Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tennis/Archive 3

This is an archive of past discussions on Wikipedia:WikiProject Tennis. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

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Archive 3

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Archive 10

Sortable tables???

On May 25, several bios have been edited to include sortable tables for tournament wins and losses. It makes some strange stuff, and I oppose it (see my comments on the Federer and Hewitt talk pages). Has it been discussed and/or agreed upon anywhere here? --HJensen, talk 22:59, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

The difference you're talking about is comparing this to that? Personally, I don't see much difference. As for the discussion of the table, no we haven't discussed it here yet. --DarkFalls ^talk 23:09, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

The problems arise when you start using the "sorting facility"; not when you just look at the tables. If you sort by tournaments, then back to year, then US Open preceeds Wimbledon in time; not good. Also, sorting on scores, first names of opponents make absolutely no sense. Also, the idea of putting on a subscript on the tournaments is indeed to keep track of numbers of win of a given tournament; hence, no need to sort them. It only opens up the possibility of creating pure nonsense (try sorting on the dates for tournament wins of Lleyton Hewitt; it becomes a laugh). So I think it is a useless and potentially confusing feature, which should be reverted as soon as possible.--HJensen, talk 14:07, 28 May 2007 (UTC)

I fixed the sorting on Lleyton Hewitt. One must use [[yyyy-mm-dd]] instead of [[dd month]] [[yyyy]]. —Disavian (^talk/_contribs) 18:47, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Sorry. I just tested both of the sortings... and the latter made one helluva mess. I'd say that we revert everything to the original design.. --Dark Falls ^talk 11:56, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

Did you not like my solution? —Disavian (^talk/_contribs) 02:57, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I was referring to the current system at the Roger Federer article, not your solution... --Dark Falls ^talk 03:08, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

I think the dating in the Hewitt article looks awful. I still haven't got an argument for making anything sortable. Can't it just be reverted? --HJensen, talk 23:27, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Links in Grand Slam Performance timelines?

I noticed that Andy Roddick#Singles performance timeline has the "W" for the 2003 US Open link to the men's draw for that tournament. Now that we have all the draws for the Open Era, should all the results in performance timelines link to the appropriate draws? It would involve a pretty large one-time effort to change all the existing timelines, but it would greatly increase the exposure of the historical draws. What do people think? --dantheox 02:55, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

No. It makes editing the timeline too unwieldy. Tennis expert 07:54, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

Other aspects of tennis

As currently structured, this wikiproject seems to focus entirely on happenings within the professional or high-level amateur tennis world. This stuff is certainly interesting, but there's a whole other part of tennis that isn't covered by it, such as tennis as played for recreation, tennis as a business, the history of the sport, and articles on how to play tennis. Many Wikipedia articles already exist along these lines, e.g., Category:Tennis organisations, Category:Tennis shots. Could this wikiproject be adjusted to include them as well? --Sheldon Rampton 15:43, 3 June 2007 (UTC)

We are covering those articles, but most of us are currently focusing a bit more on the professional level, and the tags haven't been added yet. --Dark Falls ^talk 06:02, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Samantha Smith (tennis)

Could someone flesh out Samantha Smith (tennis) - also isn't she better known as "Sam Smith"? PMA 01:21, 6 June 2007 (UTC)

The "finals" bracket: 3- or 4-rounds?

This was discussed briefly back in January on Talk:2007 Australian Open, Talk:2007 Australian Open - Men's Singles and User:Dantheox#2007 Aussie Open. I thought I'd reopen the discussion while people are still paying attention to the 2007 French Open page.

