Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Snooker/Archives/2021/November

Three-letter months usage

Per MOS:DATE we are allowed to use contractions of months (eg Sep 2001) "in limited situations where brevity is helpful" "For use in tables, infoboxes, references, etc." As such it seems to me that it would better to use these in, for instance, the "Highest ranking" section of Judd Trump's infobox, where brevity would indeed be useful. Nigej (talk) 16:53, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

I agree, as people should be able to understand the shortened month format (does the abbreviated versions have a tooltip users can mouse over to see the long format? Not a big deal if thats not the case tho) and it would prevent the text getting super small. --CitroenLover (talk) 18:10, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

There doesn't seem to be any requirement to do so, but we need to only use them in very specific cases. Nigej (talk) 18:20, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

I kind of feel like we could just put it as a note instead when it's that ridiculous. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:55, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Citing total century breaks

Hi all! We quite often have some issues with including career century break totals on our BLPs within the infobox as they are updated manually after each one, and is completely uncited. Regular WP:RS items such as Snooker Scene, or the BBC will often post specific stats, but these aren't updated, and are a snapshot for that time. I was having a look at some items that are probably non-RS, but at least give us a cited piece of information. As far as I can tell, outside of cuetracker, which is blacklisted, and we are aware of this not being accurate, we do have prosnookerblog.com/centuries/ and snookerinfo.webs.com/100centuries, (also both blacklisted) which are actually the same list, and [1] (hasn't been updated since Aug 2020). Does anyone know of any better sourcing than this, or any suggestions if we should make one of these reliable but only in this context? Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:28, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Personally I always look at snookerinfo.webs.com/100centuries which seems to be reliable and an extension of the old unpublished lists. The trouble we have is that this stat is quite widely talked about and it would be a shame to remove it completely from the Infoboxes. I'd be much happier getting rid of career prize money (for instance), the accuracy of which seems very dubious to me and for which there is little interest (does any commentator say "x has just passed £n million in career prize money"? No). Seems to me that we ought to limit the use of the centuries Infobox parameter to those that have reached the 100 mark (74 players currently). At least we've got something for these, whereas for the others we're struggling for sources and the reality is that there's very little interest for these players anyway, so maintaining their totals is simply not worth the effort. We could also add something to the template so that numbers less than 100 weren't displayed, even if someone added it. When I looked at the "Century break" parameter some months ago there were 419 articles with the Century break parameter used (5 articles had Century break=0 and 27 had it equal to 1). 41 had a reference after the number which was nearly always cuetracker (3 were prosnookerblog). There's a bit of an issue for the old-timers but I notice that we've got nothing in the Joe Davis infobox, which personally I think is quite sensible - better added to the text where the total can be put into context. Nigej (talk) 15:32, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

Sure. If someone has retired, there's a good chance that there might be an RS regarding how many century breaks they made, as it's a stable number. I'd be happy to make an exception for a list that seems more likely to be correct than to be completely uncited. It's not unheard of to have citations be reliable only in one specific context (for instance, cagematch.net is used for match results only in pro wrestling articles, not for any other information). Of course, they would have to be delisted from the blacklist (or at least that specific page whitelisted, so we'd need a pretty decent consensus first).

On the note of prize money, it's completely uncited, and we don't even give rules as to which tournaments qualify for it. You might see an article say that "O'Sullivan has made over £9m in his career", or that "Steve Davis was snooker's first millionaire", as well as season stats which are usually accurate. The BBC quite often has amounts listed during matches, but aside from that, I have no idea where it comes from, and it is quite crufty. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:44, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

I still think we can cull the ones with less than 100 centuries ourselves. As you say we'd need a wider consensus for referencing the 74 others from a currently blacklisted site but that could be left for a second stage. Nigej (talk) 19:11, 2 November 2021 (UTC)

It occurs to me that this is another parameter where we could maintain a central list (like we currently do for the current ranking). The could then all be referenced in a uniform style. At the moment people are adding numbers based on their own research or perhaps from cuetracker without anyone noticing, especially for the more obscure snooker players. Nigej (talk) 06:36, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, certainly should be centrally maintained. Either by wikidata or Template:Infobox snooker player/century breaks or similar. When people have 50 odd edits to a single article with just century break updates it's a bit silly. We certainly shouldn't be updating them whilst in play as well. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 11:45, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

In July 2004, Snooker Scene published a table of "total career century breaks" (from 1976 to 2004) and in some cases their figures are very different from what's in places like CueTracker. As an example, Snooker Scene had John Virgo on 26 centuries, whereas Cuetracker (which excludes doubles/team events, I believe) has 39. I guess they include different events. I recall that the WPBSA once called CueTracker "the world's leading independent snooker results and statistics database" ([2]), albeit in a context where you would expect them to be positive about it. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 12:10, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

I suspect that this is partly because cuetracker has continued to add events (Pontins, Canadian, Australian) which were never in the original list and hence the cuetracker grand total is something of a moving target. I also think that in 2004 the "official" totals were also in a state of flux. I've found it impossible to make any sense of the official totals before about 2007. Nigej (talk) 14:14, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

See Template:Infobox snooker player/testcases where the testcases on the right are using Template:Infobox snooker player/century breaks and not the infobox parameter. I've added an "as of" date but not added a reference so far. Template:Infobox snooker player/century breaks is a cut-and-paste job from snookerinfo.webs.com/100centuries and has issues relating to consistency of names (eg "100centuries" uses Mark J Williams, David B Gilbert) which would need sorting out. "100centuries" is updated daily. Nigej (talk) 14:25, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

