Talk:2008 Shanghai Masters

Flags and country names

The flags have to be identified by country name/abbr, or deleted, per WP:MOSICON. If having the country names in the actual tables is considered undesirable, a possible solution is to provide a key/legend (e.g. in a sidebar - there is probably room next to the ToC) identifying which flag goes to which country. The version where there are just flags and no country names, however, violates the MoS. (Not just here; it's a common problem throughout snooker articles; this one, being very, very current, is the best place to start doing things correctly.) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:11, 2 October 2008 (UTC)

This does look absolutely horrible, but I guess we have to follow Wikipedia policy to benefit the uneducated and colour blind :(. Andy4226uk (talk) 07:41, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, I understand that your intentions are good and that we should follow the MoS. You solution, however, doesn't help anything. Adding 'ENG:' to hundreds of flags does not make it more informative, it just adds clutter. If you want to add a table with, e.g., the number of players from different countries, please, do that. But, please, do not abuse the rules as motivation to uglifying the result tables. Betelgeuse11 (talk) 07:51, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Well, they aren't informative right now. For 10 people who recognize standard country abbreviations like ENG and CAN, there are probably only 1 (or fewer) who recognize the flag (other than for globally-known flags like those of the UK and the US.) Per WP:MOSICON it would be better to actually remove the flags completely and just use a country name or abbreviation than to keep flags without them. If you want to add a flag table instead, go for it. I'm just the messenger. If I call you up and say "hey, there's a dead cat on your doorstep", it's not my job to deal with the corpse. :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:08, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

For your first claim, a citation would be nice :). And no, you are not just the messanger, you changed something which looked perfectly fine into something horrible. There was no dead cat. And it is not my doorstep, it belongs to all of us. If you feel obliged by the WP policy to uglify pages, it might be the policy that is bad. Btw, the flag already contains all the information. If you don't recognise the flag, just hover over it or click on in and you will find the country it represents. The three letter code adds nothing more than clutter. Do you really think the page looks better with your change? Betelgeuse11 (talk) 09:49, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Citation: See WP:MOSICON and its talk archives. It did not look perfectly fine; it used icons as what that guideline defines as pure decoration. Cat: You've misunderstood the analogy. I'll try to explain it is clearer terms: Any editor is empowered to fix articles that don't adhere to guidelines at any time; editors who object to this have the onus on them to a) resolve the problem some other way; b) just live with it; make a strong case that WP:IAR applies, or d) gain consensus for an alteration to the guideline in question. Your continued insistence that the result is "ugly", "horrible", etc., doesn't have anything to do with anything, since that is a subjective aesthetic assement. (I actually agree with you, but it's neither here nor there). The hover argument has been raised and rejected at WT:MOSICON (for what it's worth, I actually agreed with it, but I'm not editing WP to push my personal point of view; I make stuff adhere to guidelines for consistency reasons, and if I have a problem with a guideline and its application I work to change the guideline.) If you feel strongly about this, take the matter up at WT:MOSICON. Seriously. It would probably be good for more voices to be heard there. Whether the page looks better or not isn't really the issue; it is more informative (according to MOSICON), since a much larger proportion of the readership will recognize the standardized country abbreviation than the flag. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:05, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I completely agree with Betelgeusell and his ideas, but the fact of the matter is that Wikipedia have laid down guidelines, and I think that we should stick to them, and perhaps lobby for change to the Wikipedia guidelines rather than debate this point on this page. Andy4226uk (talk) 11:04, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

Exactly. And in the interim, I believe that a short table listing number of participants by country would not only be informative (I've seen such tables on other articles, e.g. at Mosconi Cup albeit in clumsy list form, and at other non-cue-sports articles) and perfectly sufficient to satisfy MOSICON. I would encourage you to voice any concerns you have at that guideline's talk page however. Consensus on that guideline is among a rather limited subset of editors. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:05, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

In fact, just having read the discussion on WP:MOSICON, we should not be using flags anyway, because these players are not representing their countries, but just representing themselves as individuals. Since these flags are useful, I now suggest that we should follow WP:Ignore All Rules and keep the flags like they used to be. Andy4226uk (talk) 11:09, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

I don't think it's an IAR case, because the consensus at the guideline is that this kind of use (just a flag, with no explanation anywhere in the article what it is) categorically is not actually useful. That is, you wouldn't be defying the rule because in this special case it is getting in the way of your improving the encyclopedia, while recognizing it as a generally valid guideline otherwise; but, rather, disputing the rationale behind the rule to begin with. Disputing the rule should happen on the rule's talk page, not in WP:POINTy actions. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:05, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

PS: That said, I think that concise leading tables of participants by country would actually be helpful on all pro snooker event articles (and other intl. sporting events articles), since they are actually informative, both in the sense of IDing the flags for the readers who are not vexillologists and by providing meta-data about the event (has the Asian presence been increasing in recent years? What about Canadian? Is there a pattern to the treatment of "Ireland" as two "sporting nations" or one, and if so do the years of change correlate with political events? Etc. People may use our articles for all kinds of reasons we never contemplate! :-) — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:05, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for the support Andy, the WP:Ignore All Rules meta rule comes really handy in a situation like this! Since SMcCandlish hasn't answered yet, I will reverted it once again. SMcCandlish, please don't undo my edit until you show that you have some support for it within the snooker wp community. Betelgeuse11 (talk) 07:02, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

[You edit-conflicted me by about 20 seconds...] Of course. It's called WP:MOSICON, and is a WP-wide guideline. WikiProjects cannot trump general guidelines without consensus at those guidelines for exceptions (hint hint). The ArbCom already spoke on this, labeling attempts to do so fait accompli actions against site-wide consensus. (search ArbCom archives for the string "fait accompli" for those cases; they were disputes with regard to a TV series project; same project, two cases as I recall). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:05, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Betelgeuse, if you want to re-revert even after reading all of this, I won't re-re-revert you. I'd advise against it though, as I think the article with the country names provides a really, really clear example of why MOSICON has to change to at least permit flag-only usage in tabular data. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:12, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

PS: I am actively working on a table for players-by-country, for Mosconi Cup. It could easily be adapted for use here. I'll post an update when it is done. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:29, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Done: You can just copy-paste the table at Mosconi Cup#European representation and its footnote, and fill in the details. The table can be changed to 5 columns wide (which may or may not work out better here), but if this is done, the "25%" has to be changed to "20%", and I'm not certain that "Republic of Ireland" will fit; either way "People's Republic of China" may have to be abbreviated (see Template:Flag docs for how to do this) If "China PR" is actually a standard then use that, though "PR China" or "PR of China" seem more natural to me. If the table ends in some empty cells, the display can be improved by adding something like the following (change colspan as necessary) to blank them out:

| colspan="3" style="background:#FFF;" |

— SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:22, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Yes/no/maybe? The response here will partially determine how I broach this issue/case at WT:MOSICONS (if someone else doesn't beat me to it). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 13:10, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

Sorry for the late reply, I've spent too much time IRL :). Thanks for you good responses, it seems we are not as far from each other in this subject as I thought, you are just at bit more lawful than me. Anyway, I will do the change as you suggested, by copying the table from Masconi cup. I very much agree with you that flag-only tables should be permitted, but I'm hesitating to get involved in the discussions over there. I'm (as you might have noticed) ignorant on much of the workings behind the scene in wikipedia and I'm honestly quite happy with that; I am much more interested in content than in politics. But, if you need support in the discussions, I am willing to help you. Betelgeuse11 (talk) 12:09, 5 October 2008 (UTC)

Keen. Thanks for your patience with this. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:12, 5 October 2008 (UTC)