To summarize: when I uploaded all the historical draws, I made the "finals" bracket use Template:8TeamBracket-Tennis5, a three-round bracket. During the Australian Open, User:Captain Courageous put in a 4-round bracket instead. The French Open started with a 3-round finals bracket, but User:Tennisuser123 swapped in the 4-round bracket. I think we should discuss and make a decision. Here are the two possibilities:

Quarterfinals						Semifinals		Finals

1	Roger Federer	7	1	6	6

9	Tommy Robredo	5	6	1	2
						1	Roger Federer

						4	Nikolay Davydenko
4	Nikolay Davydenko	7	6	6

19	Guillermo Cañas	5	4	4



6	Novak Đoković	6	6	6

	Igor Andreev	3	3	3
						6	Novak Đoković

						2	Rafael Nadal
23	Carlos Moyà	4	3	0

2	Rafael Nadal	6	6	6

Pros/cons:

It's more spacious, so there's room for the player's full names.
It actually is the "finals", since each round has "finals" in it.
It's visually distinct from the brackets used for earlier rounds.
Older slams (e.g. 1968 French Open - Men's Singles) use this format. It would be a hassle to change them.
It doesn't give as broad an overview of the tournament.

vs.

Fourth Round						Quarterfinals						Semifinals		Finals

1	R Federer	7	6	6
13	M Youzhny	6³	4	4		1	R Federer	7	1	6	6
9	T Robredo	6	7	6		9	T Robredo	5	6	1	2
29	F Volandri	2	5	1								1	R Federer
4	N Davydenko	6	7	3	7							4	N Davydenko
15	D Nalbandian	3	6¹	6	6²	4	N Davydenko	7	6	6
19	G Cañas	6	6	6		19	G Cañas	5	4	4
	J Mónaco	0	4	2
6	N Đoković	6	6	7
	F Verdasco	3	3	6¹		6	N Đoković	6	6	6
16	M Baghdatis	6	1	3	4		I Andreev	3	3	3
	I Andreev	2	6	6	6							6	N Đoković
	J Björkman	6⁵	2	5								2	R Nadal
23	C Moyà	7	6	7		23	C Moyà	4	3	0
14	L Hewitt	3	1	6⁵		2	R Nadal	6	6	6
2	R Nadal	6	6	7

Pros/cons:

It gives a pretty deep overview of how everyone got to where they did in the tournament.
Visual consistency: it looks the same as all the other brackets and follows the same naming conventions (Initial + Last).
It duplicates information. The fourth round scores all wind up being listed in two different places.

Opinions? I tend to favor the three-round bracket, since it lets us show the full names of the most-successful players somewhere on the page and avoids duplicating match scores (which could get out of sync). But I could see it going either way. --dantheox 05:17, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I like the three-round bracket too! —MC 16:13, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I also think that 3-round bracket is better. Kedarus 16:45, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

I am leaning towards the 3 bracket template, primarily because the fourth round will look really odd with the finals... --Dark Falls ^talk 06:51, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

I went ahead and made the changes. --dantheox 18:12, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Serena's name looks funny in the 2007 Australian Open - Women's Singles 3-round bracket. There is no seed box. —MC 01:24, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm not sure what to do about that. When I wrote Template:8TeamBracket-Tennis3, it was just like Template:8TeamBracket-Tennis5. No seed meant that an empty box was displayed. Then Andrwsc (talk · contribs) added some logic to make the seeds optional and created the weirdness we have now. It looks like he's using this same template in various non-tennis Olympics articles (e.g. Badminton) where there are no seeds. If there aren't any seeds, it looks reasonable. It's just the mix that's a problem. Maybe we could ask him to create a new, non-seeded template? An alternative would be to specify Serena's seed as " " --dantheox 06:09, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

I think the   is fine. —MC 15:17, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, my intent was to be able to make the same template work for both seeded and non-seeded events. I don't like the proliferation of customizations in Category:Tournament bracket templates. For maintenance and consistency, it seems to me that it would be far better to make the same templates work for multiple situations (e.g. seeds or not, first round byes or not, third place match or not, etc.). With that in mind, I changed the logic of that template so that if you specify no seed (e.g. RD1-seed1=), none is rendered. If you have a seeded event and want a blank for specific unseeded players/teams, use RD1-seed1= . Seems logical to me! This also helps the situation shown in the bracket above, where the table looks ugly when no seeds are specified. Hope this helps, Andrwsc 23:27, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

French Open page moved...

