User talk:BlackJack/Archive 1

Biography of statisticians
Jack, if you have time to spare after these projects, it would be great if you could write any biographies of cricket statisticians and historians. At the moment, only Frindall, Frith and Ferguson have atleast a few lines about them. Haygarth, Ashley-Cooper and Sir Home Gordon (and Rowland Bowen too ? not sure) have decent obits in Wisden. About the rest, there is nothing available. It would be most useful if you could do something on these lines. Thanks. Tintin 10:10, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Reply on Tintin's page

Hello, Tintin. Yes, that's a good idea. I have quite a bit of biographical material re the likes of Haygarth, Waghorn, Ashley-Cooper and others though nothing at all re G B Buckley, who to me is the mystery man of cricket writing!!

I'll add it to my list of things to do and I'll start off a few stubs in due course.

All the best.

--BlackJack 10:15, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

Recent edit to "Category:Philately by country"
In "Category:Philately by country" I noticed you got rid of the sentence: "Also see List of entities that have issued postage stamps." I was going to add it back, but I figured I'd see what your reason for erasing it was. Is that "List of entities..." supposed to be replaced by "Category:Micro entries for all known postage stamp issuers"? --Brian Z 23:47, 14 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Have reinstated the link which was moved to the micro category but should really be in both places. Replied to Brian just now. --Jack 08:56, 15 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the clarification. Didn't mean to sound annoyed, just wanted to understand what was happening. Thanks for the great work! --Brian Z 12:31, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Moving A&T - Alexandrie etc
The new article titles here are really unfortunate. Someone stumbling upon one of these articles (as I did from New pages) will have absolutely no clue that they have anything to do with postal authorities (my first guess on Saar - Saxony was that it might be on a town called Saar in Saxony). Please consider moving them back (but take the opportunity to get rid of the capital A in "Postal Authorities:", there's no point in that). If the list in the category is an issue, why not just pipelink the categorizations? -- Jao 12:08, August 17, 2005 (UTC)
 * I'll consider it after I've uploaded the rest of the pages. It might be better to suffix each title with something like (Philately) to prevent confusion with other topics but I am keen to have a proper A-Z structure, otherwise everything will be under "P".  Thanks anyway.  --Jack 18:33, 17 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the reply. Now, the entire point with pipelinking the categorizations is that everything doesn't have to be under P just because the articles start with P. This situation is exactly what the method was devised for. Please have a look at the link above to see how it's done (it's really simple). -- Jao 19:09, August 17, 2005 (UTC)

Stumbling on Spain - Szeged on the New pages list, and not understanding anything until I checked "What links here", I was going to write something similar to the above. I absolutely agree with Jao that your title scheme does not work. Please remember that your articles might be found by people not familliar with the context, e.g. through clicking "Random article". Also, I don't think renaming this article Spain - Szeged (philately), as you seem to suggest above, would be the best solution. An appropriate title would rather be something along the lines of List of postage stamp issuers (Sp-Sz) or possibly List of postal authorities (Sp-Sz). (Naming conventions (precision) and Lists (stand-alone lists) offers some useful general advice on article naming.)

To further clarify what the articles are about, I think it would be appropriate to have a one- or two-sentence lead (supposedly, the same text for all the lists) explaining what the article is about.

Note that in order to sort List of postage stamp issuers (Sp-Sz) under "Sp" in the category you use the following in the text of the articles:

That is what is meant by "piplinking the categorizations" above.

While we're on the topic of categories... Please also consider renaming the category Category:Lists of postage stamp issuers or simply Category:Postage stamp issuers. That would make it fit better with Wikipedia's general naming practice for categories - mainly, to keep them concise. "all known" is definitely unneccessary, and it seems as if "Lists" describe the articles better than "Micro entries". / Alarm 22:15, 22 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks for answering. I promise to have some patience, but I hope to see you revisiting the issue as soon as possible. As for the term "list", I don't think that it demeans your work in any way, I just find it an appropriate description of the articles as they stand. Although each entry may contain a lot of information, and link to other entries, the article is still an alphabethically ordered list of entries. (Since Wikipedia is not paper, it might even be a good idea to break up the lists, making all the entries into separate articles. But I guess that is a long-term project.) But I might not understand the subject properly, since I don't know much about philately. But in case you're not happy with my title suggestions, what kind of titles do you think would best describe the articles and their category? / Alarm 22:54, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

