that is a big issue or not. SFC9394 11:04, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Hmm, the tournament wins sections are completely optional, so they'd both use the same infobox, but I don't really like the idea of having a double standard for using it. Snooker doesn't have any sort of Grand Slam equivalent, does it? If it did, we could list only the really important tournaments in the infobox and leave everything else in the article. Perhaps we could have a field for "number of ranking tournament wins", and one for "World Championship best" and just leave it at that? What do you think to what I've done with Stephen Hendry? The infobox is no longer bigger than the article! Flowerparty☀ 16:18, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, I didn't know if you were using conditionals or not (I should have checked the infobox source!) - if it doesn't display if there are none then that should solve the problem of 2 types. I would agree with your solution, with something along the lines of:
World Championship Best: 5 times winner (possibly add years, since this is the most important one to win)
Other Ranking tournament wins: 15
Other tournament wins: 25
That way the reader would have a good idea about the players success without having to dive into the big winners tables (which should be there to give full details of what those wins were) - but it would also ensure that the infobox didn't become overly long for big winners. It strikes a nice balance, with the Hendry infobox not letting anyone know how well he did (apart from the fact that he was no. 1), while the pelican box tells the reader too much! SFC9394 16:49, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
I've tried adding those fields (see Stephen Hendry again). The text wrapping is slightly annoying, but can you think of anything more concise than "Ranking tournament wins"? I'm also thinking it's a bit World Championship-centric now. Maybe the field would be more useful as, not "World Championship best", but just "World Champion".. I'll probably try that shortly. Flowerparty☀ 01:37, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Ok, it's now just "World Champion", which I think works better. Also, see James Wattana, where I've put the tournament wins in a straightforward list format, which is probably a neater way of doing it. Flowerparty☀ 14:27, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
I see what you meant about the text wrapping - that didn't work too well. The Wattana one looks good - that lists it nicely without being too complex. Good work, SFC9394 14:45, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
The new infobox style looks nice, and the layout is tidier, but do you think we need a field for the beginning of each season's ranking , a 'World Championship Best' field (for player who have not won it yet) and a 'Highest Break' Field?, Oh, and thank you Flowerparty, SFC9394 and all others for helping to revive the Wikiproject! - Nick C 16:22, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
I have added the new fields to the infobox, check it out at the Marco Fu article. - Nick C 19:41, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I know I intitially left out some of the stuff that's included in the old table. I'm not sure we really need all of that info though:

  • World Championship best - I tried this field earlier (see above), but felt that it was just a bit cumbersome, and makes the infobox too World Championship-centric. Is it that important that a player has reached, say, the quarter-finals in the World Championship?
  • Highest break - this nearly always seems to say '147', but never indicates where, or when the player made the break, and doesn't really tell you much about the player. I think this is better dealt with in the article's text (which I see you've been doing, Nick - thanks for that).
  • Current world ranking - I guess I'm ok with this one, but it means updating all the articles that are using the infobox when the new rankings are announced. I guess that's not too difficult. How high do the rankings go?

I'm happy to leave these fields in, of course, if other people feel they're useful. Anyway, that's why I originally omitted them. Flowerparty☀ 20:04, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

I see where you are coming from for the Highest Break field, I feel it might take up too much of the infobox, so that can be removed if you want, but it gives people who just glance at the article to find out all the information easily, without reading the text :). They do not need to be all filled in anyway. The World Championship may be needed, as this is the biggest tournament of the snooker calendar, much like the World Cup of Football. The Current World Ranking field could be useful too, as I mentioned for the highest break field. Thanks for creating the infobox in the first place! Do we agree that this can replace the old infobox? - Nick C 20:11, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
This is just a suggestion, but do we need a 'Career Prize Money' field? Someone else suggested adding a 'Residence' and a 'Place of Birth' field but I think that this can be added to the text rather than the infobox. - Nick C 21:20, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
A career prize money field would be nice if there's a reliable and up-to-date (and easily accessible) place to find such information. Is there such a place? If not, then I wouldn't trust wikipedia editors to fill in that field accurately, to be honest. The birthplace field would echo {{Infobox Biography}}, but 'residence'? That kind of information is only useful for stalkers, right? :) Also, I don't think the football World Cup is an adequate analogy here, since there's really only one international tournament in football, and the World Cup is it. In snooker, any player can qualify for any tournament, no? The World Championship just happens to be the most important. Flowerparty☀ 00:17, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
  • I would probably agree that the "Highest Break" is not really needed - at a complete guess but I would suspect that most of the pro's would have made a 147 at some point in their careers. I think the world ranking is a good idea. Perhaps the world championship field could be used if the person has gotten to the finals only (e.g. would list winner - 3; runner up - 4). Along with "ranking wins" that should give a good idea of a players level. The problem if wins is only mentioned can be seen (at the moment) by the fact that Dott is a two times world finalist - yet has never won a ranking event - so that wouldn't show up at all if it was wins only. SFC9394 00:23, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
That's true, it would be nice to have a field for the players that haven't won a tournament yet. Another way to do this would be to list the player's best performance at any tournament - for instance, Graeme Dott has been runner-up at several events. This is the way worldsnooker.com seem to do it (see Dott's profile). And they also list the career prize money, which is useful. Flowerparty☀ 01:44, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
I agree, a field for player who have not won a tournament yet would be good. Place of Birth and Residence fields are included in the {{Infobox tennis player}}, although I think that the Residence field may not be needed. Data for career prize money can be gained from Worldsnooker.com, but only for the beginning of each season. Anyone care to implement these fields? - Nick C 13:25, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
I've added all the fields that we agree on, I think. See Graeme Dott's article. Flowerparty☀ 01:33, 1 May 2006 (UTC)ore
Looks good! Tidied up the infobox a bit on Graeme Dott's article and re-added some fields, look at the John Parrott article, as he has won few tournaments and the infobox does not look crowded. Anymore fields do you think are needed, or can this replace the original infobox? - Nick C 17:43, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
Aw, you're joking! :) Well, I still don't like listing the tournaments in the infobox. It might not look too crowded on Parrott's article, but it does make the infobox longer than the article itself (at least with my screen resolution), and it means having to use the infobox differently for Davis, Hendry et al than for everyone else, which is confusing. I think it's very easy with these infoboxes to include too much information, making it distracting and dominating when placed in an article, and for me these lists of tournaments cross that line. It would be nice to start replacing the old boxes, though, if we can agree on this. Flowerparty☀ 20:25, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
Ok, I see what you mean. I have removed those list fields in the template. Now all we have to do is fill in the Number of ranking and other wins, instead of listing them. We can list the tournamnent wins in a seperate section. - Nick C 14:06, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

So it looks like we're ok to start implementing this infobox? I'm sure it could still be improved to make it look better, or whatever, but as long as we're happy with the underlying fields here, I think we should start putting it into use. Hmm, this could take a while. Flowerparty☀ 02:17, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree, we can start replacing the old infobox with the new one, should this be the standard infobox, officially replacing the old one? - Nick C 15:42, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I've updated the project page to make this the standard infobox. Now it's a just case of updating everything in Category:Snooker players :) Flowerparty☀ 01:03, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

The 'image size' setting was broken. I just changed it to 'width' as 1) it works and 2) it's standardised across templates. I did a quick scan of transclusions and it looks like nothing else has been effected. See Allison Fisher for usage example - Alison✍ 07:17, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Marking this topic "Resolved" as the infobox is now widely deployed, and has evolved past the scope of the above discussion. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 04:12, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

New Stub Pic

Resolved.

