Welcome! edit

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Snooker Links edit

Hi, Please do not add links to commercial sites, especially those not dedicated to snooker. Thanks, bigpad 21:13, 15 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Please do not add inappropriate external links to Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not a mere directory of links nor should it be used for advertising or promotion. Inappropriate links include (but are not limited to) links to personal web sites, links to web sites with which you are affiliated, and links that exist to attract visitors to a web site or promote a product. See the external links guideline and spam policies for further explanations of links that are considered appropriate. If you feel the link should be added to the article, then please discuss it on the article's talk page rather than re-adding it. See the welcome page to learn more about Wikipedia. Thank you. — Nearly Headless Nick 14:11, 16 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Links edit

Hi Emonsmi, I see that you're adding a bunch of external links to articles relating to pool. Can I refer you to the agreed WP policy on this, found here. A couple of pointers right away would include:

  • Calling the section "External links"
  • Making a bullet point list for each link
  • Not adding inappropriate links

Don't hesitate to contact me if you would like to discuss this further. The Rambling Man 14:12, 16 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

re: Matchroom sport edit

Why have you deleted my links to websites on the Matchroom Sport page. Everyone of these events and websites that I put a link on for is produced by Matchroom Sport and a large part of their work. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Emonsmi (talkcontribs) 14:55, 16 January 2007 (UTC).Reply

Please read about Wikipedia's stance on spam links. In case you require further assistance, contact me on my talk page. Regards, — Nearly Headless Nick 14:57, 16 January 2007 (UTC)Reply
Well how am I meant to update and improve things if you just delete it? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Emonsmi (talkcontribs) 15:05, 16 January 2007 (UTC).Reply
The links were inappropriate as per Wikipedia's guidelines WP:EL and WP:SPAM. You cannot insert such links into articles. Wikipedia is WP:NOT a directory of links. — Nearly Headless Nick 15:09, 16 January 2007 (UTC)Reply
On the Matchroom Sport page it says 'Matchroom Sport became the official sponsor of the WPA World 9-Ball Championships in 1999'. So I put a link to the official website of that competition. How can that be an inappropriate link? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Emonsmi (talkcontribs) 15:16, 16 January 2007 (UTC).Reply
From you contributions, I could see that you were adding the link to the site to every page which you thought was related to this event, which is completely inappropriate. The site is not official. Please review WP:NOT, WP:EL, WP:SPAM. — Nearly Headless Nick 15:21, 16 January 2007 (UTC)Reply
Take a look at www.worldpoolchampionship.com. After the top banner it says 'Official site of the 2006 World Pool Championship'. Then right at the bottom of the page it says this event is brought to you in association with ... and there is a link to Matchroom Sport. It's an official website of an event produced by Matchroom Sport so why not allow it on the page about Matchroom Sport? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Emonsmi (talkcontribs)
I see, then add it to the relevant page, rather than adding the link to Billiards, Nick Halling or Cass Edwards page, where it is not relevant. Regards, — Nearly Headless Nick 15:31, 16 January 2007 (UTC)Reply
Nope, it still isn't relevant. Links to the commercial sponsors of events are not appropriate additions to articles on those events (some events would generate literally hundreds of such links if this were appropriate under WP:EL and WP:SPAM, and are emphatically, absolutely, blindingly not appropriate on general sport-wide articles like billiards or nine-ball. These links are just bunk anyway; they are just minor (e.g. 4-item) lists of upcoming events that this commercial sponsor has a fiscal interest in, and provide no actual information not otherwise available from more neutral sources such as Billiards Digest and Inside Pool magazine sites, or the billiards/pool/snooker online community sites already linked to, which actually do provide substantial original content. Read WP:NOT; Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information or a web directory. These links are spam under WP policy, and continuing to add them is almost certain to get you blocked. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] 19:12, 16 January 2007 (UTC)Reply
PS: Links to a recognized rules-presiding organization presiding over an event/series (such as the World Pool-Billiard Association)may well be valid external links on pages relating to events (not to entire sports, unless they have a recognized role in the sport as a whole, but a self-described "supplier of sports programming" like Matchroom Sport doesn't cut it (they are apparently notable enough to have their own article, which is fine). They are just a company, that happens to be ponying up money in exchange for advertising and broadcast rights, and are not any form of recognized presiding authority over any sport, unlike the World Pool-Billiard Association. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] 19:18, 16 January 2007 (UTC)Reply
PPS: Despite the above, and the longer exploration of this below, I've actually defended you a bit, on User talk:Sir Nicholas de Mimsy-Porpington. If you are willing to learn the ropes, I think you'd make a fine cue sports article contributor, given your apparent tirelessness. NB: Please do not interpret any of the above as incivility; I'm trying to help you (while also trying to get you to stop mangling articles. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] 00:40, 17 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