This has all been done now. I decided that their advice about pipelinking was the best solution and used the naming convention suggested by Alarm. (Sp-Sz) makes more sense than (Spain-Szeged) because there is always the possibility that an earlier Sp or a later Sz might need to be added. The only thing I can't agree about is the use of "list" but I think this is because, being English, I have a different concept of this word than Alarm has. I have chosen "compendium" which is the appropriate English word for a work of this kind. --Jack 08:17, 26 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, that's even better than my suggestion. Thank you very much for listening, and helping make Wikipedia even more consistent ang logical. Cheers! -- Jao 11:34, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

Cricket bio-stubs
Well, the category only appeared yesterday, so you're more than excused not to have found it yet! Sam Vimes 20:01, 17 August 2005 (UTC)

Cricket bat
Ah, well, the picci was uploaded by SmokeDog, but I think it's an interesting (although not a good) one. The shape of the bat has changed as the game has changed. Of course, in the period about which you are writing, all bowling was underarm, pitches were poor, wickets were lower than nowadays (and with two stumps) and batsmen had no pads. So you needed a bat for low-down play, and needed to play away from your legs (as you probably know, there was no lbw rule as no-one would be looking to put their legs in the way of the ball). I do find the old (say pre-1850 or so) history of cricket very interesting, and look forward to your future contributions in the area, jguk 20:16, 20 August 2005 (UTC)

List of cricket books
I found this link online.. I think it could be very helpful in filling out the booklist. --Peripatetic 19:57, 17 September 2005 (UTC)

http://www.find-out-of-print-books-online.info/sport-cricket_W-b499.htm

C L R James
Just doing you the courtesy of letting you know that I've raised the issue of naming style on the Project Talk page, since I'm not personally very happy with the "spaces" style and would welcome input on the matter. Loganberry (Talk) 23:06, 18 September 2005 (UTC)

Pla.ers of the Season, etc/
Thanks for your comments on the template. Hopefully it will be a useful navigation tool and encourage more readers to your articles too. I also need to tip you the wink on the Wikipedia Players of the Season. Wikipedia policy requires that we report on things neutrally, which means we do not take a position ourselves. We shouldn't even say Don Bradman is the greatest ever batsman or Garry Sobers is the greatest ever allrounder. Instead we just report what others say. So we can report on Wisden Cricketers of the Year, and we can say X, Y and Z have said Don Bradman is the greatest ever batsman, but we do not say that WP says Bradman was the greatest. I don't want to lose your useful text about the early cricketers, so I have just removed the heading. In a way, it's just a game to get into WP style - just list what others have said are the most notable cricketers of the year rather than say that WP thinks they are notable. All the best, and keep up the good work, jguk 19:30, 2 October 2005 (UTC)

PS I'm also adding other templates to make it easier to navigate between the articles you're writing - hope it all helps.

Your articles
I have raised an issue which is related your work at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Cricket. Please keep an eye on this. Tintin 11:56, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I acknowledged this and I agree with the issue. I was becoming my own source and that is original research. If someone else had used my material to create an article on WP that would be different. All references to me have been removed except in the list of works, where it is fair enough if someone else thinks it should be included. --Jack 20:53, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

John Small
The John Small article says - Small's most famous feat was to score what is believed to be the first-ever century in a first-class match. I was told by a friend that the same appears in a Frindall/Vic Marks book as well. Has this view got general acceptance now (since the 1801/1772 confusion still seems to be around) ? Tintin 13:32, 29 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks ! Tintin 14:32, 29 October 2005 (UTC)


 * And as for this comment -

>> If you are unhappy with the use of the term first-class cricket in connection with 18th Century cricket, I would suggest you change "first-class" to "major" or even "top-class" so that the terminology is vague without losing the impact. I would have no problem with that at all.