I have added a picture to the stub template, comments and criticisms welcomed

Image:Chalk stub.pngThis Snooker article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

SFC9394 22:26, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

I like it. It's a bit big though, how about:
This Snooker article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Flowerparty☀ 22:39, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
Yeah that works better - I couldn't think of much else to use - the triangle of reds is almost clichéd for snooker! SFC9394 22:47, 27 April 2006 (UTC)
It's a nice bit of chalk. I've included it in Template:Snooker project, where it's looking pretty chic! Feel free to help me adding this template to talk pages - it looks like we could do to advertise the project. Flowerparty☀ 23:25, 27 April 2006 (UTC)


As an alternative (I'm bored so I just created it anyway - firguring it would be useful somewhere sometime!) is the red balls:

This Snooker article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

SFC9394 23:33, 27 April 2006 (UTC)

The image could be used for the {{snookerbio-stub}} template. - Nick C 16:25, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I have now added it to the {{snookerbio-stub}} template. - Nick C 19:36, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
Marking topic "Resolved" since the stubs for this and WP:CUE are already established and deployed. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 04:07, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Discussion of Stub Templates

Resolved.
  • Discussion of the stub templates on Snooker are taking place here: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Stub_sorting/Proposals#Snooker.2C_Snooker_bio_stubs. Please participate if you can. - Nick C 16:31, 28 April 2006 (UTC)
    • We are down to Cat:Billiards, snooker and pool stubs, Cat:Billiards games stub and Cat:Cue sports stubs for the stub template categories. (Where are the Stubs marked with the snooker stub templates will go). Please vote which one you want to have as the one you want all the Snooker stubs to go. - Nick C 19:33, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
      • It has been decided that Cat:Billiards, snooker and pool stubs will be used, which seems fair. Now we can use the stub templates! - Nick C 12:08, 1 May 2006 (UTC)
Marking topic "Resolved" since the stubs for this and WP:CUE are already established and deployed. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 04:09, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Tree Template for other snooker tournaments?

Would it be possible to create a template, much like Template:World Snooker Championship Rounds, that can be used to make result trees for other snooker tournaments? as other ranking tournaments have different best of xx frames for different rounds (Does not need to include Best of xx frames, below the Round name). And could the Best of "xx frames" field be made changeable if that is any use. Most of these ranking tournamnents have 32 competitors in the main draw, apart from the Grand Prix. The template could be named Template:Round32, if it does not include the Best of xx Frames variable, much like Template:Round16. - 213.122.38.141 12:53, 29 April 2006 (UTC)

The above comment was by me. - Nick C 13:03, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
The one that is there can be modified to make the "xx frames" field changeable if that is any use. SFC9394 13:05, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
I have changed the template to make the frame numbers optional (they are added at the bottom of the results), and have updated all the results years that use the template. This also has the advantage of allowing the years to be extended backwards pre 1980. I don't know how far back it should go, but I have taken it to the start of the Crucible Years with 1977. SFC9394 17:29, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Thanks! - Nick C 19:46, 29 April 2006 (UTC)
Does anyone think that the template should be renamed? As it is not just for the World Snooker Championship now. - Nick C 13:36, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
True, the template should be renamed. --Siva1979Talk to me 19:44, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
I've found out that 3 of the 6 current ranking tournaments can use the tree (Malta, China and World Championship) as they are straight knock-out rounds, whereas the other 3 have different formats. So lets keep it named like that, but you can still use it for other articles. - Nick C 17:18, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
What format do the other three fit in? Are they 16 knock out? If so Template:Round16 could be modified (to get rid of the third placed play-off box) and used as a generic for the other tourneys. I guess the masters will definitely be 16 knock-out, but the others I am not so sure about. SFC9394 18:28, 2 May 2006 (UTC)
The other three tournaments have a wierd format, for example, some players get a bye to the next round. So 16 players enter the first round, then the 8 winners play 8 new players in the next round, so there will be 16 players in the first round, and 16 players in the second round! And you would have to make a new template without the playy off box, as some articles already use this template, such as the Football World Cup articles. - Nick C 16:16, 3 May 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, a new template is what I meant. I see what you mean about the format then if they have a lot of custom "knock out/go through" type moves. It strikes me that some of the lower order ranking tournaments may also be liable to change their structures in the future, which wouldn't be too handy for template usage. SFC9394 13:57, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

South African flag

Resolved.

Should the icon used for the South African flag pre-1994, on tournament results and rankings pages, be the old flag rather than the rainbow nation flag? It seems strange to see Perrie Mans results from 1979 for example, attached to a flag not introduced for another 15 years after! fchd 12:59, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

It should be the older flag to give the article a greater accurate feel. --Siva1979Talk to me 19:45, 30 April 2006 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Wikiproject Flag Template accounts for this sort of thing these days.
According to the Olympics WikiProject, and to growing consensus at Wikipedia:WikiProject Flag Template and Wikipedia:Don't overuse flags, Siva1979 is correct on this. But for very general usage (including to indicate a country during a wide enough span of time that they used more than one flag in that period), use the current flag. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:32, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

The lost World Championship results

Well, not exactly lost, but where can the 1991, 1992 and 1993 results be found? The rest were found easily enough. TheMightyMariner 07:59, 6 May 2006 (UTC)

I'm having trouble finding them as well. - Nick C 13:59, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
I've got a "Rothmans Snooker Yearbook 1991-92" which has the World Championship results complete from 1927-1991, including what looks like all the qualifying rounds as well. I'll type them up when I get the chance if you like. - fchd 15:41, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
That would be great! Thanks. - Nick C 18:58, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
1991 Championship Article started, now needs someone else to smarten it up and add the draw-sheet style template. fchd 20:07, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Main knock-out has been smartened. Can I double check whether the semi-final scores should be 9-17 & 17-10 rather than the 16's that were in? Also, was the final 18-11 or 18-13? The first para differs from the results section on that one. SFC9394 23:19, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Sorry, 18-11 was correct. I'll also go back and proof-read all the qualifying results later today. 16-9 and 16-10 for the semi scores is correct, in that era semi-finals were best of 31 frames. fchd 05:33, 8 May 2006 (UTC)

Userbox

Resolved.