Aquarelle (talk · contribs) has moved French Open (tennis) to Roland Garros (tennis). Personally, I think it should be at Roland Garros, but I know most of you would prefer to keep it at French Open (tennis). What should we do? By the way, the page histories and talk pages seem to be spread over two pages. —MC 00:29, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

That move should be reverted pending discussion... As you say, I do favor French Open, mostly for the reasons we discussed before regarding individual year's draws. --dantheox 05:22, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it can be reverted as it seems to be a cut and paste move. (WP:SPLICE)? —MC 15:37, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

If it's a cut-and-paste move, then the page history should still be under French Open (tennis), right? I think that's even more reason to cut/paste it back. --dantheox 16:07, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

OK, I moved (copy/pasted) the article back. This is no big deal, since there's very little history at Roland Garros (tennis). I've invited User:Aquarelle to join this discussion. If we do decide to move to Roland Garros (tennis), we'll have to go through some hoops to preserve the revision history. The "move" button can only move to a non-existent page. --dantheox 18:11, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

We'd have to get an admin to fix it at WP:SPLICE. —MC 18:54, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

There are 2 identical articles for Roland Garros: French Open (tennis) and Roland Garros (tennis). One has to be deleted or redirected. It should be the first one because "French Open" is a generic term also used for tournaments in other sports and is an unofficial appellation. The only official name of the tournament is "Roland Garros" and this must appear in the title. I expect the managers of the tennis project to correct this situation and make the change. --Stymphal 18:33, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

We've already discussed this issue (at length) and there was no consensus to move the article from French Open (tennis). See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tennis/Archive 2#Discuss. Spyder_Monkey (Talk) 20:59, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Just to summarize, I think the most compelling point is that Wikipedia's policy is to use the common name (see WP:COMMONNAME), not necessarily the official name. This is why, for example, the article about the baseball player is Babe Ruth and not George Herman Ruth. The latter is technically correct, but the former is far and away the most common usage. And while the tournament is officially known as Roland Garros, and is probably referred to that way in France, I have never heard someone in the US call it anything but the French Open. From the archived discussion, it sounds as though both names are used in the UK and Australia. --dantheox 07:07, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

The "cut and paste" move was necessary because both articles (Roland Garros and French Open) exist. You can't "move" an article when the destination of the move is already there. It would have to be deleted first.

As for WP:COMMONNAME, the first line reads as such : « Use the most common name of a person or thing that does not conflict with the names of other people or things. » A "French Open" could be any international sporting event which accepts non-professional applicants. For the other example given, Babe Ruth is an American famous in the United States and almost always referred to as Babe Ruth. While the American's may like to refer to Roland Garros by the generic "French Open," the British and very often other speakers of English (for example an Italian or a Spaniard) call it by it's proper name, Roland Garros, as do the French. This article should not be catered to a chiefly American generic term but rather the official, international title. --Aquarelle 09:39, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Well actually, if the article is an redirect, you could do it. You never cut and paste move. It ruins the page history, which is extremely important. As for the page move, please try and seek consensus before moving. Unless I am dreadfully mistaken, Roland Garros is a disambig page. --Dark Falls ^talk 10:02, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

those are both really interesting points. I think the disambig page weakens the "that does not conflict" line of reasoning. On the other hand, I would have no real problem with French Open redirecting to Roland Garros (tennis). Aquarelle, is this your proposal? --dantheox 14:59, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I would propose that French Open (and all variations e.g. "french Open") redirect to "Roland Garros (tennis)". I know this isn't "on the record", but I checked with a few American tennis fans that I know and they were all familiar with the name Roland Garros. They told me that they had seen it on the official logo on TV as well as on the flag that flies above the Roland Garros stadium and on the official website.

