Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Snooker/Archives/2023/February

2022 German Masters final

The Times’ is reporting that the final of last years’ German Masters is one of the marches being looked at in the match-fixing scandal: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/839afdc0-a0e3-11ed-be83-0b182bac2124?shareToken=049c326bc7c9558a4bdfbfc6e467c6e8

How does the wiki want to handle documenting the suggestions made in this? — CitroenLover (talk) 12:35, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Right now, nothing. If the WST, or another source state that there was match-fixing in that match, then we will obviously follow through. If the WST or another source states afterwards that the match was looked at, but wasn't deemed to be part of it, then we should also say that. Right now, we have to be careful not to state that the match was fixed. I wouldn't be surprised if they aren't checking every match they've ever played together. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 13:57, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

I agree with Lee. We certainly shouldn't be adding anything to tournament articles. Probably the List of snooker players investigated for match-fixing article could be usefully expanded when the time comes. Currently it's all little more than rumour/speculation, which is not really our area. Nigej (talk) 15:13, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

Okay, thank you. — CitroenLover (talk) 16:24, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

More info is at WP:BLPCRIME. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:18, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

2023 Tour Championship

Isn't it a bit early to have a qualification list for an event months away? I feel like it gives the impression that the listed players have already qualified. 2023 Tour Championship#Seeding list Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:25, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

I see we had one at 2023 Players Championship (snooker). Wikipedia is full of league tables and the like which are updated during the season, so in some ways this is no different. Personally I don't see too much point at the moment, especially when there's a link to the list in the reference. I can see that during the last event before the cut-off there's much more interest and an updated list perhaps makes sense at that point. If we need some sort of consensus I'd for that: it's ok to create it after the second-to-last event before the cut-off. Not a big deal either way I guess. Nigej (talk) 18:56, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

I don't really see the point until the seeding is confirmed, but I can see why you might want to know the event prior. We aren't really a place to follow this sort of stuff though. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:37, 31 January 2023 (UTC)

One thing that is clear is that starting this list too early creates problems. The two lists we have (noted above) should be exactly the same (for the top 8), they're both simply the 1-year ranking list. However they currently differ because one includes money already guaranteed by reaching the finals of the German Masters and the other doesn't. Just a mess. Nigej (talk) 08:36, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Per my last comment above, I think it's clear that, at the very earliest, we shouldn't be starting such a list until the previous Players Series event has finished, otherwise we're basically maintaining two identical lists. On that basis the 2023 Tour Championship list should be removed. Nigej (talk) 09:08, 1 February 2023 (UTC)

Billy (Joe) Castle

Is there any reason why the article shouldn't be changed to Billy Castle? His official page https://wst.tv/players/billy-castle/ doesn't use a middle name, nor does his own twitter account https://twitter.com/billycastle147 . I'm assuming that he was Billy Joe some time back but now prefers plain Billy. Could do a WP:RM but seems simpler just to move it. Nigej (talk) 08:30, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

Looking at newspapers in Newsbank it seems that when he was young he was plain Billy, then had a few years mostly as Billy Joe (2015-2020 roughly) and more recently mostly Billy again. Nigej (talk) 08:46, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

As you know we don't change names simply because they have changed their name, but I don't think "Billy Joe" has enough about it to be considered the WP:COMMONNAME. I'd change it per WP:NAMECHANGES. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 08:57, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

These things are always a bit tricky. If I do rename it, there's always a danger that some editor will go through all the old tournament articles changing Billy Joe to Billy. A number of editors want to always point to the current article name, when they should be just putting in the name that he was known as at the time and letting the redirect do the work. Nigej (talk) 09:07, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

snooker.org switched to Billy at the start of the 2020/21 season: https://www.snooker.org/res/index.asp?event=842 (Aug 2020) has Billy Joe while https://www.snooker.org/res/index.asp?event=915 (Sep 2020) has Billy. Nigej (talk) 09:59, 3 February 2023 (UTC)

I'd say that's probably quite accurate. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 12:45, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Performance and rankings timeline table

This table is hell to edit from an editing point of view, even if it looks nice on the page for viewers. Some of the most obvious issues include:

• If a tournament is held just once and never again, we put it in the associated space with a ton of column spanning for "Tournament not Held". This looks really messy and is hard to read, especially on pages for players like Ronnie O'Sullivan. I'm of the opinion that "one off tournaments" should be moved to their own section which is just a simple table in a style similar to the calendar table that we use on the season page, which just lists the year the event took place, the link to the tournament page and the position the player reached in it.
• Currently, tournaments are moved up and down the table every time the tournament misses a year, on the basis that it is "a former tournament". I feel it would be better to split up the table into multiple headings, with each heading only looking at ranking and non-ranking events, and a tournament should not be considered a "former tournament" just because one year has been missed. The benefit of this is that the tables will be easier to edit by making it clearer where ranking and non-ranking events are found.
• IMO, an event should only be considered as "former" if it misses two consecutive seasons, OR World Snooker Tour announces the tournament will no longer be held. There should be an exemption to events that have been missing due to Covid because we have had no confirmation that several European events will no longer happen [eg Riga Masters].