The new userbox created by TheMightyMariner looks good. It can be viewed at the bottom of the main page. - Nick C 14:01, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Thanks! TheMightyMariner 14:50, 7 May 2006 (UTC)
Marking this topic "Resolved" as the userboxes are now plural, widely deployed, and have evolved past the scope of the above discussion. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 04:15, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Pre 1982 World Snooker Championship ladders

I should now have filled most of the World snooker results from 1982 onwards in ladders. Any chance on how to do the eariler years in that format when 24 or less players took part.


Yours, Pete Davis 20:45, 8/5/2006

  • Unless it was a straight knockout tournament (with 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64 and so on, competitors), a template would be hard to create. - Nick C 17:52, 16 May 2006 (UTC)

Steve Davis article

Resolved.

Hi,

Are you sure all his tournament wins are listed (ranked and non-ranking events?). As from the tournaments listed here, he has won some tournaments that are not listed in his biography. Some other player biographies may be like this as well so we need to check them all.- Nick C 16:32, 9 May 2006 (UTC)

Sounds an incredibly tedious task. The Davis article is correct for the ranking tournaments according to World Snooker, but they might be wrong, of course, and they don't list the non-ranking events. Is there nowhere that lists this information like we do? This profile claims 28 ranking and 73 professional tounraments, whatever they are. Flowerparty☀ 23:09, 9 May 2006 (UTC)
I guess we have to go through the all the non-ranking tournament pages and see. I think all the ranking ones are listed. - Nick C 15:45, 10 May 2006 (UTC)
Marking topic "Resolved" since that article has its own talk page for further discussion. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 04:36, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

1992/1993 Scores

I have put the 1992 in the snooker template, I have 1993 still to do but I don't seem to have time on my hands...I will put the scoring down here so anyone who wants to have a go can...

1st Round: S. Hendry beat D. Fowler 10-1; D. Morgan beat L. Dodd 10-6; N. Bond beat S. Dunn 10-4; G. Wilkinson beat Reynolds 10-4; N. Foulds beat B. Morgan 10-5; M. Clark beat K. Payne 10-6; A. McManus beat R. O'Sullivan 10-7; S. Davis beat P. Ebdon 10-3; J. White beat J. Swail 10-4; D. Mountjoy beat A. Robidoux (Canada) 10-6; Dennis Taylor beat T. Drago (Malta) 10-9; T. Griffiths beat D. Roe 10-6; J. Wattana (Thailand) beat T. Jones 10-7; S. James beat J. Giles 10-2; W. Thorne beat S. Mellish 10-6; J. Parrott beat S. O'Connor (Republic of Ireland) 10-1 Round of 16: Hendry beat D. Morgan 13-4; Bond beat Wilkinson 13-7; Foulds beat Clark 13-7; McManus beat S. Davis 13-11; White beat Mountjoy 13-6; Dennis Taylor beat Griffiths 13-11; Wattana beat James 13-7; Parrott beat Thorne 13-9 Quarter-finals: Hendry beat Bond 13-7; McManus beat Foulds 13-11; White beat Dennis Taylor 13-8; Wattana beat Parrott 13-6 Semi-finals: Hendry beat McManus 16-8; White beat Wattana 16-9 Final: Hendry beat White 18-5

-Evito

Where are the 1992 scores? I suppose it shouldn't be hard to simply adapt that page's formatting to the 1993 scores. I'll do that if someone will point me to the 1992 version (and remind me :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 04:41, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Terry Griffiths/ Steve Davis match 1980

Resolved.

I just changed one match, Terry Griffith lost 13-10 to Steve Davis in the second round of the 1980 world championship, and not 13-2 as originally entered.

- Mitsuko

Marking topic "Resolved" since that article has its own talk page for further discussion. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 04:39, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Patrick Wallace

Resolved.

I have now added a page for Patrick Wallace.

- Mitsuko

  • Cool! Welcome to WikiProject Snooker! Remember to sign your posts with four tildes (~~~~). - Nick C 17:11, 11 June 2006 (UTC)
Marking topic "Resolved" since that article has its own talk page for further discussion. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 04:35, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Jim Meadowcroft

Resolved.

I've created a stub for Jim Meadowcroft. It's very limited but a start at least. SteveO 14:00, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Just updated it a bit :) Mitsuko 10:10, 11 December 2006 (UTC)
Marking topic "Resolved" since that article has its own talk page for further discussion. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 04:39, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Player nationalities

Resolved.

Should players hailing from the United Kingdom be recorded as 'British' or as representing the individual British nations in their infoboxes? I favour the latter, since snooker players traditionally represent England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland given the predominance of British players. But what do others think? It would be good to build a consensus on the issue. SteveO 23:13, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

I agree, as most Snooker players come from the UK. We should have a vote. - Nick C 19:12, 9 September 2006 (UTC)
Wide consensus as judged from actual practice in extant articles is that using the individual UK countries (England, etc.) is preferred. Marking this topic "Resolved" since it's spurred no debate (nor a vote) in abut 6 months now. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 04:18, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikiproject Cue sports

Resolved.

Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals#Cue sports. Any comments, or better yet interested editors to participate? This would be a "parent" WikiProject that would not interfere with WikiProject Snooker, but attempt to do what WPS is doing for snooker with the rest of the cue sports, and keep them consistently organized. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 01:03, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Update: It is now a "live" project, at Wikipedia:WikiProject Cue sports or WP:CUE for short. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 21:15, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
Marking topic "Resolved" since WP:CUE has its own talk page for any further discussion.

UK Snooker Championship

I have now put in results from the UK Snooker championship. So far I have done 1977, 78, 79, 80 and 81 which the books I used to copy out of ended since the book was dated from 1982.

Pete Davis 19.05, 7 Dec 2006 (UTC)

What's your methodology for doing this work? Have you made a fill-in-the-blanks template article? Just curious if there's something you've done to make it less tedious. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 21:15, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

I have now filled in results from 1984-88 and 1994 and 1995 so far. My hand's getting sore typin all the time. Pete Davis 19.05, 7 Dec 2006 (UTC)

Resolving the "billiards" ambiguity

Resolved.

Several UK folk have observed that Billiards being the broadest article on cue sports (i.e. instead of Cue sport which is a redirect to Billiards, or being a renamed to something else such as "Billiards-family games") is not optimal, because only Americans and even then only some Americans use "billiards" in such a generic way that it also encompasses snooker. The debate's winding down but could use some additional input: Talk:Billiards#Proposed disambiguation page which seems to be coming to consensus, and the topic immediately above it which may not quite be there yet, but resolution of which the disamb. page depends on. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 21:22, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Marking topic "Resolved" as the issue was dealt with (see WP:CUETALK or its archives for details. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 04:13, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Peter Ebdon

Resolved.