I suppose the argument will be, if we can't source this, and there's some disagreement about the actual totals, we shouldn't be staying it as official in an infobox at all. I have written an email to WST about potentially having something official actually written on their website, as they do give official figures, but just not in a suitable place. I contact them so much though, I suspect my emails just go straight into the junk folder! :P. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 12:37, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

I take your point. However, I'm still of the view that we could put our house partly in order (reducing 419 fairly random numbers down to 74 from a single source), enough though that is not the complete solution. As you imply, the alternative is to bite the bullet now and delete the whole lot. Nigej (talk) 13:12, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

There's an argument that unless they have done a lot, it's not really relevant information. Sure records are important, and someone being in the top 10 or even 20 scorers of century breaks is relevant, and commenting on breaking 100 (or more centuries) is important info for the body. If other websites and sources don't keep a consistent list, why are we? I have absolutely no issue with a well cited piece in an infobox commenting on this, such as Paul Hunter having 114, acording to [3] (cuetracker claims 110, whilst snookerwebs also suggests 114). Chris Turner is deemed acceptable, and someone I would trust. But giving an amount based on Wikipedia editors counting breaks up is really poor IMO. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:34, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Thinking a bit more on this, having the century breaks (if we do keep them) on one page that populates the template would make spotting vandalism so much easier. We can much easier keep the updates until after the event per WP:LIVESCORES, and put protection in place if things weren't to go right. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:54, 4 November 2021 (UTC)

Why would you want to remove the century breaks list from players that have not yet reached 100 ?. Just leave it alone people like Jamie Cameron are excellent at updating every players page. Snookerinfo.webs is 100% accurate. I know that he got Chris Turner's template and his numbers are always the same as Eurosports. I know he works on this with Dave Hendon and Rolf Kalb. Also people also get their figures from Eurosport prior to matches it showed Wakelin on 66 career centuries on the career graphic and that figure matched the one on Wikipedia. It would be a bad step to remove them for players below 100. As lots of people including Jamie put s lot of time into keeping the figures correct. 31.200.178.253 (talk) 10:00, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

You're right, we could cite specific broadcasts for the information - I don't see how verifiable the info would be after broadcast though. Part of the discussion here would be if we could suggest the list at snookerwebs is accurate, and use it as an RS in this specific case. Of course, as it is blacklisted, they'd need a very good argument for it being reliable. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 10:03, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

I know Jamie does some updates on here - but is there any press about them being a reputable journalist? All I could see was it being self described and a blog. With all the best will in the world, we need to show that the figures come from a reliable source, and not just from someone on the internet. Even if people spend lots of time updating figures, that doesn't really matter to Wikipedia. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 10:28, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Is there any list of centuries going below 100 (80 for current players)? Whether Wakelin's 66 is right or wrong is not the point here, it needs to be verifiable. Relying on specific broadcasts to occasionally verify the numbers is simply no good for us. As Lee points out, it's just a moment in time for the active players. Nigej (talk) 17:57, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

Also note that the discussion so far has not been about whether to deleted the ones less than 100, its been about whether to delete just those or delete the whole lot. Nigej (talk) 19:36, 6 November 2021 (UTC)

I think the information is useful to have on pages [though I agree it should be for those with 100 centuries or more, as there are rumours of one player thinking making a century is superstitious and thus avoids making them (Fan Zhengyi, i think?)], but like anything, there needs to be citations. If the info can't be cited to something and is not an obvious fact/common knowledge, it shouldn't be on the page imo. --CitroenLover (talk) 15:00, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

What the hell would we want to delete the whole lot for ?. Snooker fans want to know how many century breaks Ronnie O'Sullivan has or will end up with. The same for Trump etc. Don't remove them for god sake. Are you trying to ruin these pages or what ?. 31.200.162.181 (talk) 16:59, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Summary/Proposed next step

We have one user wanting to retain the status quo but provides no solution to the issue, i.e. how to cite "career century break totals on our BLPs within the infobox". The issue is long-standing and there was an attempt years ago to resolve the issue by blacklisting some web sites. This has proved unsuccessful, editors simply adding unreferenced numbers instead. The general view above seems to be that moving to a centrally maintained list would be a potential solution, enabling tighter control. My plan (as a first stage) is to delete all instances of the "Century break" parameter in the infobox (using AutoWikiBrowser) and move to a central list stored in Template:Infobox snooker player/century breaks, initially populated by a list of 74 players who apparently have made 100 century breaks. I think this would be a useful first step and would hopefully lead to a focused discussion on what this "century breaks" file should contain. Detail:

(1) I already have a file (generated some months ago) containing a list of 426 articles in which the "Century break" parameter was set. I would delete all these (using AWB). I can then remove "Century break" from the list of known parameters which will then populate Category:Pages using Infobox snooker player with unknown parameters with those I've missed. I would maintain a list of those I delete which contain a valid reference.

(2) Move over to the centrally controlled list, per the Sandbox noted above which will use the Template:Infobox snooker player/century breaks file. There are 74 players included. For 72 of these the number there is exactly the same as is currently in the player's infobox. The Kurt Maflin article currently has 199 instead of 198 but this is perhaps some double counting. The only significant difference is for Steve Davis where we currently have 355. We have references for this but it's highly likely that this number can be traced back to cuetracker (which had 355 at the time of his retirement, and still does). Chris Turner (generally regarded as a reliable source) had 321 to the start of the 2011–12 snooker season (see https://web.archive.org/web/20110414214436/http://www.cajt.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Centuries.htm (April 2011) and https://web.archive.org/web/20110724174049/http://www.cajt.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Centuries.htm (July 2011)). 17 more in the next few seasons (per cuetracker - but easily checked) before his retirement gets us to 338). Anyway, a discussion really for stage 2, as also would be what to include from this reference: ""Centurions". Snooker Scene. July 2004. pp. 14–15." which we have in some articles.