No, you are the subject expert. I have no plans of touching it :-) Tintin 21:38, 29 October 2005 (UTC)


 * How did the record for the highest individual score in first class cricket go ? Small 136 in 1775, Aylward 167 in 1777, Beauclerk 170 in 1806. Was there anything between Beauclerk's 170 and William Ward's 278 in 1820 ? Thanks. Tintin 16:22, 29 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Thank you. Tintin 20:23, 29 November 2005 (UTC)

Pounds weight/pounds sterling
Yes, I'm going to have to run disambiguation on a massive amount of links, I think. I'll get onto that. Rob Church Talk 16:06, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

And of course nothing has been done! --Jack 20:23, 26 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Sorry about that. Had you checked, you'd have seen I've been entangled in a lot of nonsense lately. I'll get onto it before the end of 2005. 86.133.53.111 22:37, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

All these articles have been replaced with new links overall and I see that since this was done, another "bot" has gone around and this time all is pounds currency! --Jack 21:32, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

re:Compendium of postage stamp issuers (Ar - Az)
Can you not add a brief introductory paragraph to each of the articles just to explain to readers who might not know what they are about? A small paste of some of the text in the category page would seem fine. --TimPope 22:53, 30 December 2005 (UTC)

This was done. It's not a bad idea but it was pursued in the wrong way. God, I hate these. --Jack 21:34, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Cambridgeshire
You removed Dickie Jeeps and Johnny Wardle from the famous players list at Cambridgeshire. Jeeps was England rugby union captain for several years across the 1950s, so maybe you're right in that he's famous for reasons other than cricket. But Wardle played 28 Tests for England and caused arguably the biggest ruckus ever in Yorkshire cricket (probably surpassing Master Geoffrey). Surely he qualifies as famous for cricketing deeds. Johnlp 15:07, 21 January 2006 (UTC)


 * I restored Wardle (error) but Jeeps was a rugby man only. I'd like to develop articles about Canbridgeshire players of the past like Carpenter, Diver, Tarrant and the original Hayward.  --Jack 21:30, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. I sort of agree about Jeeps, but it's a shame if there's no record that he played (fairly) high standard cricket. Maybe we should start a List of people famous in other fields who also played cricket, starting with Samuel Beckett and Sir Alec Douglas-Home, and then I could slip Jeeps in without anyone minding. Johnlp 22:09, 21 January 2006 (UTC)

football
The Victorian Rules folk are trying to claim that Aussie Rules is an Australian variety of the game when it is very distinctly a Victorian variation of football and was codified in Victoria many years before the beginning of Australia. If you share the same opinion I would love for you to come to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Football and give your opinion.

All the best

04:09, 12 February 2006 (UTC)Licinius

History_of_cricket
Currently refers to Shock White. You are the better person to explain the issue. Tintin (talk) 13:33, 19 March 2006 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I have read your article in acscricket but wasn't confident of making the edit myself. Tintin (talk) 14:46, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

Ashley Mote
Many links now point to the wrong Mote. Tintin (talk) 10:33, 21 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Didn't know that and his article doesn't say anything either. Thanks, Tintin (talk) 11:12, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Category:Wisden Leading Cricketer in the World
Hey Jack: what was wrong with that category? It is a factual award - currently there's only three people who has won it, but it'll probably increase by 1 each year. Doesn't detract from the Cricketer of the Year, either, as that's something different. Oh, and please don't "orphan" categories that you've made redundant - having empty categories nowhere in the categorisation system without them actually being deleted just confuses people. They should be listed on Categories for deletion if you really want them gone. Sam Vimes 22:20, 21 June 2006 (UTC)


 * OK, fair enough to me. And I agree on most of what you're doing. If you want a delete, though, you should really request the delete before removing all articles in it - since the closing administrator will do that job - but if you're sure what you're doing I guess it's ok to remove and then request delete, as it's a cumbersome process. Please use an edit summary when you do so, though - it's tiresome but it helps people see what you're doing. (As another note to help you, if you haven't seen them already, the categories with Category:Cricketers at the 1999 World Cup and similar really ought to either get its ODI cricketer category removed (since they're already in the subcategory) or be deleted). Sam Vimes 22:39, 21 June 2006 (UTC)

Alletson
Hmmm. I originally created the page as Ted Alletson, but some wiser head decided it should be Edwin Boaler Alletson.

