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Revival topic: the performance and rankings timeline

I previously raised a discussion in Feb 2023, which was later re-raised by another editor earlier this year with regards to this unwieldly table of performance and rankings for every player.

For some of our players, this table is an utter abomination to edit, with tons of colspans and widths that need to be corrected every single time a new season begins, with all sorts of abbreviations that make sense to some and mean nothing to others. Not to mention, wide colspan cells for "tournament not held" or "non-ranking" when put against a tournament which began as ranking and changed to non-ranking, and vice versa. Of course, because of the "enormity" of changing this, no action was taken on this.

Having thought about this recently, I would like to concur with a proposal I raised in the more recent discussion, which is that the massive table be split up into a lot of smaller (possibly collapsible and/or column divided) tables that segregate the information into a more controlled format, so each piece of data is more easily readable, rather than the current mess of mixed formats. This also allows us to better handle the small number of "exclusive" events which have only been run a small number of times (eg the one-off WST Pro Series, WST Classic and Turkish Masters, as well as the twice-run Hong Kong Masters), by not giving them equal weight to long running events (which presently lead to huge amounts of colspanning because these events haven't been held very often, I mean just look at how bad that looks on the Ronnie O'Sullivan and John Higgins pages for example!).

My proposal is therefore the following:

• The ranking that a player starts the season with is separated into its own heading with a small table. To make it easier to edit and read, the format of the table used here should be more equivalent to a roll of honour that you see at some events, rather than lots of columns that stretch off the page, need a horizontal scroll bar, or create excessive length. Two columns: left is the season and right is the ranking. Reference notes should NOT be used to indicate whether the player was an amateur or a new professional: instead, clear and unambiguous text should be displayed. Of course, the "two column" table layout would be repeated if a roll of honour was required for players who have long careers.
• The Triple Crown events are hived off into scrollable tables (if scrollable tables are not possible in the wiki, then collapsible would work, defaulting to being collapsed) under a "Triple Crown Series" heading. One table is used for the UK Champs, another for the Masters and another for the World Champs. These are then arranged in a 3-column layout, similar to how we create the layout on events such as the Snooker Shoot-Out so that they don't create excessive page length. The table should contain three columns: the first column should be the year the event was played in, the second is the round they reached (with a relevant colour code) -- or if they did not enter, it should say so, without abbreviations -- and the third is a link to the page which is masked with the display text "Report".
• Ranking events which are still being run (and haven't gone on a single-year hiatus) should be categorised under a heading for "World Ranking Events" with a large collapsible table. This table should contains 4 columns: the first is a rowspannable column for the event the player was in, with the remainining 3 being multiple rows for the edition, round reached (as per triple crown) and a link to the event. If the table is very long, this could be split up into a two-column set of tables, with the events equally split across both. This section should NOT include the UK and World Championships, as they've been separated into a Triple Crown Series section. One-off ranking events should not be included here.
• All non-ranking events get the same treatment as ranking events and structured the same way. Again, this should not include the Masters, but it should not include "one-off" events either.
• Any tournament which has only been run once or twice is moved to a heading for "one-off events" (or similar name). As this only includes tournaments which don't run often, this should be a simple table using the same format as the ranking/non-ranking events, with limited rowspanning (at most, up to 3 rowspans, if its been disparate editions with multiple lengthy gaps between them).
• All former tournaments -- which does not include events which have skipped one year due to scheduling restrictions, or were clearly a one-off -- should be separated with a similar table, with one addition: a column specifying the "type" of event (ranking or non-ranking).

