Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Snooker/Archives/2021/January

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I propose that we remove the "Prize money" parameter from {{Infobox snooker player}}. It produces the following text, eg "Career winnings £11,776,155". There are two problems. Firstly there is no systematic attempt to keep the data up to date. Secondly, and worse, there is actually no reliable source for the data anyway. It seems that in most cases it is extracted from cuetracker.org. I can't find any official source for the information. Surprisingly to me, about 3/4 of the player articles have this parameter filled in, some 440. Of those 1/4 (roughly 110) have an inline citation for the number and of those only 6 do not have cuetracker as that citation. 3 of those 6 cite https://www.snookerdatabase.co.uk/, 1 uses just 1 season's data, +Steve Davis & Stephen Hendry which quote from retirement announcements. Nigej (talk) 14:55, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree, it's too difficult to source and to maintain this information for infoboxes. Snooker Scene and the Benson and Hedges Yearbooks used to print annual lists of money earnt from tournaments; more recently Snooker Scene has only included top earners. I checked a few samples from the 80's against cuetracker recently and they generally matched, except that cuetracker excluded team events. Omprakesh Agrawal earnt more from the 1986 World Cup (snooker) than from all of his other tournaments put together so the cuetracker figure for him is quite misleading, as one Edge case example. Snookerdatabase has career earnings for Steve Davis as £1,687,153 and cuetracker has £5,618,536 - but Snooker Scene for June 2013 (i.e. over seven years ago) has career earnings of £5,800,107 for him. The World Snooker and BBC sources used for Davis article say "over £5.5m". Plenty of scope for edit wars. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 18:41, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Like most things, it's almost impossible to source. I'd be more happy with a >X approach, but removal in general is probably a better approach. I have similar issues with the "century break" stat. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:53, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

Why can't you just leave it alone ?. As far as I can see you guys want to remove everything. Snookerinfo.centuries is the site that BBC, ITV and Eurosport use for century breaks. Adam at Snookerinfo took over Chris Turner's spreadsheets and these are the totals used by all TV stations. The prize money is updated on the BBC events especially i don't see any need to remove it. It can always be updated when stations give a figure. Eurosport also do this I notice 92.251.151.149 (talk) 23:21, 22 December 2020 (UTC)

If readers want highly speculative information compiled by snooker fans then they are perfectly capable of visiting these websites themselves. Wikipedia's purpose is

WP:Verifiability not truth. In other words readers should be able to trust the information we add to Wikipedia to the same degree that they would trust Britannica. Betty Logan (talk

) 05:49, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

DooksFoley147: Perhaps it's you that's added the numbers, I haven't checked. If so, then please tell us where these numbers come from. Nigej (talk) 07:03, 23 December 2020 (UTC)

The issues with this parameter are similar to those for "prize money" (see above). The parameter is filled in for the bulk of our player articles (nearly 500). It's not at all clear where the data is coming from, could be cuetracker or perhaps fan research. Seems to me that there is little interest in this number anyway. Reports/commentators never seem to say that someone made their highest ever break, although that's partly perhaps because most of the leading players have already made a

Makes sense to me to use the official maximums list. That info that is interesting and verifiable, although the maximum breaks by Joe Davis and Rex Williams were officially recognised so I'd argue for their inclusion too. Any views on what we should do for players who are mainly known for English billiards, where there is no maximum break, and highest break may be of more interest/relevance? I made Template:Infobox player of English billiards a while ago and perhaps that (with any improvements) is more suitable for players primarily known for billiards such as Walter Lindrum and Peter Gilchrist? For players eminent in both sports such as Joe Davis and Pankaj Advani the snooker template sees preferable to me. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 14:34, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

I agree that billiards players ought to be using {{Infobox player of English billiards}}. There are potential issues for those who excelled at both, but that's no different to, say, Denis Compton. Nigej (talk) 16:00, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

There's an argument for combining some of these infoboxes. There are plenty of pool players who played snooker, and/or billiards. I believe Chris Melling was on the tour, but known for being a pool player. A lot of the information is the same across all of these infoboxes that you would see across any bio, and only a couple of things specific to cue sports. For instance, world championship, best finish, professional, medals (for the SEA Games etc.)

For the different cue sports, there's only a couple of fields that are bespoke, things like highest break (snooker) and game (for pool, where there is a lots of games). Maybe it is worth combining these templates together, and having a few of these parameters looked at. The |game field is quite interesting, as it currently lists if the player contests nine-ball, straight pool etc, but having something like this that describes which variant of cue sports they play would be important.

Someone like Mark Selby is worth remembering that he plays snooker, but is also a blackball world champion, and runner-up at the Chinese Eight-ball world championships. Steve Davis is quite well known for his nine-ball time as well. I think it might be worth having one template, but one that lists the games that they were known to play. I agree high break isn't relevant, but a maximum break is variable. In pool there is a similar run in straight pool, but unless you have over 400 it's not important. Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:59, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

Somewhat off topic, but a good idea. Rugby does it already, see eg Kyle Eastmond, Bev Risman. Basic biographical stuff, playing careers: rugby league, rugby union, even aussie rules (order can vary). Not sure we need anything so complicated but perhaps a composite {{Infobox cue sport player}} makes sense (combining snooker, billiards, {{Infobox pool player}}), in a similar style that rugby uses. A player could then have more than 1 high break (or whatever) in different sections. Obviously issues to do with the many versions of pool. Nigej (talk) 22:02, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

So the original titles seem like they were the temporary names that WST were using, but now that the European Masters is over, they have wiped the (2) and hoping we completely forget about the whole deal and push it under the carpet. What are other sources using? Best Wishes, Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:10, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

I think a consistent disambiguator is needed across all the articles where this occurs. I would suggest using the season i.e. 2020 European Masters (2019/2020 season) and 2020 European Masters (2020/2021 season). Betty Logan (talk) 05:50, 29 October 2020 (UTC)

I previously used the season to disambiguate between two events when creating links, like 1993 European Open (1992/1993) and 1993 European Open (1993/1994). Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 19:55, 19 November 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Betty's idea but the season format would need to match that used in the season article titles, thus: 2020 European Masters (2019–20 season) and 2020 European Masters (2020–21 season). Also 2020 Championship League (2019–20 season) and 2020 Championship League (2020–21 season). As always, consistency is key. Using the season in the title would also clearly indicate WHY there were two of the same event in a single year, i.e. because they fell in different seasons. Rodney Baggins (talk) 13:47, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

I'm on board with that. Betty Logan (talk) 14:11, 8 December 2020 (UTC)

Seems to be consensus to go with the 2020 Championship League (2019–20 season) and 2020 Championship League (2020–21 season) style. Nigej (talk) 09:55, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

Although, the use of 2020 (1) and 2020 (2) seems appropriate in articles like World Grand Prix (snooker), as a compact form. Nigej (talk) 10:17, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

One further point: Should eg

MOS:DISAMBIG

page, rather than a redirect? I'm assuming so, although this involves much more work.

Nigej (talk) 14:27, 10 December 2020 (UTC)

2020 Championship League, 2020 European Masters and 2020 World Grand Prix are now disambiguation pages. No articles in main space now link to these, but you may wish to review you own links to these articles. Nigej (talk) 08:01, 12 December 2020 (UTC)

Late to the discussion, I'm the editor who moved the European Masters articles. I am happy with the solution above, although I would oppose any further use of the (2) format - I disagree with Nigej that it is ever appropriate. It simply isn't used anywhere else on Wikipedia as far as I'm aware.-- P-K3 (talk) 16:10, 8 January 2021 (UTC)