We should also discuss whether Roland Garros redirects to Roland Garros (tennis), perhaps with a link to Roland Garros (aviator) before the first line. I imagine that the vast majority of people typing in "Roland Garros" would be looking for the tennis tournament and not the WWI pilot. --Aquarelle 15:32, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

I agree with this, would prefer it to be at just Roland Garros. —MC 19:16, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

The three links on disambiguation page all relate to the tournament (the aviator and the stadium named after him), so I don't think the main page should be the disambig. The tournament should be at Roland Garros with a Roland Garros (disambiguation). Above the first line should be the Roland Garros (aviator) link and the Open de France golf link. The disabmig page doesn't have enough different things to be so highlighted, I don't think. FJM 09:17, 11 June 2007 (UTC)

It is not true to say that the tournament is referred to as Roland Garros in the UK. the French Open is by far the most common name - look at the BBC or newspaper websites for ample evidence of this. Clearly the French Open is the most common name among English speakers, and therefore the title should be French Open (tennis) as in fact it is!--86.31.226.190 07:51, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

AfD for TENNIS Magazine's 40 Greatest Players of the TENNIS Era

I've noticed that TENNIS Magazine's 40 Greatest Players of the TENNIS Era is posted at Articles for Deletion. Spyder_Monkey (Talk) 21:45, 9 June 2007 (UTC)

Gregor Selinšek

This smells like a hoax. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 11:31, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

It is... What kind of tennis player has an image like that. A quick google search, and the guy is definitely a hoax. Every tournament east of France? (snigger). Delete it and add to BJAODN or something... --Dark Falls ^talk 11:59, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll pass on the BJAODN, given the current ruckus. ˉˉ^anetode╦╩ 12:02, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

Tennis timelines

Anurag Garg (talk · contribs) left this at Talk:Tennis performance timeline comparison (men):

== Style change from Women's timeline ==

The women's timeline is a lot more complete. However there are two major differences in the style that has been adopted for the men's timeline.

* The men's timeline only shows the last name and does not show the country flag.
* The men's tables are sorted alphabetically instead of being sorted by number of wins as the women's tables are.

Shouldn't we adopt the same style for both articles? Anurag Garg 12:12, 13 June 2007 (UTC)

I prefer full names and flags. —MC 16:19, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

The men's table looks a lot cleaner and easier on the eyes but I don't believe adding flags would negatively affect that Wolbo 20:48, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, as the creator and virtually the sole editor of the women's timeline, I disagree completely. Putting just the last names in the timeline is very user unfriendly except for those already well-versed in tennis history. Tennis expert 03:36, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

Greatest or most successful player information in the article

The arguments on the talk has grown to a standstill, but more outside opinion is necessary for the addition of this topic, into the tennis article. Personally I feel that it should be removed, but will seek to gain consensus before removal. For the sake of convenience, I ask that comments be added to the talk, instead of here. Cheers. --Dark Falls ^talk 09:09, 15 June 2007 (UTC)

As you know, we have discussed this before. There has never been a consensus to delete the greatest or most successful players information in the article. Lest anyone get the erroneous impression from your post that the general subject is relatively new, it was first added to the article over three years ago, on April 4, 2004.[1] The fact that the information remains in the article and is added back to the article whenever someone comes along and deletes it is evidence of a consensus to keep it, in my opinion. Furthermore, the information that is currently in the article is cited or based explicitly on factual criteria. Tennis expert 06:57, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

There's never been consensus to keep the section either. It's age on Wikipedia does not necessarily determine its inclusion, as well as the fact that when it was removed, most of the time it was reverted by you.[2] [3] [4] [5] I am asking for a proper discussion over the inclusion or deletion of the section, and am trying to resolve this issue before mediation. I apologize if you feel that I am being unfairly biased, but I have stated my opinion, and am trying to determine whether the section is considered encyclopedic or not. --Dark Falls ^talk 03:44, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

Historical ATP Tour pages…

GAThrawnIGF (talk · contribs) has created the 1988 ATP Tour and started the 1989 ATP Tour articles. I have added the rankings using a combination of Steve G's historical rankings and the ATP player profiles. For example Agassi's 1988 rankings. Style shamelessly stolen from 2007 ATP Tour thanks to Sam Vimes (talk · contribs)! ;-) I'd just like some comments on this. And ask for some help! ;-) It's very tedious work… —MC 19:05, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