Ultimately, the formatting of this table is just bad. And for players with decades of seasons, its even worse. We should try to sort it out and make things easier to edit while displaying the correct information. -- CitroenLover (talk) 16:17, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

There's no doubt that there's a whole host of problems with these tables. I suspect we need a pretty radical reform. For starters: do we need it at all? (as an aside I had a go here: User:Nigej/Sandbox where I tried to stop the tournament name scrolling off the screen when scrolling right. Sort of works but editing is even more of a nightmare) Nigej (talk) 16:57, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

I think there's an argument to be made that the information is useful. I myself find it a useful assistant in researching information about a players' performance, which is quicker to do here than searching cuetracker.net [for example] and then scrolling through all the individual matches they played when I just want to know how far they got into a tournament [or if they withdrew/did not play in it]. However, the way that info is displayed arguably needs to be altered to improve the usefulness of the section. -- CitroenLover (talk) 18:46, 4 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't think it's a must-have in articles but for some users it does add a positive visual aspect to the article instead of just a list of prose. A lot of the articles that have wide tables that roll off the screen already have a scroll bar e.g. Cliff Thorburn. The tables in general are most likely laid out as they are as they've just evolved into their current form without any common approach, but they could do with a re-vamp as they can be quite complicated and unwieldy (especially with players with lengthy careers). Andygray110 (talk) 12:12, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

One area which does need changing is the use of all capitals in eg "Tournament Not Held", "Non-Ranking Event". WP:HEADERS says that we should use sentence case for table headers and it makes no sense to use even more capitalisation for cell entries. It should be either "Tournament not held"/"Non-ranking event" or "tournament not held"/ "non-ranking event", I'd be happy with either. Nigej (talk) 08:23, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Agree - think the version with caps at the beginning ("Tournament not held"/"Non-ranking event) would cut down on users bickering over capitalising the completely lower-case version. Andygray110 (talk) 12:14, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Whilst I like having access to these things as a reader, I'm not convinced that an overarching results list per person that is almost always uncited is a particularly good way to treat a BLP. I do think we should be a lot more selective as to what to include - I get ranking events, but outside of the Masters/UK, why do we need to include the results from every non-ranking event ever held? I feel like this isn't the best way to handle it, but likely the best way we have come up with to deal with this. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 12:24, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

I think the difficulty with that approach is by just including the Masters you cut out other notable non-ranking events such as the Champion of Champions and/or other current tour events. For example you would read in the prose of Gary Wilkinson's article about how the only tournament win of his career was the World Matchplay, but when you look at his performance table it wouldn't list it but instead list a bunch of second round/quarter-final results in ranking events, which would seem odd. Andygray110 (talk) 10:07, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

I tend to agree with Lee. I don't see any need to aim for completeness. We're an encyclopedia aiming to include important information and to filter out the less important stuff. Of course that does leave open the issue of which events are important and which ones are less so. Nigej (talk) 11:25, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Precisely. Establishing that (if it's possible) would solve a lot of issues on this page. Andygray110 (talk) 14:28, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

This table did come up last year: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Snooker/Archives/2022/April#Results. One issue that came up there was related to use of LQ 1R 2R 3R. Currently we use LQ for those losing held-over matches, which I'm not sure is correct. As I noted there we are not always consistent, see eg 1984 Grand Prix (snooker) where Tony Meo is down as 1R while Willie Thorne and others have 3R even though they lost at the same stage (the last 16). I'd rather go for L128 L64 L32 L16 even though that doesn't distinguish between qualifying matches and main stage matches. Nigej (talk) 11:25, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

imo. The initial thing to do is to just create multiple independent tables, so the info can be better handled. Each table should be separated by a regular wiki heading that denotes ranking, non-ranking, one-off and decommissioned tournaments. Then from there, we can look at which tournaments we should include or not.

a decommissioned tournament would be one where there’s clear indicators its not coming back. The Turkish Masters is not a tournament that would be “former ranking” because it just missed one season [due to understandable circumstances]. — CitroenLover (talk) 11:34, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