An Automated Message from HagermanBot edit

Hello. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. You may also click on the signature button   located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your name and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you! HagermanBot 15:16, 16 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Your signature edit

Hi Emonsmi, thanks for your message. Can I recommend you pay heed to HagermanBot above, and sign your edits on talk pages? You can do this by typing ~~~~ at the end of your comments. This way it's easier to communicate! Cheers! The Rambling Man 16:51, 16 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

Your 16 January 2007 advertising edits to numerous cue sports articles edit

Please stop adding inappropriate external links to Wikipedia. It is considered spamming, and Wikipedia is not a vehicle for advertising. Thanks. You have really gone beyond the pale. I don't think I've ever seen a more indiscriminate (though probably just policy-ignorant, not malicious) spamming run on Wikipedia. This is like putting a link to www.pepsi.com on the article for every movie that Pepsi has ever been one of the sponsors of. And worse - you are spamming non-related articles such as World Pool-Billiard Association with links to Matchroom-sponsored tournaments that have nothing to do with the WPA (proof: http://www.wpa-pool.com/index.asp?content=cal2005 - the Matchroom-sponsored "World Pool Championship" is not a WPA-sanctioned event according to the WPA, unless I'm missing something; if I have my apolgies, but where is it? Alleged facts in WP articles need reference citations.) If we added links like this for every commercial sponsor of every event, film, concert, etc., the sponsor lists would in many cases exceed the length of the articles! To the extent that any of these articles at all (perhaps the genuinely Matchroom-sponsored event article, only) should mention Matchroom Sport, this should be done with a wikilink in the main article text to Matchroom Sport here at Wikipedia, not with an external link to their commercial website. And even in the case of such events, it should probably only be for ones principally or solely sponsored/organized by Matchroom; this will be hard to demonstrate even for the Mosconi Cup - the banner of its official site shows numerous major sponsors, including SBS (who have the prime sponsorship spot, apparently), PartyPoker.com, a Dutch company, the city of Rotterdam, and Sky Sports. Adding external links to commercial companies that just happen to have been one of several sponsors of events is not how we do things here. Please read and understand the Wikipedia policies and guidelines you have already been pointed at. I believe your edits are in good faith but may of them are plain mistakes under WP policy. NB: The correct name of the links section is "External links", not "Related links". Not also: Encyclopedic content like "Rodolfo reached the quarter-finals of the 2006 competition" does not belong in the "External links" section, but in the article main text, with a reference citation.

Spammed articles include: World Pool-Billiard Association, Billiards, Weber Cup, 2005 Mosconi Cup, 2006 Mosconi Cup, Mosconi Cup, Ralf Souquet, Cass Edwards, Ronato Alcano, Rodolfo Luat, Michaela Tabb, Nine-ball, Billiards, Pocket billiards, Earl Strickland, Steve Davis

Legit content that's not just Matchroom advertising added to (and not reverted but sometimes fixed or sometimes unreverted and de-spammed): Weber Cup, World Tenpin Masters, 2005 Mosconi Cup, 2006 Mosconi Cup, Mosconi Cup, Ralf Souquet, Ronato Alcano, Rodolfo Luat, Michaela Tabb, Steve Davis

And I'm just getting started on this mess... I am carefully un-reverting and fixing some of the legit content you added. Please see the articles just named up above to see how this was done (see especially Tabb for article-text merging of legit material, and Alcano, Souquet for appropriate ways to link to content at commercial sites such as articles about and bios of the players without spamvertising the sites themselves.

Please do not interpret this as a personal attack; but you've made a big mess that will take more experienced WP editors a long time to sort out. I would probably have it all fixed tonight (after already having worked on it for 5 hours!) but I have an actual pool league match to go to in an hour. I expect I can clean this all up by tomorrow night. If you feel confident that you now do understand how this should actually be done, feel free to also work on de-spammifyng some of your additions and restoring/merging them where they are directly relevant, not just a link because some company sponsored something, and not redundant with existing information in the articles. I'll review them all again anyway, since I'm taking the opportunity to make other fixes such as categorization and talk page header templates.

SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] 00:29, 17 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

REPLY TO YOUR MESSAGE
Dear SMcCandlish.
LThank you for your lengthy response and information about the site. Firstly an apology and yes, as you predicted, I was new to the site having been informed of it by a friend. Therefore I was not aware of style, rules or guidelines that I had to follow. Thanks for your attempts to improve and correct any errors I may have made.
Any links that were added were done so in good faith and with the best intentions and any mistakes that were made were not malicious. Obviously we both share a passion for sport and I just wanted to make the pages better with more information.
May I correct you on a few points. Matchroom Sport are not a sponsor of any of the events that I put links to (world pool championship, world pool masters, world cup of pool, mosconi cup, weber cup, fish’o’mania).
As you mentioned with your point about Pepsi, to include a list of sponsors to a page as a related link to Wikipedia would be ridiculous. In no way would I include a list of sponsors on any Wikipedia page. What would be the point and what information would that give any sports fan?
Instead, Matchroom Sport promote and organise these events. They do everything from invite the players, organise accommodation and even pay them, hire officials, find a venue, sort out television coverage, arrange ticketing - everything to put on an event. In effect if Matchroom Sport did not exist then these tournaments would not take place.
Re: attaching a link to the World Pool Championship to the WPA page.
Every Matchroom Sport pool competition is sanctioned by the WPA. If you don’t believe me and want proof then look at the page you used as an example (http://www.wpa-pool.com/index.asp?content=cal2005)
On the category it has for World Pool Masters (8/06/07 – 10/06/07) It lists ‘Matchroom’ as the federation. The EPBF (European Pocket Billiard Federation) and APBU (Asian Pocket Billiard Union) are linked for the events they organise and Matchroom is listed by the World Pool Masters as they organise that. The other competitions like the World Pool Championship as, unless I’m wrong, probably haven’t had dates confirmed and that’s why they don’t appear on the same WPA page.
Apparently (according to the WPA site, Matchroom is listed as ‘a special member’ so they’re affiliated to them as well. (See the following link - http://www.wpa-pool.com/index.asp?content=member)
(By the way I made the very long journey to the Philippines for the 2006 World Pool Championship – I still can’t believe Alcano beat The Kaiser in the final. What an atmosphere though at the PICC. It was absolutely packed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
Thanks for your time. ( Emonsmi 12:11, 17 January 2007 (UTC) )Reply
Howdy! (Warning: this is another long one...) I've belatedly added a "Welcome" template to the top of your talk page (personally, I think these should be auto-added to all user talk pages by the software itself). It has some links in it that may be helpful. Anyway, I did believe your edits were in good faith, and am still working on properly restoring the relevant content in a bunch of them that were reverted. Will take some time, but I'm also using the opportunity to do other maintenance tasks on these articles, so it's overall a productive excercise.
"Every Matchroom Sport pool competition is sanctioned by the WPA. If you don’t believe me and want proof" — this would be a significant fact that should be added to both the Matchroom Sport and World Pool-Billiard Association articles with a source citation. I will look at the link you suggest to see if it will make an appropriate source. Regardless, it does not mean that every possibly relevant article should have links to Matchroom's commercial website; just citing the facts in the articles about M.S. and the WPA is sufficient. NB: It's not about whether anyone believes you or not; rather, alleged facts need to be sourced (cited); that's all. See a long thread at or near the bottom of Talk:Albinism for a similar issue. It's not about whether one contributor is qualified or has deep knowledge; the issue is that a reader of the encyclopedia has no basis on which to judge whether this text or that is reliable or not based on who wrote it (which is largely invisible to readers); thus, we cite to external reliable sources.
"Instead [of monetary sponsorship], Matchroom Sport promote and organise these events" — That seems slightly debatable. The events' official websites' banners show Matchroom as a sponsor and other material I've read suggests that they do in fact hold the largest of the purse-strings; and it is very clear from Matchroom's own site that their line of business is primary-sponsorship of sports events such that they own the broadcast rights. The Matchroom Sport article would be a great place to (sourcedly) elucidate the details of their role in the industry, and I genuinely think that would be a great idea, because even their own website is rather unclear on the concept and on their own genuine role. For most purposes, though, they aren't particularly informative/relevant (as simply a link to themselves, as opposed to links to articles/interviews/bios, which are the ones I'm slowly restoring) when it comes to player articles, or articles on games/sports themselves (snooker, nine-ball, etc.) because Matchroom does not have a (known, sourced) formative role when it comes to rules, sanctioning, etc. WPA certainly does. That is, the roles of Matchroom and WPA should not be confused or conflated. I (and I suspect others editing these articles) would not (really, could not) at all mind tournament article edits (sourced) that identify Matchroom Sport as the organizer of this event or that, provided that the the sanctioning body (usually WPA, though WEPF, IPT, etc., are