Looks good! I expect this process could be completely automated with some massive scraping of atptennis.com, but I'm really not up for scripting that right now. It'd be cool to have some way of seeing the rankings fluctuate over the course of each year, maybe a week-to-week chart of the top ten? That's probably asking a bit much. --dantheox 04:35, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

It might be better to use stevegtennis.com. I just used atptennis.com for the high/low stuff. I'm not sure we need that though… —MC 15:34, 17 June 2007 (UTC)

List of family relations in tennis

I recently created a List of family relations in auto racing, which will be moved to the mainspace soon. The first response I got when I brought up the list (which was limited to Formula One at the time) at Wikipedia:WikiProject Formula One was "I guess I'm going to have to ask...why?" I am also in the process of building a list of family relations in cycling and a list of family relations in Dutch football. I was thinking about creating a list of family relations in tennis soon, but I want to avoid the response I received, so I'm bringing this up here first. The list would include all family relations between notable tennis players, such as Marat Safin and Dinara Safina, Richard and Michaela Krajicek, the Williams sisters, John and Patrick McEnroe, Helena Suková, Věra Suková and Cyril Suk, the Bryan twins, etcetera. Any thoughts/suggestions? A ecis^Brievenbus 00:30, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Sounds good to me… —MC 00:47, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

My first reaction is also: "Why"? If you continue, note that Kurt Nielsen is the grandfather of Frederik Løchte Nielsen.--HJensen, talk 20:44, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Well, the reason I think this is worthwhile is also the reason why I think the List of family relations in Formula One was/is worthwhile. My main "inspiration" for the list is the List of family relations in the National Hockey League, which provides information, background and context, and has just been promoted to Featured List status. Many tennis players draw part of their claim to fame from their family relations, like for instance the Bryan brothers and the Williams sisters. Listing the family relations I believe provides a historical background to tennis. Cows fly kites (Aecis) ^Rule^/^{Contributions} 10:53, 22 June 2007 (UTC) (To avoid confusion: I am User:Aecis. See User:Aecis#Cows fly kites)

It's interesting, but it will probably come across as too Listcruft-y for some. Also, don't forget Tim and Jörg Bergmeister. --Spyder_Monkey (Talk) 05:25, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Grand Slam brackets...

Should we have last names only like in the historical draws or include initials like some editors have been doing recently (ie 2007 Wimbledon Championships - Women's Singles)? —MC 15:05, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I'd generally err on the side of including more information. After all, seeing "Williams" in a women's draw is completely ambiguous. I think full names would be even better, but there are plenty of names that won't fit on one line, especially when bolded. First initial plus last name isn't a bad compromise. --dantheox 16:32, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Okay, I like this compromise too. So, what about the historical draws? Should they be changed to the "first initial plus last name" format? —MC 17:41, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Ugh, I'm really hesitant to go through and make major changes to all the historical draws, but I guess it should be done. Is there any standard browser width that Wikipedia pages are supposed to be designed around? If we increased the team-width param in each bracket, full names would be tenable. But that would make the brackets quite wide. --dantheox 20:04, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm not sure — 1024×768, I guess? I think we should change it to {{flagicon}} + "first initial plus last name". Also, we need to publicize this (and other) style guideline(s) somewhere… —MC 21:22, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

True, that should be an extra section of this wikiproject. We should have standards for brackets, player pages, tournament pages, etc. --dantheox 23:30, 22 June 2007 (UTC)

Individual ATP/WTA Tournaments...

I am in the process of creating a couple articles for ATP tour tournaments by year. For example, for the Queen's Club Championships in 2007, I have created a page titled 2007 Queen's Club Championships, with details on the singles and doubles draws.