Generally a good article on Peter, but I have rewritten to 'tidy up', and include some more background information, and info relating to previous matches (his defeat of Steve Davis in the 1992 World Championship, and the events at which he made his two maximum breaks etc.). In addition, I have omitted some statements that I didn't feel were particularly noteworthy - "During the 2006 World Championships, Peter almost made a maximum 147 break on three occasions, just failing towards the end of each break. The only century break in the final match in 2006 against Graeme Dott was his in the 23rd frame", and unfounded claims such as "He doesn't always see the textbook shot - instead he tends to make it difficult for himself with sometimes bizarre shot selections", "These ponderous performances are often used to break his opponent mentally", and "- possibly only second to Alex Higgins". The article that I propose is as follows...

Peter Ebdon (born August 27, 1970) is an English professional snooker player and the 2002 World Champion, and current UK Champion. He was born in Kettering and lived in Islington, north London, until he was 18, before moving to Wellingborough, Northamptonshire. Attending Highbury Grove school, he played cricket and had trials with London Schoolboys. He began playing snooker at the age of 14.

Ebdon turned professional in 1991, and – sporting a pony-tail, made an impact by beating Steve Davis 10-4 in the first round of the 1992 World Championship, and reaching the quarter-finals of the event – earning him the WPBSA Young Player of the Year award as a result. He climbed the rankings rapidly to reach a career-highest position of number three in 1996; he again reached world number three status at the conclusion of the 2002 season.

Perhaps Ebdon's greatest achievement, thus far, was his 18-17 defeat of Stephen Hendry in the 2002 World Championship final. Peter previously reached the final of the tournament in 1996, which he lost 18-12 to Hendry, and was also runner-up at the 2006 event to Graeme Dott where – at 15-7 down coming into the final session, Ebdon won six successive frames before Dott prevailed 18-14.

Ebdon is a remarkably focussed and determined player. Until recently, his shot times had slowed down considerably; this attracted some criticism – particularly, in his match against Ronnie O'Sullivan in the 2005 World Championship. Resuming at 10-6 down, Ebdon won the first six frames of the evening session, at one stage taking three minutes over a shot, and five minutes to compile a break of 12 [3]. Ebdon nevertheless won the match 13-11. Such performances, though lacking fluency, often appear to break his opponent mentally. Ebdon stated after his victory over O'Sullivan: "when I'm trying my hardest I seem to go slow. I don't do it intentionally".

Among Ebdon's best achievements was winning the UK Championship in 2006, beating Stephen Hendry 10-6 in the final – in doing so, becoming only the ninth player to have won both the World and UK Championships. Peter played arguably the best snooker of his career at this tournament; his shot times were markedly quicker, and this fluency served Ebdon well in defeating the defending champion Ding Junhui, and John Higgins en route to the final, and compiling eight century breaks over the course of the tournament.

Ebdon was only the second player to have made two competitive maximum 147 breaks in professional tournament play – these coming at the Strachan Professional and UK Championship, both in 1992.

Ebdon's shot-selection is somewhat unorthodox in comparison with other top players, yet he is regarded as one of the best single-ball potters in the history of the game, and few players can perform the power screw-back as well as Peter.

Along with Mark Williams, Ebdon is one of the few professional snooker players to be colour blind. He stated in an interview with the BBC, "There have been plenty of times in the past when I potted the brown instead of the red, and vice-versa." [4]

Peter has been criticised for his exuberant outpourings of emotion after winning matches. However, since one particular outburst [2] after potting the match ball against Stephen Lee during their 2001 World Championship second round encounter – repeatedly fisting the air and shouting "Come on!" at the top of his voice, he has toned down his celebrations significantly.

Ebdon is renowned for his strict fitness regime in order to condition himself for snooker; he swims one mile a day, and has cut down on carbohydrates and sugars in order to maximise physical fitness and stamina. He is a devotee of Napoleon Hill's classic motivational book Think and Grow Rich.

Outside of snooker, Ebdon has interests in breeding racehorses, fine wines, and music. He learned the oboe whilst at school, plays the piano, enjoys listening to classical music, and has sung on two pop singles – one of which, being a cover of the David Cassidy song I am a Clown[5].

Peter is a dedicated family man, and is married to Deborah with four children: Ruby May, Ethan, Tristan and Clarissa. In 2005, he emigrated with his family to Dubai, admitting to the BBC that "It's a fantastic lifestyle there, and a much safer environment for the children to grow up in".

Please let me know your comments,

Rob Hatcher —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Robhatcher (talk • contribs) 12:20, 18 December 2006 (UTC).

Marking topic "Resolved" since Rob Hatcher's text has long since been merged into the article, which has evolved further from there. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 04:23, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Stub templates and categories

Resolved.

As part of WikiProject Stub sorting, I would like to ask you all to participate in the SFD discussion that is going on regarding the stub templates and categories for this project. It's kind of a big mess right now and I would like to straighten things out. Thanks. ~ Amalas rawr =^_^= 21:22, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

  • The results regarding Snooker are as follows:
{{Snooker-stub}} & {{Snooker-bio-stub}} / Cat:Snooker stubs

~ Amalas rawr =^_^= 17:25, 5 January 2007 (UTC)

Marking topic "Resolved" since the stubs for this and WP:CUE are already established and deployed. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 04:08, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia Day Awards

Resolved.

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 19:21, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

Marking topic resolved, as the target date of Jan. 15, 2007 is long since past. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 04:24, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

English billiards

Resolved.

Should WikiProject Snooker be expanded to include English billiards? It strikes me as near-certain that the player crossover (at least in Britain) is large, and that it is unlikely that any set of editors is better able to handle E.b. topics than WikiProject Snooker, while there is insufficient interest thus far in the topic to support a WikiProject English billiards, and finally, the participants of WikiProject Cue sports are largely focusing on pool and to a limited extent three-cushion carom billiards. If not, I'm sure WikiProject Cue sports can handle it eventually, but it'll take the participation of someone there who knows a lot about E.b. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 00:22, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I'll take the almost 2 months of silence as "no thanks". — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 04:25, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

1994 World Championship

The table on this one is incomplete and only goes up to and including the semi-final. LuciferMorgan 02:14, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Fixit request

Resolved.