always in play in this field as well) are also mentioned, and the differing roles are clearly explained; otherwise it can give readers the impression that Matchroom are a rules-defining body, which isn't actually the case. Another way of putting it is that really 99% of readers could care less that Matchroom is organizing this event or that, but a large number of them care a whole lot whether it is a WEPF vs. WPA event; the distinction there actually matters to enormously more readers, while the distinction between funding, organizing and promotion by Matchroom vs. by Benson & Hedges (who do in fact similarly organize a major snooker event) is of dubious importance to the vast majority of readers. That's not to say it is of no importance - someone doing an industry analysis would find the information very relevant, which is why I say it should be included (in the article text, not ext. links), but very clearly as to what it means, and as distinct from the defining and sanctioning organization (where such a distinction exists; with IPT there is in fact no distinction — they are effectively their own simultaneous Matchroom and WPA. Ick!)
"[Organizational entities of various sorts] are linked for the events they organise" — Definitely some cleanup is needed in this area overall. The distinction between nonprofit rules/sanctioning organizations (federations/associations and the like), for-profit ones like IPT, and organizers/sponors like M.S. (and even perhaps the difference between organizers and simple sponors) needs to be clarified cuesports-wide (and ultimately perhaps even more broadly, with regard to all sports articles here.)
"[Some events] probably haven’t had dates confirmed and that’s why they don’t appear on the same WPA page" — That sounds entirely plausible. If there is a consistent ongoing relationship between M.S. and WPA, it should certainly be documented at both articles (though it need not be detailed on every tournament page, as that would be redundant.)
"[A]ccording to the WPA site, Matchroom is listed as ‘a special member’" — that just means that M.S. gave WPA a bunch of money and may have a lot of influence inside WPA (wanna wager on boardmembers in common? >;-). If the connection/effects can be reliably researched, that would be a good addition to the articles on the organizations, but not of particular relevance to articles like Earl Strickland or nine-ball.
"[A]ttaching a link to the World Pool Championship to the WPA page" — If it can be sourced that WPA is the defining/sanctioning org for X, Y and Z events, those events should certainly be mentioned in the main article text as WPA-sanctioned events, and wikilinked to the WP articles about those events, e.g. WPA World Nine-ball Championship, or (only if no such event article exists) externally linked like this to their official sites. Meanwhile, the articles on those events should link to the official sites, under "External links". The event articles might also wikilink back to WPA, e.g. "The Snorkel Weasel Tournament has been a WPA-sanctioned event since 2002".
PS: "Philippines for the 2006 World Pool Championship" — I so envy you! I did get to see the tail end of the WPBA event at the Sandia Casino in Albuquerue, NM, late last year; parts of it have been televised on EPSN. I got to meet JLee, Fisher, et al., in person. It "ruled!", as they say.
PPS: A wikipedia norms FYI: You neen't add "This is a response to" introductions, or "Dear whoever", etc., to replies on talk pages, and your replies should be indented by a ":" (or, rather, one more ":" than that which you are replying to) on each "paragraph" of your response. This is known as reply indentation level. If you click on "edit" on this topic, you'll see that my initial message has paragraphs like "Blah!", while I've fixed your reply to it to ":Blah!" and my replies to THAT are "::Blah". If you reply to this in turn, your re-reply should be formatted as ":::Blah". This is Wikipedia's version of ">"-quoting in e-mail, to make is easy to distinguish [re-...]replies from what they are replying to. These indentation colons have to be at the beginning of the line ("paragraph"). Hope that helps!
SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] 03:28, 18 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

WikiProject Cue sports edit

If you feel up to it, you may wish to join the Cue sports WikiProject (see Wikipedia:WikiProject for more info on what WikiProjects do/are for.) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] 03:28, 18 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

PS: Good show, on recent edits - they are on-topic and well identified as to what they consist of. Note that people are not reverting them.  :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] 18:43, 31 January 2007 (UTC)Reply

2006 world pool championship for deletion edit

AfD nomination of 2006 WPA Men's World Nine-ball Championship edit

An article that you have been involved in editing, 2006 WPA Men's World Nine-ball Championship, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2006 WPA Men's World Nine-ball Championship. Thank you.

Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. Slayer of corrupt (talk) 14:11, 10 August 2009 (UTC)Reply

2006 world pool championship for deletion edit

AfD nomination of 2006 WPA Men's World Nine-ball Championship edit

An article that you have been involved in editing, 2006 WPA Men's World Nine-ball Championship, has been listed for deletion. If you are interested in the deletion discussion, please participate by adding your comments at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2006 WPA Men's World Nine-ball Championship. Thank you.

Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. Slayer of corrupt (talk) 14:12, 10 August 2009 (UTC)Reply

ArbCom elections are now open! edit

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