Is this necessary to be doing this, should I be bothering creating these sort of pages. Please add your comments, to save me the trouble of creating any more pages that may be unnecessary. Allied45 03:54, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I think it would be great to have some non-slam tournament pages, especially for the Masters Series events. It's going to be incredibly tedious to do this manually though. Where are you pulling your data from? I have a number of scripts I wrote in association with the Grand Slam Project that may be useful to you. --dantheox 06:05, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I'm getting the draws and results from the official tournament sites (which usually carry the past few years results), and from the official ATP site, where they have archives on tournaments dating back to the beginning of he ATP tour (1970) --Allied45 06:37, 28 June 2007 (UTC)

Generating performance timelines

I noticed that James Blake does not have a "Performance Timeline" section. Is there a standard procedure or tool for creating these? These tables could be generated almost entirely from the ATP profile page, as well as the Ranking history page. I'd be willing to whip something up if there's no existing tool... --dantheox 06:23, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Good idea, I don't think there is an existing tool avaliable. - Nick C 14:18, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I've put something together at danvk.org/timeline.cgi. You take the ATP Profile URL (most wiki player pages should have this link), paste it in, and submit. You'll get a section you can copy directly into an article. Here's a sample: James Blake. It only includes slams at this point, and no win/losses in those. I'll iterate on this in the future, but this is a start.

Let me know if you notice any problems. I'm sure the 1977/1986 Australian situation is handled incorrectly. --dantheox 22:14, 8 July 2007 (UTC)

do infoboxes show current ranking??

Hey, am in my annual casual tennis following during wimbledon phase, and have noticed that neither the pages for Lleyton Hewitt or Kim Clijsters show their current ranking. Would this not be useful information to include??--Macca7174 12:50, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

I think this was debated before; it would take a huge amount of effort to update all the rankings every week. - Nick C 14:17, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

Proposed renaming of Category:WikiProject Tennis Templates to Category:Tennis templates

... please see the discussion at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2007 June 27#Category:WikiProject Tennis Templates. Thanks. Mike Peel 18:19, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

2007 Wimbledon Championships - Gentlemen's Singles?

Hello, I believe 2007 Wimbledon Championships - Men's Singles should be moved to 2007 Wimbledon Championships - Gentlemen's Singles because the official website has the Gentlemen part, too. Also, here at wikipedia, we already have a page called List of Wimbledon Gentlemen's Singles champions. I would like to know whether you have discussed this matter or not and what you think about this now. Thanks, Crzy cheetah 00:18, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Yes, this has been discussed at length. Start reading from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tennis/Archive 2#Discuss, and read the next two sections for good measure. To summarize, we stuck with "Men's Singles" because:

It's consistent with the naming of the other slam pages.
Even the official Wimbledon site isn't consistent on this, see the discussion for details.

--dantheox 02:01, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for providing the link. The decision is fair enough. --Crzy cheetah 02:15, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

Who is notable?

I just noticed Anna Fitzpatrick has a {{notability}} template, and that made me wonder which tennis players are notable enough for an article. My opinion is anyone who enters any event of a grand slam tournament would be notable by default but I can't find anything to confirm this, so what does the project think? - MTC 17:21, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I would say that any player who is or has been on the ATP or WTA entry list is 'notable'. I don't think junior players should be mentioned even when they win various low-grade ITF junior tournaments. This could overflow the wiki, and lead to very random information provision (some will get mention just because an editor has a perdonal interest in the player, while better players will not get an article). (So I would say Anna Fitzpatrick is notable, as she is currently around no. 500 on the WTA list.) Those Juniors winning Slams and Orange Bowls should be mentioned though. Moreover, there is a very good chance that they will fulfill my first criterion at some point.--HJensen, talk 21:35, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

The Cricket WikiProject states that any person who has played first class cricket is notable. If we follow that rule, it'll mean that any person who has played professional tennis is notable. --Dark Falls ^talk 05:27, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Is the point of establishing notability guidelines for tennis players to be able to decide what wikipedia pages should be deleted? Or what pages should be created?

On the men's side, in any given week, about 1900 people have an ATP singles world ranking.

Go to [6] to look up some example weeks.