Below is an example of table that demonstrates this "rowspanning" behaviour, which should look a lot better than what we have so far:

Event	Edition	Reached
some event	1999	Quarter-Final
	2000	Winner
	2001	Round 1

In terms of tournaments which began as non-ranking and changed to ranking -- or vice versa -- the tournament should be entered twice into the respective tables for the respective editions (eg the Snooker Shoot-Out should be included in both ranking and non-ranking headings: the data for the non-ranking edition should only record results for players who participated in the non-ranking edition; the same holding true for players who only played in the ranking edition, and so on). Please let me know your thoughts on the below, thanks. --CitroenLover (talk) 19:03, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

As I don't know who edits the pages on a regular basis nowadays, I've pinged the following users who I think are active, based on talkpage posts and edit history of a randomised selection of articles: @HurricaneHiggins @Nigej @AlH42 @Lee Vilenski @BennyOnTheLoose @AmethystZhou. If there are others, please feel free to @ them into this conversation. Thanks. --CitroenLover (talk) 19:09, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

I agree that the current timelines look very unwieldy. Your proposal gets an agreement from me. Just one question, using your table, if a player plays in the 1999 and 2001 editions, but missed the 2000 edition (due to not entering or losing their tour status) would this row be excluded from the table? Steveflan (talk) 21:29, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi thanks for the question on this @Steveflan. I would say that if the tournament was held, the player was a tour member and they withdrew from the event [and we have a source to confirm they withdrew], we should record that. But if the player was not a tour member and did not compete as an amateur top up, or they simply chose not to enter the event, we shouldn’t really bother including this because it would make no real sense from the context of that individual.

We don’t need to know what events they didn’t enter that they weren’t eligible to enter in the first place [therefore, players who have never competed at the Masters don’t need a table about how they never played in it, thats just pointless text on the page and people can work it out for themselves]: we should just record the events they could enter that they did enter, unless they withdrew from them due to unforeseen circumstances [which can then be noted in the table]. Hope this helps.

As an aside for others, qualifying rounds should be clearly distinct from main-stage rounds. Therefore, a loss in the first round of Qualifying is not the same as losing in Round One of the main stages of an event, so should be recorded appropriately [using the new format]. CitroenLover (talk) 22:14, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

CitroenLover, could you do a mockup (maybe in your sandbox) of what this would look like on a player's page, with the ranking info? I'm finding it difficult to visualise from just the three lines in the example how it would look and how much space it would take up. As I've said before, I think that editions of events that have gone from non-ranking to ranking (or vice versa) should be listed together, not separately. (Especially the World Championship!) If it's line by line there could be a column to indicate whether it's a ranking event. Thanks, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 22:43, 28 September 2024 (UTC)

I don't look at individual players' pages very often, and hardly ever edit them, but just looking at the timeline table for ROS, it seems to me that the table is horrible, difficult to edit, and totally unnecessary. It has no sources and so smacks of original research. I would be happy to see these tables eliminated altogether.  Alan  (talk) 10:34, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

...OK, there is one source, just for the ranking history from snooker.org, but that is all.  Alan  (talk) 10:40, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

Hi @BennyOnTheLoose sure thing, it might take a bit of time to make a sandbox to demonstrate this, but I can certainly make one and link it here in a day or two :)

@AlH42 I think the problem with removing them is that a lot of regular readers, who do not edit the wiki, are likely to raise a fuss over them being removed. While I agree they are partially OR, we could easily fix the OR issue by referencing news articles. However, that would over-populate the tables with references, when a lot of this can be easily assumed as truthful without a million references on the pages. -- CitroenLover (talk) 12:40, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

I think these tables are pretty much the definition of original research, and you can't have too many references.  Alan  (talk) 13:00, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

While they are probably the definition of OR, referencing every single tournament -- some of which might not even be possible to do without using banned sites like CueTrack -- would likely lead to over-referencing, and clog up the references section with an unnecessary number of links. While its important to have references, common sense is a thing: not every single thing needs a reference, especially when it comes to obvious facts (like we do not need to reference when someone was born and where, because thats just accepted to be factual without one; neither do we need to reference every single start-of-season ranking because we have a single reference that covers the players' history). However, its up to the community to decide how much referencing it would like to do, but I don't think "you can't have too many references" is true, as you definitely "can" over-reference a page into oblivion, causing the page to be nothing but references, which makes it unreadable for those who just use the site to read up information.