I'd prefer your line - who'd search for Reginald Dwight?? --Dweller 08:56, 22 June 2006 (UTC)

History of cricket category
I notice you've deleted several articles from the category History of cricket. I can't see any good reason to remove them, and plenty to leave them in. Can you please elaborate on why you think they shouldn't be there? I reverted Bombay Quadrangular and then noticed you'd done the same on several other articles, so I thought I'd ask rather than go ahead and revert them all. -dmmaus 22:45, 23 June 2006 (UTC)

You have just added the category International cricket competitions to Bombay Pentangular. But it is a domestic championship. AFAIK, the occasional English cricketer (Rhodes, Hirst, Larwood etc) took part in it because they were already in India on other business (usually on invitation of one or the other Maharaja to coach or play for him). Tintin (talk) 04:45, 24 June 2006 (UTC)


 * (in response to your reply on my talk page:) Okay, not a problem. I have no objection at all, and think this is a good idea. I just didn't notice the announcement of your intentions and so was confused. (The cricket organisation discussions are spread over a few pages, I notice...) -dmmaus 09:22, 24 June 2006 (UTC)

ACS
In which year did the ACS come up with revisions like Hobbs' 197->199 ? Were all the revisions made in a single shot, or were they done gradually over the years (for the players since Grace. I guess for the early 19th century players, it may still change) ? Thanks, Tintin (talk) 12:06, 28 June 2006 (UTC)

Re: Project Control
Unfortunately, not really. Deletion is to be centralised because it's such an important part of the encyclopedia, apparently. I will note, however, that people voting on CFD are more likely to be convinced when the project is speaking with one single vote, preferably with some link to the discussion that has gone before. In the case of the categories that were nominated on June 24, it probably went through a bit too quickly, with removal of the categories and so on (as you may have noticed already), and several people within the project as well have voiced their concerns. So I think the best course of action right now is to leave things to simmer for a little bit, let people come up with comments on the cricket project talk page, draw up some kind of structure for the categories, and THEN go to CFD to do the cleanup work. Sam Vimes 12:34, 29 June 2006 (UTC)

Season dates
Hi Jack. Among all your good works, you've amended the cricket style section on WP Cricket to suggest seasons that cross years should be referred to as 2005-2006, rather than 2005-06. I don't agree with this, and have put it up for discussion on the project discussion page. The convention in cricket outside Wikipedia is for 2005-06, and that is true of other sports such as soccer and rugby too. Anyway, I'm happy to abide by the consensus, but my vote would be for no change. Should we, by the way, indicate on the project page that this is up for debate? Johnlp 08:17, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks, Jack. Of course in articles about backwards time travel, 1999-00 might be perfectly acceptable. But we're probably unlikely to get many of those in WP:Cricket. ;-) Johnlp 10:19, 1 July 2006 (UTC)

Cambridge corridor cricket
You moved User:Qwertg to Cambridge corridor cricket. That was a hoax/joke article, already previously deleted twice and in BJAODN. —Quarl (talk) 2006-07-04 02:05Z 


 * Gulp! Well, I certainly got hooked by that one.  I suppose I should always read the history of anything that is unfamiliar.  Thanks for pointing it out.  --Jack 05:39, 4 July 2006 (UTC)


 * No worries. —Quarl (talk) 2006-07-05 07:42Z 

Archiving
Hi BlackJack, I was watching your talk page in case you replied, and noticed you removed some old posts. Just so you know, the recommended way of doing this, so it doesn't look like you're trying to hide anything, is to archive them instead of just deleting them. —Quarl (talk) 2006-07-06 08:10Z 

Thanks for the tip, Quarl. Since you sent that, I have actually noticed a couple of archived pages so I've made a note to look at it (see Things To Do). I had though historic pages are like an archive but they're more of an audit trail really. All the best. --Jack 06:27, 7 July 2006 (UTC)

AFD for phil-stub
Please note that deletion of stub templates and categories should go to WP:SFD. AFD should only be used for articles. --TheParanoidOne 07:15, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

Thanks for letting me know. I'm still getting my head around all these delete options. --Jack 18:18, 12 July 2006 (UTC)

UPU
Actually my primary interest is in stub sorting, with a secondary interest in CFD which I visit only on those days that I've nominated a category for renaming or renomination, or come across a renomination while doing a renomination. While removing articles before or during a nomination on either CFD or SFD is considered bad form because it makes a category or stub type look unpopulated when in fact there are articles that could make use of it, this is the first time I've heard anyone even suggest that adding existing articles that fit a stub type or category is bad form. Caerwine Caerwhine 16:07, 16 July 2006 (UTC)