Can someone who knows more about the snooker player infobox than I do please fix the subst'd one at Walter Lindrum? — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 09:09, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

I have changed it to use the snooker infobox as requested. It looks a little untidy ATM as one of the templates used in the death entry is up for deletion, but it looks like a perfectly reasonable template to use so those who are crusading on its deletion can have the responsibility if they decided to break it. SFC9394 18:40, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks. Quick turnaround! I'll have a look at the template you refer to. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 20:01, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
PS: The template deletion issue appears to have gone away. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 02:09, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Stub & cat. cleanup

Did a bunch o' stub cleanup. ALL identified snooker stubs that were bios are now tagged with {{Snooker-bio-stub}}, so that they sort into Category:Snooker biography stubs. Also cleaned up some "article mess" in Category:Snooker (e.g. tournaments that weren't in Category:Snooker tournaments, referees that weren't in Category:Snooker non-player personalities, etc.) Made a new Category:Snooker equipment for the equipment articles. Flagged two obsolete little rules articles for merging into Snooker rules. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 04:04, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

Portal:Snooker update

Updated the DYK there. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 15:41, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for that. It looks a lot more professional now! Cream147 Shout at me for doing wrong 00:21, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
Keen. Still needs some serious development but at least it's got a few more things-and-stuff. Oh, I don't think I ever bothered to report it here, but I actually overhauled the entire thing to an extent, prioritizing content sections that actually had content over those that didn't, and so forth. It's worth a look (not least of which because someone might disagree with some of the changes...) NB: I have been seeing edits to some of the snooker player bios lately that suggest news, as in some major tournament has completed. Stuff like that is probably good stuff to add to the portal's news section. And perhaps the featured player should change at some point. Things like that. To be honest, and I know this sounds pessimistic, but I'm highly skeptical that a single person in the world is using that portal page. But if it's ever going to be used, that's only going to happen by it being regularly updated. One possible way of ensuring that is if everyone in WP:SNOOKER actually uses it. Just commit to doing that, and just one's own personal annoyance that this or that hasn't been fixed or updated will probably lead to updates happening. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 01:55, 17 March 2007 (UTC)
I agree. Not a single person in the world does use it. But if we made it good enough, we could stick a link to it on a few snooker pages and more people will use it then... Cream147 Shout at me for doing wrong 10:59, 21 March 2007 (UTC)

New categories

Category:Snooker celebrity amateur players — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 09:21, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

This one is up for CFD; needs at least a couple of articles in it to be saved. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:36, 1 May 2007 (UTC)
Too late! — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:37, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Category:Masters Champions (snooker) theres another Bobo6balde66 22:12, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Infobox cleanup

Did some cleanup on {{Infobox Snooker player}}:

  • Removed numerous empty HTML comments.
  • Fixed colspan problem (everything was colspan=2 except headings were colspan=3 but there is no third column)
  • Fixed code consistency problem (some cells did not have same parameters as others of their type)
  • Fixed appearance consistency problem - all like cells are now styled the same and have a consistent width, such that if two or more are used on the same page the flag icons will now line up
  • Reclaimed some space for data (on the right) by shortening some of the longwinded headings (on the left) and removing redundant padding (infobox cells are auto-padded). The left column now only requires 41% of the width of the table instead of 45% (one heading still wraps, "Best ranking finish", but oh well; I couldn't think of a way to shorten it other than "Best finish" which is too vague). Results of width changes tested in Firefox/WinXP and Safari/MacOSX, at default window and font sizes, which "captures" most of the audience we can bother catering to, probably 95% (we cannot really bother writing code to MSIE needs directly, as the browser is a complete piece of junk from a W3C standards compliance perspective, whatever good points it has, and there are some).
  • Updated template documentation.
  • Not done: Wikicoding of the table; it is still HTML table code. No big deal, I guess. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:50, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Did some more twiddles to it including dox update again, and resolving an amibiguity in one of its links; also a grammar/typo fixes (missing comma between birth date and place, etc.) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:40, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Changing the format of the years?

Should we change all the snooker related years to represent seasons and not years?
Exs: a victory in 1992 could be a victory in the 1992/1993 season or the 1991/1992 season. --CrazyChip 13:31, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

That might be a bit tedious for the reader; where the season is known, this could be resolved with wikilinks to the season article, but keeping the linked-from year in the prose as just the year (indeed, doing so would be more precise anyway.) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:18, 5 May 2007 (UTC)
Agreed. I would just like to metion that if a season is metions in an article like this "2006/2007". Then it would be natural that this links to the season like so 2006/2007, and not to the years 2006/2007. I say this because i have seen this in a few articles. --CrazyChip 12:28, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
But see #Major merge proposal below. Do agree that wikilinking bare years like [[2006]]/[[2007]] is utterly pointless. It provides no value to the reader at all. People just do this because they mistake [[3 May]] [[2006]] and mistake it for linking for information's sake (it isn't; it is only to make user date formatting preferences work; talk at Village Pump/Technical and WP:MOSNUM is leaning strongly toward having the WP engineers actually change this, so that [[3 May]] [[2006]] will link but not format, while something, else, like {{DATE:3 May 2006}} would format, while {{DATE:[[3 May]] [[2006]]}} would do both. I.e., in a year or hopefully less, the entire idea of randomly doing something like [[2006]]/[[2007]] will seem quaint and absurd. :-)

Nicknames

Most infoboxes list the nickname(s) of the players, but there is additional page listing some of them: List of snooker player nicknames. The list seems to scream for citing sources, should those sources be just references to the player articles of something more concrete like bbc-artickles using the nicknames ?

In my opinion a list like this would look best if it was referanced at the bottom with "Sources can be found in the individual player articles". This of course require that the nicknames are actualy referanced in the articles. --CrazyChip 12:22, 6 May 2007 (UTC)
I do not believe this is a permissible [non-]citation style in Wikipedia. The list does in fact need to be sourced in detail. The great thing about this, however, is that in the course of doing so, the nickname facts will also be being sourced for the individual player articles (the vast majority of which do not presently have any sources at all for nicknames, and only a handful reliably source multiple nicknames. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:29, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Major merge proposal

I've come to the conclusion that the two separate series of snooker world rankings by year and snooker seasons by year articles really, really need to be merged:

  • The season articles are too short to stand on their own.
  • The rankings information is really part of the season data.
  • Neither is very informative out of context with the other.
  • Most of the rankings article have no sources cited at all, and are thus very inviting deletion targets.
  • Worst of all, usage is confusing and even misleading. For example, one often links like so: the 2004/2005 season - the obvious thing to do - but if the reader goes there they find nothing but a small chart of tournament victors and runners up - a list which rarely actually mentions the player whose bio they are reading at all! What the link should do in most cases is: the 2004/2005 season. Just merge them, and this entire problem goes away.
  • As a corollary, the season articles are useless to all but the top player bios, since they present no information at all except about the top players.