Anyway, I have set up a sandbox of my proposal. It is deliberately limited so as to reduce how much work I would put into a concept, but you should be able to get the idea from the little that I have put there [which covers all of the earlier mentioned parts of the proposal]. -- CitroenLover (talk) 13:18, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

Performance timelines provide a good visual overview of players' careers, which are especially useful in the many instances where the "career summary" section is patchy. I'd be totally opposed to removing performance timelines entirely, but supportive of any endeavor to rework them as @CitroenLover proposes. As for the claim that the performance timelines consist of "original research"—each entry in the timeline is linked to that event's tournament page, which has references that should make it easy to verify the information. The concern about over-referencing individual players' pages is legitimate in this instance. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 13:24, 29 September 2024 (UTC)

I think it's better to include references on the page. Some of the refs on linked pages are dodgy (e.g. for Pot Black). See Cliff Thorburn or Terry Griffiths for examples where the table is referenced - although the refs are for results, not for statements like "Tournament not held". For a much worse looking example, check out John Spencer (snooker player) where during the FA review, the tables were split out to avoid having column headers in the middle of a table, for accessibility. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 10:38, 30 September 2024 (UTC)

@BennyOnTheLoose having thought about it, i think we could make a case for having a reference column on the new tables, but i think to avoid it getting out of hand, it should be one meaningful reference about that players’ progress and not endless references. The alternative is that the references could be stuck to the event name, where more space is likely to exist for a copious number of references, though over-referencing should still be available imo. — CitroenLover (talk) 11:55, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for the sandbox example, CitroenLover. I think one disadvantage is that in the current version it's easier to look see how a player has done in a partcular season as well as in a particular event. I think I'd prefer something like this one in my sandbox; a simplified version of the current model. Maybe we could have the triple crown events as the first three lines. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 13:05, 1 October 2024 (UTC)

@BennyOnTheLoose thanks for the feedback. On one side of the coin, I get your point; on the other side, we're not a statistics site and should only be presenting the information in a non-statistical manner. While I do like your sandbox format, the problem is that it is still dependent on a column-based layout and also needs to be extended width-wise every new season the player is in, and also has the significant issue of "Tournament Not Held" empty space if a new tournament appeared many years after the player joined the tour. But, I do like your format because it does not separate all the events like our current table does, and we can always use reference notes or other indicators to denote a "non-ranking" edition or similar: the only thing I would suggest in your sandbox is that Triple Crowns should be listed first (UK -> Masters -> Worlds), due to their higher prestige in comparison to all other tournaments on the calendar. -- CitroenLover (talk) 18:10, 3 October 2024 (UTC)

@BennyOnTheLoose @AlH42 @HurricaneHiggins @Lee Vilenski if no one here has objections to Benny's table layout, this should probably start to be updated on pages which see lesser amounts of traffic before getting to the bigger pages. -- CitroenLover (talk) 17:17, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, I much prefer Benny's style. Not sure what the green background on some of the events is for though Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:38, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

The idea of the green is in a bulletpoint above the table in my sandbox; I've tweaked it and actually added the symbols in. No doubt we can phrase this better once principles are agreed. Do we want triple crown events at the top of the table, or to try and keep it roughly in season order (e.g. world championship would be probably the penultimate row for players who competed in Pontins events)? I'm not sure that something like "UK Championship†‡" is very user-friendly but we should also try to make the tables as close to complying with MOS:ACCESS as we can. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 21:25, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

I would suggest grouping matches based on types: Triple Crown Series should be at the top, then all ranking events, then all invitationals. Former events, or one-offs (eg WST Classic/WST Pro Series/Hong Kong Masters), should be at the bottom of the table, or separated into their own -- similarly designed -- table imo. -- CitroenLover (talk) 16:58, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

Yeah, exactly that. The three Triple Crown at the top, then anything that has ever been a ranking event, and then invitationals (minus the Masters, naturally). Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:06, 26 October 2024 (UTC)

@BennyOnTheLoose as there's been no opposition whatsoever to changing the table, I don't have any issues with you going through the articles and updating each performance table to use your format, taking on board the above from Lee. :) --CitroenLover (talk) 14:39, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

References

Archiving

Just a heads-up: since the Wayback Machine is still down following a DDoS attack, I have been using Ghost Archive very successfully.  Alan  (talk) 18:16, 11 October 2024 (UTC)