One issue for me is that most of the tables are completely unreferenced. It pains me to see the World Championship and UK Championship split across different sections (for players active before the ranking system), when other tournaments which are not really the same tournament at all, are clumped together (e.g. World Open (snooker). Having separate tables would make this even worse. Our criteria for inclusion are unclear - there were loads of tournaments with only a handful of players in the 70s; some are included (e.g. 1979 Kronenbrau 1308 Classic, some not. (For that one, the two players who didn't win a match have "SF" in the table, which makes it look on a par with reaching the semi-final of something like the 1969 World Snooker Championship.) Can we just have blanks unless a player actually competed? In Eddie Charlton, the second of the two rows relating to international open has TMI, I think. It's a nice idea to have these table but I don't like the current ones. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 12:06, 14 February 2023 (UTC)

Six-red draw

I've had a look at the last staging of the event, but copypasting so much of the page without making an error in trying to include the 2023 draw is daunting. The draw is right at the end of this page [you will have to translate from Thai into English, in order to read it]: http://www.thailandsnooker.org/news_detail.php?id=1244 and note that all Thai players' names are their traditional Thai names, not the Western nicknames they use. Ultimately, the draw is known now, but not when they will play: presumably the format / dates will be similar to the 2019 version. If someone could add this, I'd greatly appreciate! -- CitroenLover (talk) 22:00, 11 February 2023 (UTC)

https://www.snooker.org/res/index.asp?event=1402 has lots of details. No idea where it comes from. Looks like 32 players, 8 groups of 4. Bit confusing since it was originally stated that the 4 qualifiers would join 16 other players. Nigej (talk) 13:20, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

From the looks of it, the criterion was: Defending Champion [Maguire], the top 15 in the world rankings at some specified cut-off point [some appear to have not entered], 4 qualifiers [Zhang Anda, Chris Wakelin, Ali Carter and Jimmy Robertson], 8 Thai players [one assigned to each of the 8 groups], then the WSF Junior and Main champions [Stan Moody and Ma Hai Long]. If there are players who did not take their invitation, it appears multiple others fill the spots left by those who chose not to enter, which include Mahmoud El-Hareedy, Andres Petrov, Jimmy White and Ken Doherty. Jimmy Robertson and Ali Carter appear to have been seeded because they are the next highest ranked to ensure there's 15 other seeds which aren't the defending champion [which is confusing because both of them are qualifiers, rather than automatic invitees due to world ranking]. -- CitroenLover (talk) 17:05, 12 February 2023 (UTC)

Yeah, seems odd... WST definitely said Four join 16, but looks like they changed their minds to 28. That does seem like it was likely the top 16, plus eight Thai players and then four additional players, who might well be Moody, Hai Long, El-Hareedy and likely Jimmy White. I don't know if Snooker Scene has any more info on it, or if we will maybe get some more info when the event comes on.Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 12:43, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Just some info, Andres Petrov got an invite because of winning the European 6-reds Championship in 2021. MisterRerack (talk) 09:46, 18 February 2023 (UTC)

Maximum breaks sections in player articles

While I was updating the Shaun Murphy (600 centuries, 7 maximums) I noticed the "Maximum breaks" section at the end of his article. This hadn't been updated for some time and didn't even include his 6th maximum in 2020. Seems to me that readers are finding this sort of information from the Maximum break article which is readily accessible from the infobox. On that basis I have deleted it. I was aware that Ronnie and Judd have similar tables in their Maximum and century breaks made by Ronnie O'Sullivan/Maximum and century breaks made by Judd Trump articles but I was thinking that was it. However I find that there are a few others: Stuart Bingham#Maximum breaks, Mark Davis (snooker player)#Maximum breaks, John Higgins#Maximum breaks, Ding Junhui#Maximum breaks, Stephen Hendry#Maximum breaks and Neil Robertson#Maximum breaks. Personally I'd be happy to see these extra ones deleted, per WP:NOTSTATS. I think there's justification for the O'Sullivan/Trump lists since they're in sub-articles specifically for stats. The fact that Murphy's list hasn't been updated to include his 2020 maximum is a sure sign that no one's actually looking at these tables. If we are to keep them I think we need some consensus on who should have them, ie at least n maximums. Nigej (talk) 09:40, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't think we need a table for this. Absolutely in prose and a link to the main topic, but individual maximums? I think this is a holdover from footballers who often have a list of international goals in their bios, which is also overkill to me. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 10:55, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

800,000 hits on the Shaun Murphy article since his 6th maximum but no one noticed it was missing from this table, or if they did they couldn't be bothered to update it. Nigej (talk) 11:29, 17 February 2023 (UTC)

Not sure these add anything to the articles that isn't already captured in prose/infobox; support deletion per above. Andygray110 (talk) 23:25, 20 February 2023 (UTC)