Indeed. Good work. Davis has this Eurosport citation suggesting 355 [www.eurosport.com/snooker/world-championship/2019-2020/snooker-news-steve-davis-i-wasn-t-good-enough-at-game-s-main-skill_sto7742374/story-amp.shtml], although, I always worry that these figures are cyclical. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:09, 8 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughtful approach to this, Nigej. Let me (a non-techie and non-AWB user) know if there's anything I can do to help. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 11:39, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

If you ever wanted to learn how to use AWB BennyOnTheLoose, I can teach you. There's a surprising amount that can be done without even looking at regex. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:54, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

It is not about maintaining the status quo as you call it. It is about keeping relevant and vital information about players careers in fairness 31.200.162.181 (talk) 17:05, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

The policy is that if we can't verify the number it's got to go, whether its relevant/vital or not. If you want to keep the stuff you need to come up with solutions to this issue. Nigej (talk) 17:27, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Stage 1

I've switched over to the new system now. Most instances of the "Century break" parameter have been removed. I had some trouble with some articles in that it wouldn't let me save for blacklisting issues, but I'll get a list of those and others I missed in the coming hours (should populate Category:Pages using Infobox snooker player with unknown parameters). Anyway these remaining instances of the parameter will be ignored anyway since the template now uses Template:Infobox snooker player/century breaks instead. This currently has a list of the 74 players who've scored 100 centuries (extracted from snookerinfo.webs.com/100centuries), Steve Davis on 338 not 355, unchanged for the others. Active players have "(as of 7 November 2021)" appended", inactive ones don't (controlled by the same file). I found a number of articles using the Snooker Scene July 2004 reference which are currently removed: Tony Knowles (snooker player), Tony Meo, Jim Wych, James Giannaros, Mike Watterson, Mark Wildman, Jimmy van Rensberg, Geoff Foulds but which could be added back. This is just my initial stab at the "century breaks" file, we now need to decide what's in it (if anything), and how/when to update it (daily, after each event? Luckily we're in an inactive week, so no changes until next Monday). Nigej (talk) 13:26, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

On a related note, would it be suitable for us to run a script to attack any blacklisted sites and replace with cn across our articles? I could probably write some regex to do that. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:52, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Would be useful, but I think there's still some mileage in simply deleting stuff. Nigej (talk) 15:55, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Snookerinfo.webs is the site to use as was pointed it is ran by Adam Clark who got Chris Turner's spreadsheets when he passed away. He works with Dave Hendon to compile century breaks data for Eurosport 31.200.162.181 (talk) 16:51, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

SnookerPlayer template

Hi all. Having worked on adding draws on pages for a little while now, I find the process of using flagathlete incredibly cumbersome. Most of this is down to adding the country code for the flag and the link, which is the same almost all the time and hardly ever changes (how many players over time have changed their sporting nation? I can only think of like, less than 5 people, who have done this). Have we considered looking at a Lua module with an intermediary template to ease editing requirements and simplify our editing workflows with regards of players? I am thinking of something like {{SnookerPlayer|Name of Player}}, which would work something like this:

• The template would lookup a lua module list details about the page name for that player and what country they represent.
• If the player is in the list, the template would prepopulate a call to {{flagathlete}} on behalf of the user
• If the player canot be found on the list, the template would just return a link to that players' page, if it exists.

In my opinion, doing this would vastly reduce the burden of country codes and links being within the articles, as they would be pre-written elsewhere. It would also provide a centrally managed list of players that can be added once and are automatically available everywhere on the wiki. Basically, to the viewer, it would just be a flagathlete template but not directly calling that template. --CitroenLover (talk) 15:02, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Possibly. You'd have to pay attention to flags potentially changing, as well as players altering their nation (see Kurt Maflin, Eden Sharav for example. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:17, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

I had thought about that, but in those situations, it may be worth falling back to the normal standard of using flagathlete. Alternative is having an additional parameter to force a specific country code if someone has changed their sporting country, although that would make it no different to flagathlete, so for those cases I'd fall on the "use flagathlete". --CitroenLover (talk) 18:42, 7 November 2021 (UTC)

Lee have you seen the way Darts adds their flags and players names it is much cleaner and simpler way than snooker does it ? 31.200.162.181 (talk) 17:02, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

IP User. Well, the darts articles don't meet MOS:ICON. The style of our tables and articles are designed to meet Wikipedias policies. If you are unwilling/incapable of realising that we have to meet the Manual of Style then maybe a collaborative project like Wikipedia isn't for you. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 11:44, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

I had a look at {{PDCFlag}} and while this matches what my discussion was about, our version would need to follow the policies on flags. Ultimately though, I can simply reuse the PDCFlag template and tweak it to follow the policies. :) --CitroenLover (talk) 12:00, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

"Prize money" in infobox (continued)

This is a follow-up to WT:WikiProject Snooker/Archives/2021/January#"Prize money" in infobox, which was never resolved. The consensus there, it seems to me, was to delete it. Obviously the prize money total could still be mentioned in the article, I'm just proposing to delete it from the infobox. We had one user wanting to retain the status quo but they provided no solution to the issue of how to cite the numbers. Seems pointless to me to retain the parameter for the one or two players where we could perhaps find a number. Any more thoughts?