For information: the Internet Archive is now back on-line but in read-only mode for now. See this.  Alan  (talk) 13:54, 14 October 2024 (UTC)

Reminder! Names and scores in tournament articles

Hi all, I've noticed in recent tournament articles that a couple of longstanding editorial conventions are being disregarded. The first relates to scores. If representing a match score from the losing player's point of view, give the loser's score first, e.g., "Trump lost 2‍–‍6 to Si." Do the reverse from the winner's point of view, e.g., "Si defeated Trump 6‍–‍2." Saying "Trump lost 6‍–‍2 to Si" is inconsistent with other articles and with the manual of style. The second relates to names. The player's wikilinked full name should be given only on first use in a major section (e.g., Shaun Murphy or Judd Trump). Thereafter, refer to the player by their family name, unlinked (so, Murphy or Trump). In cases where confusion may arise (e.g., two players in a tournament have the same family name, such as Neil Robertson and Jimmy Robertson), continue to use the player's full name, unlinked. Recent articles are stating all players' full names throughout. Thanks for being mindful of the above. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 11:06, 13 October 2024 (UTC)

Here here. We do actually have a style guide for this, but these two items are exactly right. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:46, 23 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @Lee Vilenski! HurricaneHiggins (talk) 11:48, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

@HurricaneHiggins it isn't surprising to me that the style guidelines are being ignored at times. In defence of the users who do so, they may be unaware of them: however, its probably more likely to happen because so few regular editors are around nowadays. But agree that the style conventions are there to be followed and should be enforced at all times, so if you do see people ignoring them, tell them to read them tbh. :D --CitroenLover (talk) 17:16, 25 October 2024 (UTC)

Hi @CitroenLover, I don't think it's down to people being unaware. These issues have been discussed more than enough on this page and elsewhere. It's more that certain editors seem to believe that they don't need to abide by style guides or past conventions. Bluntly, it feels like an effort to make up new rules and repeat them frequently enough that they become ingrained. Just now, I had to correct "Judd Trump was beaten 9–3 by Kyren Wilson" in the Northern Ireland Open article, exactly the issue I pointed out above. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 21:19, 27 October 2024 (UTC)

@HurricaneHiggins I totally agree with this. This might be caused by the repeated points on talkpages -- like this one -- about how "it doesn't matter what happened before for page formats and that we don't need to retroactively update older pages to newer standards": maybe it doesn't matter what happened in the past, but clearly the recent habit of making up new conventions is taking that statement too literally where people think its fine to change the conventions because they simply didn't like the previous ones, instead of understanding that conventions exist to ensure consistency. -- CitroenLover (talk) 18:16, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

Thanks @CitroenLover. Completely agree with what you say. If longstanding conventions matter, they should be enforced by the community and changed only by consensus. But I'll be blunt here and say that the snooker wiki no longer feels collaborative or consensus-driven. It has largely become the personal fiefdom of one individual, who seemingly has carte blanche to follow his personal whims. This is facilitated by others who, as you say, are encouraging a mentality that how things used to be done doesn't matter anymore, that we can make up the rules as we go along, and that anyone who objects is somehow standing in the way of progress. Hence the style guides and editorial conventions that past editors painstakingly developed and implemented are increasingly being disregarded. The overall approach to writing articles has changed, and the quality of articles has nosedived. We can do so much better, but there needs to be a "we" and there needs to be a collective will to enforce standards and strive for higher quality articles. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 22:16, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

World Rankings

As of today, WST has announced that the world rankings has a sponsor: https://www.wst.tv/news/2024/october/28/johnstone-s-paint-to-sponsor-world-rankings/

Is there much of a point in changing any aspect of the pages related to the snooker world rankings to reference that they are now sponsored by Johnstone's Paint? Seems pointless to mention it since its obviously just a marketing technique and not really something anyone is going to care about. -- CitroenLover (talk) 18:19, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

@CitroenLover It hardly seems a notable change. I just wonder what it means to "sponsor" rankings, when anyone with a pocket calculator can figure them out based on publicly available figures! Will Judd Trump henceforth be the Johnstone's Paint world number one? Sounds like a marketing gimmick to me. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 22:26, 28 October 2024 (UTC)

