Talk:2008 Tennis Masters Cup/GA1

GA Review
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Hi, I'll be reviewing this. Before I go further, congratulations on producing such an attractive and thorough article so soon after the event.

I'll follow my usual approach of dealing with "high-level" issues like coverage and structure before the nitty-gritty, and leave the lead until any issues wiht the main content have been resolved. --Philcha (talk) 11:07, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

What should go in what article
I see some discussion at Talk:2008 Tennis Masters Cup of which details should go in which articles, the other articles concerned being 2008 Tennis Masters Cup - Singles and 2008 Tennis Masters Cup - Doubles. I do not regard the "What should go in what article" debate as evidence of an edit war, since the tone of all participants is reasonable and friendly, and they all concerned with how best to present the subject than with POV-pushing (PS don't get wound up about this, it simply deals with the "no edit war" item in the GA checklist). --Philcha (talk) 12:00, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

However looking at the size of 2008 Tennis Masters Cup I think that, per WP:SUMMARY, 2008 Tennis Masters Cup - Singles and 2008 Tennis Masters Cup - Doubles should do a lot of the heavy lifting instead of being bare results tables. That will enable this article to deal with additional matters like: how the venue was selected (is it as murky a process as the selection of sites for Olympic Games?); whether the venue already existed, had a major upgrade for the event or was specifically built for the event; and why the event was held in China when China had already got the 2008 Olympics; and any issues that came up with the running of the event (e.g. scheduling problems, for example to fit in with US TV schedules, which is a perennial issue at the US Open and IIRC the Australian). --Philcha (talk) 12:00, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Off the top of my head, I suggest a suitable structure for both 2008 Tennis Masters Cup - Singles and 2008 Tennis Masters Cup - Doubles would be:
 * Rules for selecting participants, especially any changes since the 2007 cycle. If the rules and any changes for 2008 are identical for sigles and doubles, then they should mainly be covered in 2008 Tennis Masters Cup, and mentioned more briefly in 2008 Tennis Masters Cup - Singles and 2008 Tennis Masters Cup - Doubles. BTW should mention that these end-of season events are for men - are there any for women, and is there one for mixed doubles?
 * Structure of tournament - round-robin and knock-out stages. If you can find reliable sources, comparison with the structure of the finals stage of the FIFA World Cup or similar events in other sports would be good. Once gain, if the structure is the same for singles and doubles, the details should be in 2008 Tennis Masters Cup.
 * How the participants qualified, including the impact of withdrawals. Preferably a little briefer than at present.
 * Draw and seeding.
 * Results table.
 * Any significant consequences, e.g. major changes in world rankings as a result of the tournament
 * Summaries of matches, preferably a little briefer than here. Including any scheduling, fitness, personal or other relevant off-court issues. Also comment on any "revenge matches", or episodes in on-going rivalries  or other "spice it up" factors. --Philcha (talk) 12:00, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I'd build up 2008 Tennis Masters Cup - Singles and 2008 Tennis Masters Cup - Doubles as much as possible before starting to reduce / remove coverage in 2008 Tennis Masters Cup. --Philcha (talk) 12:00, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I know I'm asking a lot, and I'm willing to be fairly patient. In the upside, you already have very nearly enough material for 3 GAs, provided the references stand up. Hopefully you can get 3 GAs for the price of 1 around the end of Jan 2009. --Philcha (talk) 12:00, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
 * Quick comment - are you sure that 2008 Tennis Masters Cup - Singles and 2008 Tennis Masters Cup - Doubles are better off as articles, and not lists? Okay, as of my writing this (i.e. before being built up) they're both quite short, so they could quite reasonably go either way, but you also need to bear in mind that something of a precedent is going to be set here for other tennis draw pages, and I'm not convinced that something like 2008 US Open - Men's Singles could ever be considered an article and not a list. Maybe you disagree though - either way, I'd like to hear your opinion, and this is the issue we were discussing above. Is it possible to build the pair up but still have them considered lists? Or maybe we should have different procedures for different tournaments? - rst20xx (talk) 19:36, 9 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Those are very fair questions.