I'd agree with removing it from the infobox and that total winnings can be included in the prose if there is a reliable source. I've seen lists in Snooker Scene, e.g. of the top ten prize money winners of all time, but, like century breaks, I guess it depends what events are included included as to where a source gets its total from. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 18:09, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

I think that's a general point. Stats in the text can be put into some sort of context, even to the extent of saying "so and so says he won this amount, but someone else says this." whereas stats in the infobox are really only suitable if they are unambiguous. Personally I see nothing wrong with saying that different sources give different numbers. Nigej (talk) 18:25, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

The big issue is that people think it's suitable to add this up and update it after every event. I'm happy with saying that a player has won over £X million (if we have a citation), which is fine for the prose. Uncited, and ambiguous has no place in the infobox. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:00, 9 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments. Based on these and the earlier consensus, I've started deleting the parameter from player articles. Nigej (talk) 06:35, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Done. May be a few left I've missed which I can clear up later, but they're not used now anyway. A few need reviewing since they had seemingly genuine references: Stephen Hendry, Steve Davis, Terry Griffiths, Cliff Thorburn. I haven't checked yet whether the information is already in the text. Nigej (talk) 07:38, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

I've added something to the four articles noted, but probably should be checked. Nigej (talk) 11:34, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

My experience is that we've cited some of these to try and get them through a GAN, rather than being useful info. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 11:41, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Citing total century breaks (continued)

The new century break system is now up and going and hopefully working as intended. I've added a "doc" page for Template:Infobox snooker player/century breaks giving some information/instructions. This is currently rather vague in places since we've not decided some of the issues. I've added a paragraph on "updating" with an instruction: "Do not update totals during the day's play." but we need to decide whether it's ok to update it daily during tournaments or whether it should only be updated after the tournament. snookerinfo.webs.com/100centuries is updated daily: "This list is updated daily during tournaments after all games have been completed.". Personally I'd be quite happy for our data to be updated daily too. Another issue is whether we should have some sort of protection on the file, presumably WP:SEMI, in line with the protection on the template itself {{Infobox snooker player}} - which would seem logical to me. Nigej (talk) 15:50, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

This looks good! I do wonder if this might be better as a Lua module, similar in lines to some other Lua modules out there that handle data of this nature, as a Module file would be easier to update than a massive switch statement. But thats more of an optimisation we could look at later, since I don't expect this to be getting edited frequently [my viewpoint is that it should be updated at the end of play for that day]. --CitroenLover (talk) 17:46, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Like magic, the file is now semi-protected. Thanks whoever triggered that, or perhaps it just happened. Nigej (talk) 18:07, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

It's automatic Nigej, as it's transcluded on enough pages. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:08, 10 November 2021 (UTC)

Use of bold/italic in "Final" table

We've had a "Final" table in our individual events articles for many many years. He're a typical example 2020 World Grand Prix (2020–21 season)#Final. Generally I feel that they're ok. My main complaint is the use bold and italic in the "Highest break", "Century breaks" and "50+ breaks" sections. For some years we've had system (it seems) of bolding the higher number and using italics if it's a tie. I'm not keen on this for two reasons. Firstly I find the use of italics makes it quite difficult to read. My slightly dodgy eyesight struggles a bit with italic 1. Secondly the use of bold seems undesirable to me. We (and other sports) widely use bold to indicate the winner. We do it here with the frame scores etc, but using bold for the final three parts of the table make no sense. There was no competition for who got the highest break in the final or most centuries in the final, so it seems to me that the use of bold (especially italic) is unjustified. Regarding ties, see eg 2020_Championship_League_(2019–20_season)#Main draw where winners get highlighted but there's no highlighting for a tied match. This seems to me to be a good use of bold. 1981 World Snooker Championship#Main draw is good example of how I'd like to see it, just plain text for this part. Also worth noting that we have some articles, like 1996 International Open#Final and 1995 British Open#Final where the use of bold/italic clearly has a different meaning (although I'm struggling to work out what that is, answers on a postcard please). Nigej (talk) 08:59, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

defending_champion parameter in Infobox individual snooker tournament

We have a defending_champion parameter in {{Infobox individual snooker tournament}} which I'd like to get rid of. Generally the defending champion is put in when the tournament article is created and then when the tournament is over (or during it) it gets deleted (eg 2021 UK Championship). All seems a completely pointless exercise to me and fails one my Wikipedia rules that (generally) we shouldn't be adding content when we know that later it will get removed. Nigej (talk) 16:04, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

I actually disagree on this to a point, we don't actually have any rules on things not being added if they are to be removed later. We have plenty of things that are specifically written despite knowing it would be outdated. We generally do include information about how the defending champion got on within the article as well, so it's sourced. I suppose the question is, why do we even remove this from the infobox? The argument has always been that they are no longer defending the championship, but that is not important, we are saying who went into the tournament having won the prior version.Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:01, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

To me its in the same category as live scoring, putting stuff in when you know its going to be changed. Sometimes we have to do it (eg tense "will be" "is" then "was") but generally its undesirable IMO. Nigej (talk) 08:17, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