The only place it should be mentioned is a passing mention on this year's rankings article. Nothing more. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:01, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Agree with both of you: its not all that notable to require changing the name of the pages, but can be passingly mentioned on the season rankings page with a reference. — CitroenLover (talk) 23:41, 2 November 2024 (UTC)

Irish Professional Championship and Jackie Rea (Reprise)

Chris Turners archive states "The first Irish Professional Championship was held in 1947 and was won by Jackie Rea. Right up until 1982 the championship was conducted on a challenge basis with the champion deciding who his challenger would be. Jackie lost one challenge, to Jack Bates in 1952, but regained the title almost straight away and beat off all subsequent challenges until he came up against Alex Higgins in 1972."

Having had access to various Newspaper archives, I have been trying to research results from the Irish Professional Championship to try and ensure we have as full a record as possible (thus removing the 'various challenges' text in the results table).

Interestingly I've found that Chris Turners Archive to be wrong on this. Being the only Irish professional snooker player at the time, Jackie Rea was declared the first Irish Professional Snooker Champion without playing a match in November 1952. The 1947 tournament that Chris mentions was actually the All-Ireland Amateur Championship, in which Jackie Rea beat Jack Bates in the final.

In fact, Jackie Rea was only ever challenged for the title twice. The first, in 1956, was by professional billiards player, Jack Bates, who Jackie Rea beat comfortably (37-26). With the second challenge coming from Alex Higgins in 1972. This was due to the fact that there were no other professional snooker players from Ireland during Rea's reign.

Chris Turner's archive also states that Jackie Rea lost a challenge to Jack Bates in 1952, however, this was in the semi-finals of the All-Ireland Amateur Championship , which took place prior to the declaration of Jackie Rea as Irish Professional Snooker Champion.

For the 1972 challenge, there was talk, in 1970, of a qualifying match between Alex Higgins and Paddy Morgan to see who should be allowed to challenge Jackie Rea, however this did not materialise, with Alex Higgins left as the lone challenger.

I currently have a draft version in a sandbox here. If everyone is happy, I have no problem in this being used on the actual page. Steveflan (talk) 11:14, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

I've also noticed errors in areas of the Turner archive, but if there is only an absence of match reports in the newspaper archives that in itself is not enough to declare the Turner source wrong. Unless there is a reliable source that challenges Turner or verifies the statement there was a lack of professional players/only two title challenges, then making that statement falls under WP:OR. I also doubt it was contested every year, but I think the Turner source is all we have for now. Andygray110 (talk) 20:22, 14 November 2024 (UTC)

The first reference on my sandbox page is from the Belfast Telegraph giving the story of how the Irish Professional Snooker Championship came about, thus proving Turner's original assertion that the championship started in 1947 is wrong as well as the 'fact' that Rea lost the tile in 1952 - which is impossible seeing as he wasn't declared Professional Champion until after the match in question took place.

I know of at least 1 other article in the Belfast Telegraph, prior to the first challenge match, which mentioned the lack of professional snooker players in Ireland (North and South) which is why the first challenge came from a billiards player, and if memory serves, there is another article (again in the Belfast Telegraph) that mentions only 2 challenges. Unfortunately, I no longer have access to the British Newspaper Archive, hence I can't reference them.

Whilst I fully understand that making a statement due to a lack of match reports, etc can be classed as WP:OR, the fact that Rea was the only professional snooker player in Northern Ireland during this time, and that the Belfast Telegraph covered (almost) every match and tour he undertook (including numerous challenge matches against Alex Higgins and others), on the balance of probabilities, I find it very hard to imagine that they would miss a Professional Championship match. Steveflan (talk) 13:10, 15 November 2024 (UTC)

The 6 November 1952 Belfast Telegraph article is a great find, Steveflan. I had a look through The Billiard Player for 1952 and found no record of matches for the NI professional snooker title; by April 1952 Bates was already in Scotland and had applied to enter the Scottish championship. I've amended the Jackie Rea article. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 22:14, 18 November 2024 (UTC)