 * In 2008 Tennis Masters Cup - Singles and 2008 Tennis Masters Cup - Doubles I think the draws are small enough for the same article to accommodate both the text and the tables. Do you think there is any risk that either of the Masters tournaments will be increased in size?
 * The issue of setting a precedent is also important, as your comment at Talk:2008_Tennis_Masters_Cup implies that at present there are no tournament GAs or FAs - which, as a moderate tennis fan, I hope will soon be remedied. However if this part of the discussion gets complex, a GA review is not the right place and I'd suggest it should be cut and pasted into Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tennis and continued there. If a more complex discussion takes a while, I'm prepared to wait a month for a consensus to emerge and for this article to be adapted to whatever consensus emerges.
 * Please note that my comments below are based only on the 2008 articles - I haven't checked my suggestions against previous years' tournaments.
 * I've had a look at 2008 US Open - Men's Singles and at 2008 US Open (tennis). I've also had a look at 2008 Wimbledon Championships and at 2008 Wimbledon Championships - Men's Singles, which as a pair follow a similar structure. In both cases I feel that the main tournament articles are vast indigestible lumps and should be split, with separate articles for the main tour events (Men's Singles, Ladies' Singles, the single sex doubles and possibly the mixed). To be honest I'd play the minor events (juniors, seniors and qualifiers) by ear on a year-to-year basis - sometimes there's enough in the top-level tournament article without these, sometimes there isn't; and of course the top-level tournament articles should also summarise the key features of the main events, which will vary from year to year, e.g. emergence of new stars, farewells of old ones (several times for Martina Navratilova), first use of new facilities (e.g. Wimbledon Court 1), etc. In addition I think the current "Day 1, Day 2, etc." structure makes it harder to follow the progress of any one competition, especially for fans who are mainly interested in one type of competition. Since the draws for at least the Men's and Ladies' Singles in these tournaments are huge, I suggest the seedings and results tables should be be in additional articles, e.g. "2008 Wimbledon Championships - Men's Singles Draw". Then 2008 Wimbledon Championships - Men's Singles would be free to provide a text acount of the Men's Singles, but hopefully more briefly and concentrating on highlights such as upsets, comebacks (within matches), great matches, who was on form and who was not, psychology, incidents, etc. (and, in the case of Wimbledon, any resurgence of serve-and-volley). And so on for the other competitions. I'd expect a similar structure to work for the other Grand Slam tournaments.
 * With non-GS tournaments I'm not sure there's a one-size-fits-all structure - some have only one competiton (e.g. Mens' or Ladies' Singles) and some have more; some have large draws in each competition and some have small draws; etc.
 * Returning to the 2008 Tennis Masters Cup, the draws are currently quite small, so the text accounts, withdrawals, seedings and tables can fit in one article for each competition. And I expect that most years there's enough to write about in the top-level article, e.g. how the location was selected, whether the venue was existing / upgraded / new, whether any controversies arose or were resolved (e.g. about China getting both the 2008 Masters and the 2008 Summer Olympics, or any political protests during the 2008 Masters). --Philcha (talk) 21:27, 9 January 2009 (UTC)
 * And of course, it should summarise the two child articles... well I think what you wrote sounded very sensible, in my opinion you make some good suggestions, but I'm gonna leave this GAN alone now (enough hijacking on my part!), and wish the best of luck to all parties involved - rst20xx (talk) 21:46, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Is anybody doing anything about this? If I don't see a response in the next 4 days I will have to assess this as "failed GA". --Philcha (talk) 20:57, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I'm watching this but don't have time to help out (nor did I write the article at all). I have, however, left notes on the talkpages of the three main editors for this article. The principle editor, Oxford St., hasn't edited since December, and his talkpage says he's on a short Wikibreak, but also that "he will swiftly answer any message concerning the GA nomination of 2008 Tennis Masters Cup, though." rst20xx (talk) 23:32, 18 January 2009 (UTC)