One of the issues i have with the defending champion item in infoboxes, is when you have tournaments that are restricted. For example, the champ of champs and the tour champs. In both these cases, the defending champion may not be eligible to enter or they choose not to, thus meaning they cannot actually defend anything because they aren’t actually in the tournament to do so. The Masters is the sole exception because the previous year’s champion will always be invited, even if they aren’t in the top 16, although they could technically decline to defend their title. Im all in favour of removing the defending champion entry from the infobox. It generally gets referenced in the article lead anyway, where more context will be given. CitroenLover (talk) 23:43, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

I can't say I care too much either way, so long as we don't start trying to remove the prose about it. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 10:10, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Fully agree Lee, I would certainly oppose removing any prose/in-article text about the defending champion if it were proposed! Just think its not relevant in the infobox. --CitroenLover (talk) 15:02, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

"Major wins" parameter in snooker player infobox

We have a rarely-used parameter in {{Infobox snooker player}}: "Major wins". The documentation says:

• If a player has won all their tournaments before the 1973/1974 season (1976/1977 is when the first snooker world rankings were published), list them under |Major wins=, like in the John Pulman, Fred Davis and Walter Donaldson articles.

so it's meant for the old-timers who played before ranking events started. It seems to be only (validly) used for Fred Davis (snooker player) (12), Harry Stokes (snooker player) (3), Joe Davis (24), John Pulman (12), Sidney Smith (snooker player) (1), Walter Donaldson (snooker player) (2), although there may be others I've not found. Walter Lindrum also uses it to list some billiards achievements. Personally I find it rather ill-defined, and for Fred Davis (snooker player) and Walter Donaldson (snooker player) (for instance) I'd rather just have the "World Champion" bit in the infobox. Happy to keep if folk think it's useful. As ever the danger is that people use in inappropriately, like Ng On-yee whose wins were clearly after 1973. Nigej (talk) 16:12, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

I don't see why we need anything more than World Championship, ranking, and non-ranking. I suppose the only confusion is those old minor ranking tournaments. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:01, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

I've removed the parameter. Maybe at some future date we can come up with something more well defined. Nigej (talk) 19:27, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Replacing "High break" parameter with "Maximum breaks"

This is a follow-up to WT:WikiProject Snooker/Archives/2021/January#"High break" in infobox. The general view there was that the "High break" parameter was generally uncitable and of relatively little interest, whereas a "Maximum breaks" parameter would be citable (since there is an official list) and much more interest is shown in this achievement. My proposal is to remove the "High break = ...", replacing it with "Maximum breaks = n" (or blank if the player has none) which would produce eg "Maximum breaks 2" (nothing if the player has none) in the infobox. I have toyed with the idea of having a central repository for the maximums data but I now feel that this would just create unneeded complication, since there's no disagreement about the numbers.

Currently, for those who've made a maximum, The "147" is followed by addition text. This is generally different for those who've made 1 and those who've made more than 1. Ryan Day is a typical example for those who've made 2 or more: "(2 times)". Sometimes "small" text is used for this, for no obvious reason. Luca Brecel, is a typical example for those who've just made one. A link is provided to the event where it happened, generally on a separate line and generally in "small" text. I have looked at the possibility of doing something similar but I don't think it really works. For one thing, its impractical for someone like Ronnie (with 15), and also the use of "small" text falls foul of MOS:SMALL (text in infoboxes is already smaller than normal text). So I'm of the view that we just put the number in, the user can click on Maximum breaks to go that article or look through the article to get more detail. Nigej (talk) 08:14, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

I think this is a good proposal. As you say, Maximum break has the details on how many official ones have been made, so that can be the central repository, rather than a template. --CitroenLover (talk) 10:14, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, the small thing is certainly silly. We have to be a little cautious with saying "maximum break", as there are different types of maximum break, and a maximum in six-red snooker is quite common. I'm not saying there is a confusion, but just to comment here that these are not the same thing, before the inevitable edit war when O'Sullivan takes part in the World Six-ball Championship. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 11:41, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

I think the use of a link to Maximum break and some suitable text in the template documentation should be enough. However we could always use a different phrase, like "147s", "147 breaks", "147 maximums", "Official maximums" or whatever, if it were to become an issue for us. I'm now thinking that "Official maximums" would be a clearer name for the parameter, might discourage someone putting in silly numbers for Willie Thorne for instance. Nigej (talk) 11:59, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

You are right. I suppose "Official maximum breaks" would have to be the title, which is probably longwinded. So long as the documentation stated it was specifically for officially ratified maximum breaks of 147 (or 155.... Does a 148 count as a maximum? I suppose that's not really our issue) it's fine. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 12:28, 11 November 2021 (UTC)

No Lee a 148 does not count as a maximum break if you referenced Jamie Burnett he has not made a maximum as he made a high break of 148. This is not on the official maximum breaks list and it should be removed from his page. He only made a high break ok 77.75.244.40 (talk) 09:36, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

He appears in the Maximum break list at number 57. So I'm a little confused at the moment. Nigej (talk) 09:45, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

also here https://wpbsa.com/about-us/records/147-breaks/ at number 57 Nigej (talk) 09:48, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

or here https://wst.tv/wpbsa/official-147s/ at number 57 Nigej (talk) 10:25, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

In fact a brilliant example of why our information should be referenced to reliable sources. Anyone can go to a reliable source and check whether he did made an official maximum or not. The same is not true as to whether Ronnie has won £12,345,678 in prize money or not. Nigej (talk) 10:47, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

Exactly right. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 10:51, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Use of small characters in the High ranking parameter text