As some of you may've noticed, I did a monster overhaul on the rankings articles. I'll volunteer to perform the merger, and I think the results will be pretty darned rich little articles. The merger would also combine the sources for each, which helps protect the articles from AfD by making them more solidly referenced. I'm not volunteering to do link cleanup; there are bots that auto-resolve links to redirects, so it's simply not a long-lasting issue. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:44, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I agree with your idea, although there would be a lot of redirects to do. What would the final merged articles be called? For example would they be called Snooker season 2004/2005 with the Snooker world rankings 2004/2005 redirecting to it? Also the templates for these two articles would have to be overhauled and merged into one. - Nick C 17:32, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
I wouldn't worry about the redirect cleanup; as noted, there are bots that go around doing that sort of thing. I think the real article/redirect relationship you propose is the sensible one. Templates: Probably, but I'm a whiz with templates. I'm actually working on a SUPER-DUPER nav template for all of cue sports that will support snooker parameters, such that it will show snooker stuff by default and "zip up" all of the other stuff. Ultimately these sorts of snooker-subtopics would be integrated. See User:SMcCandlish/Sandbox/Nav for the progress so far (and feel free to just edit the dummy snooker text in it; I have yet to think about what should actually go in there, figuring I should defer to youse guys since I'm more of pool maven. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:53, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Elaboration: The Snooker season name would be the main one, with the rankings necessarily starting them off and forming the bulk of them, but the season results as they come in would go up top, yes? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:41, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
Yes, sounds like a good idea. Thanks for all your good work! So, for the exisiting articles it would just be the case of cutting and pasting the corresponding season/ranking articles together? - Nick C 17:14, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

How to overhaul a snooker bio stub with one source

See this diff. Note that everything in the infobox is covered in the main article prose, and sourced there rather than in the infobox. There are also now sections and logical ordering, and a clear difference between the article lead and the article body. Overwikilinking removed, but salient links added. Ext. link converted to real ref. citation. Personal PoV mercilessly stripped. Informal language tightened up. Nonencyclopedic "he's going ba-a-ald!" dig removed. Note also that specific facts (or small blocks of related facts unlikely to be later "interrupted" with interpolations) are sourced inline (it looks slightly funny now because there is only one source, but it will make emminent sense after more sources and more facts are added). It took about 2 hours to get this up to an AfD-proof Start-class article, all without even having to find another source. This could easily be a B-class article and even a GA-candidate with 4 or 5 additional sources, with no addition of magazine-style PoV nonsense (the perennial problem with the snooker bios, it seems; everyone wants to emote in them for some reason), and with more information (note the block of entirely missing years, lack of information on his childhood and his amateur player days, and not enough detail on his tournament participation). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:25, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

Snooker tournament page style overhaul

See 1981 UK Snooker Championship (archived version in case of revert/changes). Contrast with World Snooker Championship 2007, which could get the same sort of treatment. Especially constrast with the old version of itself! That last is what many, many of these pages still look like. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 14:36, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I think the World Snooker Championship 2007 and other World Snooker Championship articles that use the tournament tree should stay the same, although the UK Snooker Championship articles could do with a major overhaul, as many of them are just lists of results, and some have incomplete results. - Nick C 17:15, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
You don't like the additional features, as at 1981 UK Snooker Championship? The potential for top player pics and stats seemed like a good plus to me. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:55, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
They are good ideas, but it's just the hassle of updating all the infoboxes after a season, and at the moment we don't have many pictures of players anyway. But that's just my opinion. - Nick C 21:07, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Pics will come in time. The update issue: Fixable by leaving off the highest ranking line in these secondary uses of the infoboxes. Ta-da! What did you think of the mini nav bar at the top? (It's a much richer template than it looks; about 10% of it is stock WP policypage code, the rest is all mine. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:23, 13 May 2007 (UTC)
The nav bars are really nice and make the article more 'stylish'. So will you be adding the infoboxes and the nav bars to the articles? - Nick C 16:59, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Defining "Best ranking finish" in infobox

Given:

| Best finish = Quarter-finalist, [[World Snooker Championship 2007|World Championship 2007]]; Semi-finalist, [[Malta Cup]] 2007

which should be removed? One must; there can't be two "best", unless they are both the same, e.g. two identical semi-finalist finishes in the same event in different years, but with exactly the same number of points by coincidence.

— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:40, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I say remove the "Quarter-finalist, World Championship 2007" entry, as best ranking finish means the furthest a player has got in a ranking tournament. - Nick C 20:57, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
Really? I'd thought that making it into the WSC at all would be worth more, but then again I'm still getting used to the fact that the Top 16 get auto-"grandfathered" in without having to go through the qualifier hell... — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:21, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Common messy editing problems in these articles

Main peeves:

  • Doing "reference citations" as [http://www.url.com/file]. <[[WP:REF|ref...> and {{Cite web}} (+ {{Cite book}}, etc.) exist for a reason! Even I'm a little new to the {{Cite}} family, but at least use ref and provide some basic details.
  • Emotive personal-point-of-view or otherwise biased language, especially WP:PEACOCK wording, as well as WP:WEASEL-words claims. Good Articles chances die on contact with this junk. And the related {{Magazine}}-style "I wish I were a sports journalist" stuff, full of allegedly clever metaphor, neologism, over-familiarity, novel synthesis, and rehashing of already-known facts (e.g. residence) to desperately avoid using the same phrase (like someone's surname) more than twice — a case in point: "He had to win three qualifying matches to book his seat on the plane to Beijing, and the Derbyshire cueman then beat..." Um... "To book his seat"? The airline wouldn't let him? "Wikt:cueman?" This was actually a mild example. A third related phenomenon is using enencyclopedic colloquialisms ("gobsmacked", "mates", etc., as if we'd expect Australian articles to talk about "sheilas" and "the barbie", or American ones to be rife with "dude" and "like, awesome". Heh. We have to remember that people in Hong Kong, Jamaica and Samoa are reading this stuff too.
  • Listing match results winning-score-first, regardless of the order the players were mentioned in or other sentence semantics. Drives me nuts. Examples: "Jones lost, 9-0" (you can't lose 9-0! At least not in snooker or any other game were more points is better), "Jones, Smith's final competitor, was soundly beaten 9-0" (bad because some readers will assume that the 9-0 order refers to the order the players were mentioned, and will become confused and have to re-read the sentence; just avoid awkward constructions like that).
  • Not wikilinking that which screams for linking, like tournaments, snooker seasons and years in world rankings, and jargon. Meet {{Cuegloss}}, a very handy friend. Related is mislinking, e.g. "the 2004/2005 rankings" (link to that season's rankings article, not the generic article on the rankings system), or worse yet, which we're about to get into in more depth, "the 2004/2005 rankings". Gaaahhh...
  • Overwikilinking, especially bare, lone years, which serves no purpose at all for readers. And repeating every possible birthplace link in the infobox, in full, instead of compressing them. That is, in the "(born...)" segment of the article lead, yes, do Cheesehamlet, Greater Mootown, Cowcounty, Farmerland. In the infobox, do Cheesehamlet, Cowcounty (unless there are two Cheesehamlets in Cowcounty, in which case do Cheesehamlet, Greater Mootown, Cowcounty. If the needed "combo" redirect doesn't exist, just make it; takes about 8 seconds. And, our old favorite, wikilinking everyday words (a WP:NOT#DICT issue): "McDougal also is an avid golfer, and plays regularly in local tournaments, with a custom-made set of clubs." Um, no. Just the er link will do.

Of course I do realize that most of this stuff is due to noob editors. I think it's our duty to try to be fairly informative in edit summaries (and when necessary on talk pages), to discourage bad editing and educate about and encourage good editing. And don't be afraid to use user warning templates on frequent or extreme PoV transgressors.

Those are the ones bugging me the most lately. :-) I've done tens of hours of cleanup on this stuff lately, but am kind of wearing out.

— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 01:51, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Probable solution to the hunt-and-update infobox rankings problem every year

It just struck me. Someone's already solved this problem (or rather this sort of problem). Nick, you're handling most of the rankings tracking and updating right? You really need to go talk with the main minds behind WP:WPFT. They've done amazing things with layers of nested meta-templates. I know my way around template syntax and parser functions pretty well at this point, but even I don't quite understand how they've done what they've done. They bending template code to uses that probably were never even imagined; the true hackers of Wikipedia (aside from the actual MediaWikia engineers of course). I'm almost dead certain it can be adapted to our purposes. I think the way to do it is that every ranked snooker player would have a Talk:Player Name/Playerdata subpage just like assessment /Comments subpages, or a /temp-redraft7 page anyone can create. This page would store their ranking (and perhaps other) data, which could then be tokenized. Instead of John Smith's {{Infobox Snooker player}} "|Current rank" parameter being filled with "#47", it would instead be filled with "{{John Smith/Playerdata|Current}}. Still a lot of pages to update every year...

I have a sneaking suspicion that adding another meta-template layer onto this could enable all of the stats to be stored in a single page, such that once the player /Playerdata pages are create they never have to be manually updated again, no infoboxes would (for that data), and even things like the Snooker world rankings XXXY/XXXZ pages could call upon them. Just one page (well, 2; see below) would need to get updated every year for rankings. Another things I've noticed is that their flag template system can handle variations almost trivially and without consequence (e.g. different flags for the same country for different time periods); this means (if I'm not smokin' crack here) that provisional and official rankings could be kept "seamlessly separate" to make up a seemingly oxymoronic phrase.

If the rankings we have are provisional they'd simply be entered as such, and (while the rankings are provisional) John Smith's i'box line would be {{Player Name/Playerdata/Current}}; when they aren't provisional any longer, a simple 0.5 to 1 hour AWB job would remove "|prov=yes", and the stats would simply insta-change, because the prov. list of rankings would not be tediously manually replaced with the correct official rankings; they would be separate lists the entire time (which could conceivably come in handy later - maybe there could be call for an article comparing and doing some statistical analysis on prov. vs. ofcl. rankings or whatever. Who'd want to try to do that by hand.

Lastly, I further (though with notably less certainty) suspect that ParserFunction tricks could be used to obviate the need for actual Player name/Playerdata files at all. It might instead, with another layer of abstraction, be possible to have John smith's line read "|Current rank|{{SnookerRank|John Smith|prov=yes}} and once a year change to "|Current rank|{{SnookerRank|John Smith}}. A boat-load of geeky template work, but ever after two lists of stats (provisional and official) and an AWB job per year.

It this doesn't work then it should (and perhaps more to the point probably can); I doubt many had conceived of anything remotely like the flag template system before someone(s) just got some nifty ideas and did it.

</ramble> — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:15, 13 May 2007 (UTC)

Huge Fred Davis mess to clean up.

Some asinine lazy person moved Fred Davis to Fred Davis (snooker player) (well actually to Fred Davis (Billiards) which is against the naming conventions, and a bit off-point, but I fixed that), and made Fred Davis a disambiguation page, without bothering to fix any of the links. There are a bunch of snooker/billiards pages still linking to Fred Davis. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:51, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

"Needed bios" list in the to-dos; to-do question

I've cleaned that up a lot, including some basic (not individual) prioritization, sane formatting/organisation, and making it a transclude so that it can be seamlessly also transcluded into WP:CUEBIOS.

PS: How does everyone feel about installing the standardized to-do box? It has a number of default useful fields for various sorts of cleanup work, and adding custom items is easy. See WP:CUE#Open tasks for an example. The only catch is that project members will need to separately watchlist it (this is good, though, in that it is easy in your watchlist to distinguish between changes to the to-do list and people futzing around with non-important things on the main project page.) Anyway, I'm good at setting that to-do template up, if we want one here. PS: It can also be transcluded at Talk:Snooker which may be helpful in recruiting participants, getting articles created, and letting people know that this project is active (cf. recent drive-by tagging of it with {{Inactive}}. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 02:39, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Jimmy Michie

This article was prod'ed, and it was in rather crappy stub state. I have greatly (and sourcedly) expanded it, but it could still use some work. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 17:07, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Merge proposal: world rankings articles into season articles

The annual rankings articles (Snooker world rankings 2007/2008 and season articles (Snooker season 2007/2008) need to be merged. The season articles serve almost no purpose, and are hardly linked to from any other articles; they are near-orphans. Meanwhile the w.r. articles are quite important for many, many snooker bios, yet are most commonly linked in the form "...and in the 2007/8 season...", which is misleading to reader (but can't really be replaced, as the content at the season articles is so limited that linking to them in such a context is uniformative).

So, it is proposed that the ranking articles be merged into the season articles as the main content, pushing the present season article content downward.

— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 17:12, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

  • Support as nominator. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 17:12, 31 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Support - Rankings and seasonal performance are two sides of the same coin, so it's logical to have them in the same article. SteveO 23:51, 5 August 2007 (UTC)

Paul Hunter

What more need done to be done to his page or what more can we do Bobo6balde66 22:36, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

What I would first suggest is careful copyediting from the top down, for encyclopedic style. Much of it is still written in magazine style, with too many superlatives and too much emotive, informal language. The article has enough content and possibly enough sourcing to be a Good Article, but its style is very deficient, and it wouldn't even come close to surviving a GA review. Next, try going through all of the existing source citations and looking for additional (non-trivial) facts to add, and looking for facts already in the article with only one citation which can be bolstered with addtional citations (i.e. fact X cited to article A is likely also citable to article D and K as well). Also, cite more narrowly; there are entire passages of, say, 15 facts, with only one reference citation, at the end. This is suspicious looking, sloppy, and prone to error (because someone may insert something else in the middle of this with a citation to another source, leaving the impression that only the 2nd half of the article, after that new citation, is citable to the original citation, when in fact the top half was as well, and this will lead other editors to slap {{fact}} tags on statements in the first half of the article.) Next, look for more sources for more material (for example at Jimmy Michie today, I was able to about octuple the length of the article by carefully reading just one additional source and adding cited details from it!)
PS: I removed the half-formed table you inserted at Paul Hunter. The idea has some merit, but should be a template, and there is no point at all having two redundant columns. Just have a heading of "World Rankings", and rows of "2005/2006", etc. That would be of potential use on any snooker bio article for which the player placed in at least the top 32, I would say. Also, please use <ref> and {{Cite web}} (or {{Cite book}}, etc., as appropriate). Pasting in bare URLs does nothing useful for the reader/researcher. This has been a major problem already in snooker bio articles; there are literally hundreds of unformatted reference citations like that which need cleaning up, and adding more of them makes matters worse for all other editors. That said, kudos for finding new sources at all, of course, and please keep that up! — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 23:57, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Fred Davis Image NOT fred

The picture accompanying the article on Fred Davis is a picture of Walter Lindrum as a young man. It is definitely NOT Fred davis. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.219.9.253 (talk) 09:08, 6 September 2007 (UTC)

Gerard Greene!?!?!