 * I was pinged to come here. Oxford St. did all the work; the only reason I am involved with the article is becuase he asked me to copy-edit the article. I got through about half of it, but then a discussion about the article's length and use of summary style arose. I stopped copy-editing after that, and have not been involved with its progress since. I cannot help with anything to do with content. Unfortunately, Oxford has not edited since December 31, and it looks like the article will fail GA for now. Hopefully, he will return soon. The problem is, this is such a large article and as such, GA reviewers are loathe to touch it. This article was at GAN without a review for nearly two months. Who knows how long it will take next time? When Oxford returns, we should resolve the above issues before resubmitting. Dabomb87 (talk) 23:41, 18 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Okay, I am in a position as Rst20xx here as I haven't worked on the article, nor was I involved in any sort of discussion. But having a look at this now and the discussion on talk page, I see this is not going to be an easy ride. Particularly with the absence of the principle editor. I am also bewildered by the choice to go to GA first instead of PR. What are your thoughts on this? Leave  Sleaves  22:09, 19 January 2009 (UTC)
 * If you go to PR it would be necessary to close this review with a "fail", as 2 concurrent reviews is a recipe for chaos, and an admin close of this review (so that no "fail" showed up) would remove the comments so far, which I think any PR should consider.
 * The article was nominated for GA review on 17 November 2008 and waited 2½ months before I set out to review it. I notice WikiProject Tennis has an Assessment Department but it does not seem to work all that fast. There's no sign of any Wikiproject review at Talk:2008 Tennis Masters Cup, and no PR section that I can see at WikiProject Tennis. If I were a main editor of this article I'd have gone straight for GA review, as my own experience of asking for PRs has not been encouraging. I know from looking around that I'm more patient than most GA reviewers, provided I see signs of action - and I'm a tennis fan, in a minor way.
 * OTOH if you can get a few WikiProject Tennis members to promise on their kids' / mothers' / a significant others' lives to review it pronto, that would be fine. In that case I think the first priority should be how to structure a package of articles about the tournament - as I said, if the refs stand up there's at least 2 GAs' worth of material. --Philcha (talk) 23:03, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Well, as you correctly noted, WP:Tennis is in disarray. Due to excessive edit wars, debates and other such problems, there are very few active editors left there. The project has no effective structure in place and at present has zero GA/FAs. The only GA it had in its life was removed not long ago. That's actually the reason why I jumped here so quickly. I was aware that this was underway and just didn't want it lose for lack of workers. But I wasn't expecting such a dire situation this GA is in. A PR won't exactly have ideal participation, but I feel there are a few participants who could be able to contribute to a certain effect. I would try and start implementing your suggestions, but I doubt I'd able to work enough to get it in place soon enough, not without the help of its principle editor. Now I know this is not my place to say this, but I think you should let this review slide for now. Should Oxford St. fail to turn up soon enough, we'd let this one go, regroup and renominate again with the concerns addressed. Leave  Sleaves  01:54, 20 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Fair enough. Thanks for responding. I'll wait a week to see if Oxford St. or anyone else takes it on. If not, I'll issue a "fail" - which would be sad, because the main problem is that there's too much good stuff here. --Philcha (talk) 08:06, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

*sigh* :( rst20xx (talk) 12:32, 28 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for informing me of Oxford St.'s retirement from WP. I said I'd wait a week, and that time's up too. Regretfully I have to conclude that this article has failed to reach GA level. However if the refs stand up there's 2 or perhaps nearly 3 GAs' worth of material here, and I hope someone goes for it. --Philcha (talk) 12:46, 28 January 2009 (UTC)

- - - - - - please put GA review commments / response above this line - - - - - -