I am in the process of deleting about 300 uses of {{Smaller}}, {{Small}} and the "<small>...</small>" markup in text associated with the High ranking parameter, eg changing "High ranking = 91 (June–July 2014)" to "High ranking = 91 (June–July 2014)". The plain fact is that the use of small text in Infoboxes is not allowed (per MOS:SMALL). Note also that the use of these is also not allowed within the template itself, per WP:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 146#Observe MOS:FONTSIZE in infobox templates where is was agreed to "deprecate font size reductions by infobox templates to below 85% of the page default size, including the use of {{small}}, {{smaller}}, and <small>...</small>". Nigej (talk) 17:44, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm of the opinion that the small notation should be reserved for outside of mainspace (such as talk and userspace). This is a suitable change. Do we need to mention when they were at that rank in the infobox? It's never cited (and it could easily be cited). Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 10:13, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

I think the idea of including all the dates of highest ranking worked okish when there was only one ranking change per season. However, it can now lead to expansive text, especially for the number 1s. A half-way house would be to only list the first time they reached that ranking. Nigej (talk) 15:17, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

I mean, I guess? It doesn't really change that it's not really cited. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 10:49, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Indeed. On that basis we should get rid of it completely. I've always found it surprising that no one out there keeps historical lists of all the ranking updates (not even us, we only seem to keep those associated with "seeding revisions", eg Snooker world rankings 2020/2021) or even a list of each player's highest ranking. Maybe there is and I've missed it. You'd think WST would have it on their player articles, or snooker.org (http://www.snooker.org/res/index.asp?player=85). Nigej (talk) 11:45, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Infobox snooker player season

We have a template {{Infobox snooker player season}} which was used by the old Ronnie O'Sullivan season by season articles. It's used by a couple of drafts (one failed, one not submitted). I'm assuming, based on previous discussions, that we don't want season by season articles for any players and so this template can go. Nigej (talk) 11:57, 12 November 2021 (UTC)

This is now deleted (or moved to userspace for some reason). Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 14:52, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Proposed new parameter "Ranking finals"

It seems a little odd to me that pretty much every article for a player that's reached a ranking final has a section listing the ranking finals they've played, called for example in the Ronnie O'Sullivan article "Ranking finals: 58 (37 titles, 21 runners-up)", but the number of ranking finals they've reached does not appear in the infobox. So I'd like to add a "Ranking finals" parameter which would show this number (ie. 58 for Ronnie). There's a certain overlap with the "Best finish" parameter. See eg Jack Lisowski which shows his "Best ranking finish" as "Runner-up ..." but which could simply be "Ranking finals 6". Nigej (talk) 19:45, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Would this be for ranking finals only? As we already include the number of ranking, minor-ranking (MR) and non-ranking (NR) titles in the infobox, I think if we include ranking finals we should also include MR and NR finals given the rationale above. Might start to look a bit crammed though. Andygray110 (talk) 23:05, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

It true that we could add all sort of similar things, World Championship finals too. However, it seems to me that ranking finals is both well defined and of wide interest whereas MR final is of little interest and NR is not so well defined. Also ranking finals matches the "Best finish" parameter which we have for the best finish in a ranking event but we don't have anything for MR or NR. Currently we roughly mirror wst.tv, eg Luca Brecel says "Ranking titles: One" and Jack Lisowski says "Best ranking event performance: runner-up, 2018 Riga Masters, 2019 China Open, 2019 Scottish Open, 2020 World Grand Prix, 2021 German Masters, 2021 Gibraltar Open" but this seem illogical to me. Why go into great detail about Lisowski's 6 losing finals but not mention which event Brecel won. Nigej (talk) 06:39, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

If we do that, wouldn't the infobox start to get a bit cramped? May I suggest we retain "Best Ranking finish" and show "Winner","Runner Up","Semi finalist", etc as applicable, and then the number of times in brackets rather than the actual events (in the case of Jack Lisowski this would be "Runner-up (6)" rather than the current version). The details should be shown further down in the "Performance and rankings timeline" and/or the "Career Finals" sections. I would have no problem retaining similar summary information for Minor ranking events, but, given the apparent ambiguity of Non-ranking tournaments (i.e. what Tournaments to include and exclude) I would be quite happy to leave "Non Ranking" out of the info box. If we keep "Non ranking" summary info in, then why not add Amateur titles information as well? Steveflan (talk) 11:53, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm keen on the "Best finish" parameter, especially since WST often mention it in their player bios. I agree that the full names of the tournaments need to go from this parameter. We need to remove the small/smaller stuff anyway and the Jack Lisowski article (for instance) would get out of hand. Currently we have all sorts of different styles for this parameter, including "Last 16 (nine times)", "Last 16 (x10)", "Last 32 (twice)", "Quarter-final (6 times)". Probably something like "Last 16 (x2)" would be clear enough. I'm also wondering whether we should have some cut-off at the lower levels. "Last 128 (x13)"? Presumably he lost every match he played. "Wildcard round (2010 Shanghai Masters)"? So he got an invitation to play in a wildcard match, which he lost. "Last 72"? Is that possible? Doesn't seem very encyclopedic stuff to me. I'd propose limiting it to the Last 32 and better, especially since the WST doesn't seem to mention these minor "achievements", at least not for the two or three I looked at.. Nigej (talk) 12:34, 17 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm happy with the "Best finish" parameter as well and fully agree that it needs cleaning up, with some agreed guidance around what should and should not be included. Best ranking finish is an obvious one, and yes we should agree a cut-off (I would say the Last 32 as well), although how would we define finishes in the Pro Series ranking event in 2020-21 and the Championship League ranking event at the start of the 2021-22 season? I'm quite happy to go with the consensus on Minor Ranking events, but in regards to Non-ranking and Invitational tournaments, I would suggest we only add tournaments won. I'm also in agreement that "Last 16 (x2)" is clear enough for the infobox. Steveflan (talk) 10:43, 18 November 2021 (UTC)