All it takes is a single entry ranking point to get a world ranking. In 2007, the ranking rules were changed so that you had to at least win a professional match to get that first point, the exceptions being the Slams and the Masters Series events.

In a given year, I'm guessing 2500 or so different players will have a world ranking at some point during the year.

Are 2500 Men's pro players notable? Not according to the ATP's own website.

If you look at ATP page for Olivier Charroin, who has been ranked for 2.5 years now, will be top-700 next week in singles, and top 400 in doubles, you'll see that he doesn't merit a photo, a date of birth, a place of birth, a left-handed or right-handed, anything at all. That's typical for most players outside the top 500 on the ATP site.

On the other hand, he just won a main draw match this week at a $125K challenger, beating a top-200 player who was top-70 just 2 years ago. Does this make him notable? I can tell you that Santiago Ventura Bertomeu's fans will find him notable this week.

On the women's side, they require points in at least 3 tournaments before you can be ranked, and you must also be at least 14 years old, with some other restrictions. [7] So about 1400 are ranked currently, 500 fewer than on the men's side.

I would say the 'minimum' of the gauge for notability would be 'winning' a main draw match at the Challenger Series level, or 'playing' an ATP main draw match, or the similar levels on the WTA side.

The upper end of the gauge for determining notability could be having the player's name appear in an article in a credible city newspaper for a city other than one that the player has some connection to or the city in which the tournament is played. That would pretty much mean playing in a main draw ATP or WTA level tournament, since those results are standard fare on the back pages of sports sections and occasionally in larger print sport-specific summaries.

And as User:HJensen noted, winning a Junior Slam is also notable, indicative of future status, along with any other major international Junior tournament. Maybe just say any Junior with a top-10 ITF world ranking?

And what about college players? Is winning the NCAA individual title notable? Is holding the #1 NCAA ranking notable?

Are these Junior and NCAA feats notable in and of themselves, or only as indicative of future professional performance? If the latter, and a player never realizes that professional potential, is that cause for future deletion for a lack of notability?

ShabbatSam 08:02, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Tennis greats

not an encyclopedic article, was simply copied from the tennis article [8]. should be deleted. rawr, Tennis amateur 17:19, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

I've prodded it. It's a violation of GFDL anyway... --Dark Falls ^talk 06:26, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

Links to stevegHelper website?

Recently (since June 14, 2007), User:ShabbatSam has systematically added links to his own web pages on current activities and rankings of professional tennis players (indeed, to spread links to his web-sites is stated as his main purpose of joining the tennis project: "But the reason I joined was so I could add links to male tennis player pages that would take them to my two webpages that search for a player's match results and ranking history."). See here, and go back in time He has done so without seeking consensus here (and furthermore he demands that people do not revert his unexplained insertions without giving an explanantion! - I think the burden of proof is the other way round!). On his talk page, I urged him to do so, after he was very dissatisfied with my removal of some of his links. I presented my arguments against the links at his talk page, and he presented why they in his opinion contained more information than what can be found at the ATP pages. The standard links for Gilles Muller looks like:

I find them not of merit to be included, and I do not approve of this way of pushing forward a personal web site on Wikipedia - in particular without seeking consensus, and furthermore continuing as if nothing has happened after the behavior has been questioned. User:Marianocecowski also stated on the talk page that the links were spam. But I would like to hear other people's opinion. What do you think? Should every tennis bio have two to three links to the steveghelper websites? --HJensen, talk 17:56, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

I was out of town when this first went on, which added to my frustration level.

But honestly, I thought this was a dead issue.

You reverted only one wiki page after the initial three, and in that revert, you listed the reason (for Jarkko Nieminen) NOT as the links having no value, but that the links also presented info on Timo Nieminen. In fact, only one of the two links pulled up info (Match Results) on Timo as well as Jarkko; the other link for Ranking History showed only Jarkko's rankings, so clearly you did not even bother to look at that link. Otherwise, you would not have deleted it for the reason given. Regardless, I immediately altered the links to be completely specific to Jarkko under ALL circumstances.
Mariano did not further revert any more of my links, not even the 25 he had reverted previously which I then manually re-entered.
User:MC came across the page I had just created for Jan Hajek, which was just a stub stating a sentence about him and giving the ATP, Recent Match Results, and Ranking History external links. He did not delete my links, even though they were practically the only thing on the page. Instead, he wikified the rest of the stub article.