Hes made it to a semi final sad he never made the final , but i made a big edit on his page and will conitue to add to it! Bobo6balde66 02:52, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Century of centuries

Hi all,

I have recently created the article Century of centuries. I hope people care to look at it and improve it as they see fit!

Andy4226uk 15:33, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Watchlisted. Also moved to List of snooker players with over 100 century breaks per the article naming conventions; the original name was amusing but non-encyclopedic. Anyway, it has some coding problems in it that need fixing (lots of "=" showing up for no reason). Seems like a reasonable if rather arbitrary article, though it could probably be merged into another article. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 12:18, 20 December 2007 (UTC)

Needed Biographies- Tian Pengfei

I have started an article on Tian Pengfei, one of the people on the needed biographies list. Kevo-723 (talk) 14:05, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

I've watchlisted it. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:53, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Nicknames article

For a while I've been suggesting that List of snooker player nicknames should simply merge into List of snooker players. On further thought, I think that the former should simply be WP:AFD'd, as a pile of unsourced nonsense that is a target for subtle vandalism. No sources are cited at all, it does not agree with the player articles, and really doesn't seem to serve any purpose.

Aside from all that, it is also chock-full of original research, namely the digging up of cutesy, one-off descriptions created by sports journalists to "spice up" their writing, and then applying a novel, personal point of view that these are somehow "nicknames". They aren't. Nicknames are appellations that people earn, either positively (Sylvester "Italian Stallion" Stallone) or negatively (Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon), that are actually applied to them on at least a somewhat regular basis. If some Hebridean snooker player ends up being labeled "the Cueist from Uist" by some commentator one day, that does not make it his nickname. If it recurs in several other reliable sources, i.e. not blogs and Internet forums, that is evidence that it is actually a nickname. I would hazard a guesstimate from Googling so far that well over half of the alleged nicks on that list are not nicknames, just "clever" journalistic word-play, and many of them are not sourceable at all, at least not by anything that Google can find. And even that isn't a reliable indicator, not only per WP:GOOGLE but in particular because WP articles themselves are being used as sources elsewhere, so the appearance of an alleged nickname here lends it false currency and spreads it around to various blogs and fansites, without there ever being a reliable primary or secondary source to begin with. See Talk:Marco Fu for some discussion of this factor, specifically in relation to snooker player nicknames.

Mistaking reporters' comments for nicknames has conflict issues, too. It is trivial to find instances of both Shaun Murphy and Ronnie O'Sullivan being labelled "the magician" by sportwriters, for example.

Anyway, I've brought this up here for discussion (I'm not sure anyone is even watchlisting the article and its talk page) in case someone wants to actually go through this list, source the nicks that can be sourced, and add them to the individual player articles with sources (and perhaps also to the List of snooker players per the merge proposal), and abandon the rest of them. Another option would be to go through with the merge and {{fact}} tag all of the unsourced nicks. Pretty tedious, and I'm not sure it would be worth the effort.

Also, The list has mostly been compiled by anonymous users, with very little input from WP:SNOOKER regulars, suggesting to me that no one here is really interested in the list, and that much of what has been added to it is patent nonsense.

— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:52, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

Going once...: Seriously, I mean to WP:AFD this unless this project wants to do something productive with the material and clean it up. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 12:12, 20 December 2007 (UTC)
Going twice...: Anyone, anyone? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:30, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
That can go - really no need, bordering on fancruft - any names can be mentioned in player articles themselves. SFC9394 (talk) 20:17, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Players with 'C' surnames

Somone has vandalised this catergory under List of snooker players. There used to be about 10 players under the letter 'C'. Now there is only about 4. Samasnookerfan (talk) 14:25, 27 December 2007 (UTC)

Um, so, just undo the changes. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:29, 25 January 2008 (UTC)
I know! It seems a bit dumb I know, but honestly, as I was quite new to editing on here I didn't know how to do that. I'm much more experienced now and I added them back anyway. Samasnookerfan (talk) 18:02, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

Neal Foulds

The article on Neal Foulds is very short, considering how high he got in the world rankings and his current status as a commentator. Samasnookerfan (talk) 01:05, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Copying this to his talk page, since it is more likely to be noticed there. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:34, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Glossary of cue sports terms needs 4 new entries

Two-pot rule, three-pot rule, all-in, and spot-barred all need entries at WP:CUEGLOSS. These may be English billiards terms or E.b. and snooker terms, I'm not sure; but I am certain that the mostly-British membership of this project is in a better position to create entries for them (with sources I hope) than I or Fuhghettaboutit are (we being the glossary's most active editors, but both Americans). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:28, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Cue sport FA

Hey. As a (very) part-time member of the project, I was wondering if we could instigate some kind of FA drive? I'm 100% certain an article like Steve Davis would (with a bucket of work) get there. Let me know if you'd be prepared to spend some time working with me on it! The Rambling Man (talk) 18:51, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

Sure, but this will need to be done one step at a time. The order I would suggest is Peer Review, followed by a bid for Good Article status, then WP:SPORT A-class assessment, and finally Featured Article. It's really rare for an attempt at FA status to succeed if there hasn't been peer review and GA (A-class is less vital, but can't possibly hurt). PS: Do you mind I repost this to WT:CUE and WT:SNOOKER? — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 18:56, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Of course. I've got a fair bit of experience over at WP:FAC with football and cricket articles so I know the deal (I'm now on 17 featured articles/lists). I'm seriously going to suggest we avoid a GA - that could take months with the current backlog. I think with my FAC experience and your cue knowledge we can go PR then FA. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:16, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
P.P.S. Repost away, the more the merrier! The Rambling Man (talk) 19:16, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Works for me then! — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:18, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
Okay, well Steve Davis seems like a good place to start! I'll get going on manual of style issues and start adding/refactoring sections. I'll also probably add a bunch of {{cn}} templates - we'll need to be watertight on references for FAC to succeed. Let's kick it! The Rambling Man (talk) 19:23, 24 February 2008 (UTC)
We also need to identify some additional likely candidates. WP:CUE#GA and WP:CUE#B-class are good places to start, as is WP:SNOOKER#Article list. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 19:27, 24 February 2008 (UTC)

<unindent> As SMcC may remember I attempted an FAC on Snooker and it didn't go brilliantly! I think I was a bit overly ambitious going straight there! There are plenty of opportunities and I would be happy to help as well, my only problem was that I find the FAC can sometimes be a bit pernickerty and annoying if we have a "everything has to be cited with a dedicated book", for Snooker & snooker related topics that can be a bit more tricky than finding a source for the GDP of Canada - as a lot of the history of Snooker is played out in smoky clubs in the 60's and 70's. I am happy to help though if there is a drive in any one direction. SFC9394 (talk) 19:53, 24 February 2008 (UTC)