No I agree with Andy this is a horrendous idea just leave the infobox stating the wins in Ranking, Minor-Ranking and Non-ranking events as they are. Does anyone really want to see the number of ranking finals played in an infobox. It is fine the way it is. What is the point of having Lisowski ranking finals 6 ?. Will that explain how many he has won ?. Infobox should really just include wins not totals finals played, if people want all that info they should go through a players page 77.75.244.39 (talk) 10:03, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

So are you proposing that we get rid of the "Best finish" parameter? Nigej (talk) 10:16, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I am saying leave the infobox as Ranking wins: 4, Minor-Ranking : 4 and Non- ranking 4 etc. Here is what I would say I think a parameter should be added in the infobox for "Professional Wins" ie for Steve Davis has ranking wins 28 and non-ranking wins 56. People should not have to count up how many titles he has won. There should be a line above like in golf. "Professional Wins" (84). I think that could be a great idea and would look good the way it is now you need a calculator to add them up 77.75.244.39 (talk) 10:24, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

The problem I have with is that, although the number of Ranking and Minor-ranking wins is well defined, the same is not true for Non-ranking wins. Where's the reference that says that Steve Davis won 56 non-ranking events? Adding up two well-defined numbers and a number that's not referenced, produces another number that's not referenced, making the situation even worse. Nigej (talk) 10:40, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Also, as discussed to death earlier, there is some ambiguity as to what events are "professional events", especially as we go back in history. I'm not sure we need to have a finals variable in the infobox, especially as some of the biggest events held were not ranking events (CoC, Pot Black, Masters, as well as the old world championships). This info can be put into the body (so long as it is cited). Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 10:48, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

Don't agree with that but whatever. 77.75.244.39 (talk) 11:01, 16 November 2021 (UTC)

I've seen quite a few items now being listed as "other wins". I feel that's even less well defined than non-ranking wins. Surely that could mean absolutely anything! I'd propose we simply list the ranking event wins and world titles, which is very well defined. Remember, infoboxes aren't even manditory, so we should really have all of the information in there be completely correct, and cited in the prose. There are plenty of places where ranking titles are retained. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 13:43, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

The reality is that this category (the parameter is called "Other wins" but the text produced is "Non-ranking") is simply a count of the number of wins in the "non ranking" table in the article. There's no actual source that says "x won y non-ranking events". I deleted (amongst other things) "major wins" from John Pulman but Fooksy has reincarnated it as "Non-ranking 13". This includes as wins. qualifying for the 1948 Sunday Empire News Tournament and winning the 1973 "World Plate Championship", both pretty doubtful as bona-fide significant wins. The 8 world championship wins are important, the 13 "non-ranking" is meaningless, and of no interest to any of our readers. Nigej (talk) 20:35, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

Yan Bingtao controversy

Please can someone take a look at Yan Bingtao and back me up on this. A new user is specifically adding information about a sexual harassment accusation which has appeared on Chinese social media. I've removed the content citing WP:SUSPECT but the user has just put it back again. The sources are highly dubious and Yan has not responded. I wouldn't be surprised if it were some personal vendetta and it really doesn't belong here. Rodney Baggins (talk) 10:05, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Oh boy that's a massive BLP and WP:CRIME failure. Keep an eye on it, drop some warnings, and let me know if it gets really bad and protection/blocks are warranted for this. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 10:17, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

I just dropped them a warning. Rodney Baggins (talk) 10:22, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

Thanks, it's worth noting they are doing the exact same thing at zhwiki Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 10:28, 21 November 2021 (UTC)

New properties in Wikidata

Anyone would like to propose new properties for players and tournaments at snookerscores.net?--218.250.158.118 (talk) 16:44, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

I can't say we are wikidata. I occasionally take a look around there, but what sort of things were you looking at? Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:50, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

I mean something like [4] and [5] for snookerscores.net/. New properties can be proposed here --218.250.158.118 (talk) 16:57, 22 November 2021 (UTC)

High break in infobox for players that have not made a maximum break

Hi I am just wondering if we could add a career high break parameter only for the players that have not made a maximum break ?. I will give three examples. 1. For retired players like Joe Swail he never made a maximum. By looking at his infobox it would be nice to know what his career high break was it just leaves something missing. 2. Current players that have not made a maximum I think it should be shown what their HB is as fans want to be able to see this info. Finally point 3. This has obviously happened only once as we know Jamie Burnett has made a maximum break and a high break of 148 I think this in particular, the HB should be highlighted in his infobox. Again I think the infobox tidy up looks well adding the maximum breaks, tidying the best ranking finish etc. I would just like to see this proposal implemented for those without a 147. Regards 31.200.158.200 (talk) 12:12, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