Aside from that, I take issue with your characterization of my actions and motivations above, but I may address that after I get some sleep. Suffice it to say that:

My site is not according to the wikipedia definitions a Personal Web Page, nor are my links Spam, according to the wikipedia definition.
Only 6 players (I think) out of 100 that I modified were given a 3rd link to Recent Match Results for all that country's players (LUX, CYP, NED, AUT, FIN, and KOR). The idea was just something I was trying out as a more informative alternative to the wiki category links for players from the same country. It is currently highly misrepresentative of my edits to suggest that I was routinely adding 3 links to SteveGHelper, when 95% of my edits used just 2 links.
I'm new to wikipedia, and today was the first time I encountered this talk page. I did, however, early on in my edits (Jun 25), ask for assistance on the Tennis Template page to make a Template for the edits I was doing, and not a single person bothered to respond to my post. So forgive me for not running to try to find this talk page, when my experience with the tennis project was that "talk" was not really an active thing here. Now that you have pointed me to this page, I see otherwise. But I did not ignore your comments. To the contrary, I checked every day to see if you or Mariano had reverted any more of my links. I considered that to be the best barometer of how the issue was progressing.
And I did not 'DEMAND' that people not revert my work again without explanation. I 'ASKED' "please do not ..." on the pages where I re-entered the one hour plus of my hard work that Mariano deleted without saying a word (and now that I have read the SPAM page, without raising his concerns to me or issuing me a SPAM warning).

I will only ask that before anyone comments here, that you look at my Contributions to get a better feel for what I was doing, for instance you will see that I:

added, fixed, or standardized the ATP Profile link for each player on 50+ of my edits
created a couple of player bio pages that did not already exist
always added my links below the ATP profile, never above and never at the top.

And I would also strongly suggest clicking either of my links (Ranking History or Recent Match Results) and look at the thoroughness and relevancy they deliver with one click, and then attempt to recreate in your head that same sense for the player you get from my links by instead clicking to the ATP profile page and looking for recent match results and ranking history.

ShabbatSam 11:10, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Also, for what it's worth, as far as the merit of my links, other users of other language versions of wikipedia have ported my links over to some player pages, something I noticed this week in my server logs:

Fernando Gonzalez on tr.wikipedia.org
Janko Tipsarevic on sr.wikipedia.org— Preceding unsigned comment added by ShabbatSam (talk • contribs) 11:28, 6 July 2007

As for your motivations, I just quoted your own page. Maybe it is a bit silly to write like you do - just a friedly suggestion ("my webpages", e.g., sounds pretty personal). I appreciate your other edits, of course! They are not the subject of discussion and are irrelevant to the issue here. So, let us hear from others now on the issue at hand. And I agree that this page is sometimes a "dead" place - a pity you haven't seen this when you joined the Tennis Project. In any case, I think that proves that one must be patient before engaging in systematic projects like you have done. Just "having not heard anything" is not the same as a confirmation. And just because I haven't wasted tons of time reverting your edits, it is surely not an implicit approval by me (I don't want to engage in edit wars). I have raised the issue, one other editor has also quesioned your links. And that is it as far as activity. But I have not seen anyone supporting your links either. I just think that there should be someone expressing their support to your projcet, before you implement it. Now you have implemented it, and we will see what happens over time. PS: You are correct about my reversal for Jarkko Nieminen. I did not bother to look at the other link. So my edit comment "Rm links that give info also about Timo Niemenen :-)" was incorrect in the sense that I used plural. However, I thought the ":-)" - an emoticon - indicated what my true intent was. Sorry for the confusion. --HJensen, talk 11:58, 6 July 2007 (UTC)