The fundamental issue with this is: where is the information to come from? I'd assume that we'd use the "Highest tournament break" in the WST biographies, eg https://wst.tv/players/joe-swail/ https://wst.tv/players/jordan-brown/ They don't give any indication when this high break was achieved but it is at least citable. If we are limit it specifically to this information, I wouldn't be 100% against it. Before I removed it, the Joe Swail article said "142 1999 China Open (qualifying)" but WST doesn't mention that extra information so we should limit it to just "142", unless we have other reliable sources that mention this extra information. The final issue is whether it's really that interesting to our readers. Personally I doubt it. Are they interested that Joe Swail's best break is 142 rather than 141 or 143 or 146. I suspect not. Nigej (talk) 13:30, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, the actual place it happened is really not citable. The 142 for Swail (acording to my non-citable OR), suggests it was actually in the last 32, so not in qualifying. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:00, 23 November 2021 (UTC)

It seems that some of the last 32 matches in the 1999 China Open (snooker) were played in the UK (presumably they'd be called qualifiers) and some in China. Clearly the matches involving the wildcard winners had to be played in China, not sure about the others. http://www.snooker.org/trn/9900/ci99_res.shtml calls the last 32 matches "qualifying", even those matches played in China, another example of this issue of whether "held over" matches are qualifiers or not. Our articles says "The defending champion was John Higgins, but he was eliminated in the fifth round of the qualifiers, losing 1–5 against Peter Lines." even though this match was played in China and in IMO was not a qualifier at all. Nigej (talk) 07:30, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Seems that just four last 32 matches were played in China, the 3 wildcard winner matches and Williams/Harold, perhaps explaining the 140 Harold high break we have in the infobox. Just a one table setup, so only 2 or 3 matches played per day. Shows how much effort is still required to get articles up to any sort of decent standard. Anyway, keep up the good work. Nigej (talk) 08:19, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

On this, we don't even know if this was the first, or only time he made this break. I'm all for including info that an actual source states, but we need to be specific as to what is ok. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:33, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

Another issue is how to ensure editors do not add "high breaks" for players not on the WST site. There are some editors who seem to have a desperate need to fill in infobox parameters, and they're going to trawl the internet to find high breaks, and add the information from cuetracker or some other blacklisted site. Before I removed them all, there were hundreds of high breaks not mentioned on the WST site and the danger is there all going to filled in again. Nigej (talk) 18:51, 24 November 2021 (UTC)

"Best finish" parameter

As noted above the "Best finish" parameter in {{Infobox snooker player}} is in desperate need of a clean-up. The parameter is specifically for ranking events, which is a well-defined list. Also it is not used for any of the 68 players who've won a ranking event, they use "Ranking wins" parameter instead. A few issues come up:

1) As was noted above, we currently have a number of "best finishes" in which the player didn't win a single match. I'd suggest limiting it to those who've reached the last 32 of an event. This fits in neatly with the common old tournament style with 32 players in the main event, the top-16 ranked players + 16 qualifiers (and still used for the World Championship).

2) What does "best finish" mean. Generally it's well-defined but the round-robin events and different qualification systems somewhat complicate the issue. Up to 1981 there was a last-24 stage in the World Championship (and a last 32 if you include the final qualification round). The 2006 and 2007 Grand Prix (snooker) had a round-robin stage reducing the field from 48 to 16. And recently we've had the WST Pro Series which finished with a round-robin (128 to 32 to 8) and two Championship Leagues which had 3 stages reducing the field from 128 to 32 to 8 to 2. Probably others too.

3) Is it citable? The good news is that for current players WST generally mentions it. eg [6] "Best ranking event performance: Semi-finals" or [7] "Best ranking performance: Semi-finals, 2018 Scottish Open" [8] "Best ranking event performance: Quarter-finals", [9] "Best ranking event performance: Last 32" The bad news is that it doesn't generally say exactly how many times, although details are often given in the biography further down. For any ranking event finalist it shouldn't be a big issue to find a reference. For players without WST bios further down the list (last 16, last 32) it may be more of a problem.

4) Names to use: Currently we use: Runner-up (36 players), Semi-final (50), Quarter-final (roughly 58), Last 16 (69), Last 24 (4), Last 32 (89). Sam Craigie has 3rd (his finish in the 2021 WST Pro Series#Final group stage). So that's about 300 players all told, down to the last 32 level.

5) Extra detail. Currently we often have additional detail. Many list the event(s) eg Jack Lisowski, Nick Terry. Others like Cliff Wilson and Jason Prince simply say "(5 times)" or similar. A big issue with the list of events is that they generally use small/smaller which is specifically not allowed in infoboxes. A potential issue with just saying "x1" (or whatever) is the example of Gao Yang (snooker player). He already has "Last 32 (2022 German Masters)" in his infobox since he's qualified for that stage already. The danger with using "x1" is that someone next year will add the event again (not knowing which event the 1 refers to).

Nigej (talk) 13:42, 20 November 2021 (UTC)

By the way you should not use x1 at all. If it has happened only once it should just say, Semi-finals, Runner-up etc. If it has happened on more than one occasion then you add the x as it identifies the same result has occurred on multiple occasions Kentbobo (talk) 15:27, 26 November 2021 (UTC)

Having a system where, if it's missing, then that means (x1) is not ideal IMO. How is the casual reader meant to know this secret code? It's true that we currently use a system where the absence of "maximum breaks" means none, the absence of "ranking" wins means 0 wins, etc, so I suppose it's not so different. It would also make sense if the (x2), (x3), etc were quite rare. However they occur 43% of the time (for those from Last 32 to Runner-up), so they're quite common. My own preference is to either always include it or always leave it out (after all, Lisowski's best finish is actually Runner-up). Nigej (talk) 16:06, 26 November 2021 (UTC)