Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Steve Davis/archive2

Steve Davis

 * Nominator(s):  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 16:28, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

This article is about the nugget. Six-times a champion of the world. A one-time most hated man in the UK and now a national treasure.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 16:28, 27 December 2023 (UTC)

Comments from BennyOnTheLoose
Looks like there are a couple of my questions/points pending from the previous nomination, I'll put them here too:
 * No mention in the text of the tours to China, etc in the 80s?
 * No mention of his off-table sponsorships/endorsements?
 * Legacy - "I suppose what I'm looking for in the article, ideally, is some comment or speculation (from suitable people) on why he was so successful, his influence on other players (e.g. style of play, general inspiration), him becoming the UK's highest paid sportsperson, and possibly something about his contribution to the growth of snooker worldwide." (Note "ideally", not "or else")

New points:
 * "His career total of 28 ranking titles places him fourth behind O'Sullivan (40), Hendry (36), and John Higgins (31)." from the lead is more specific than the cited text in the body.
 * There seem to be some accessibility/MOS issues with the tables. You might find some of the formatting at John Spencer (snooker player) or Ray Reardon helpful.
 * Can the Pool tournament wins (Mosconi Cup) be put in a table to be consistent with the other finals tables?
 * Shouldn't flagathlete be used in the tables, for individuals?
 * Nearly all of the notes are lacking citations.
 * Any reason to have both lettered and numbered notes?
 * What are the sources for the Pot Black and Tenball results? (They aren't in the CueSport book; I wish there was a good source for them all)
 * I don't think the snooker.org references are "(in Norwegian)"
 * The Snooker Scene magazine references don't look right (e.g. title as "Snooker Scene" as well as the publication); I can probably help with those.
 * Can we get a different source for the 1981 Guinness World of Snooker Open final, rather than the Daily Mail?
 * You could use "Davis keeps winning habit", Snooker Scene, June 1981, pp.25-26.


 * Some inconsistency in refs, e.g. 1 has "wst.tv" but 79 has "World Snooker"
 * Access date for the Ranking History snooker.org ref (for the Performance and rankings timeline) should be amended to a date after 2016
 * Any reason to use a colour to highlight "Premier League" finals in the Career finals section?

Probably some more to follow. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 21:09, 28 December 2023 (UTC)

There doesn't seem to be much use of book sources, which raises questions as to whether the article "is a thorough and representative survey of the relevant literature" (criterion 1c). There is plenty of commentary on Davis in books like Everton's Black Farce and Cue Ball Wizards, and Williams and Gadsby's Masters of the Baize. The latter gets a mention here, but in my opinion, as mentioned in my comments on the previous nomination, "The "detailed comparison and ranking of snooker professionals" is only 12 pages out of 235 in my edition so I think that's more a description of part of the contents rather than of the book as a whole." The chapter on Davis is slightly longer than that comparison section, at 14 pages.

There's also earlier coverage in lots of the 1980s snooker books (e.g. Burns' Pocket Money), more recent coverage in publications like Cooper's Deep Pockets: Snooker and the Meaning of Life and Sandbrook's Who Dares Wins: Britain, 1979-1982. What's the reason for not citing more books?

Could you outline any further work done to address 's concerns about the balance of the article at the earlier nomination? (Most recent comment was 21 June 2021, I think.) Glancing through the many edits since then, I didn't see anything that obviously addressed this. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 12:48, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Oppose from Amakuru
As mentions above, I opposed this one last time on the grounds of balance and also a lack of detail in the career section, as compared with other examples such as the GA-level Mark Selby (the career section for Davis has 2981 words of readable prose compared to a current 5938 words for Selby). Doing an article diff of my comment from 21 June 2021 and today - - it doesn't look like have been any very major changes to the Career section since then, so what I said last time still holds. I therefore continue to oppose I'm afraid, although I don't doubt it's decent enough for GA and has the potential to be an FA if some work is done to expand and balance it. Cheers &mdash; Amakuru (talk) 13:19, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Comment from Rodney Baggins
From what I've read above, might I suggest that this re-nom is a little premature? I think such a prominent player article deserves input from various editors to get it to FA standard – if it does need quite a lot of work, I'm happy to help with that process. At the very least, I'd like time to go through and give it a good old copy edit for you. I'm currently looking at Alex Higgins but am also very interested in working on Steve Davis. Can maybe do in parallel? Depends on priorities at the snooker project level. Regards, Rodney Baggins (talk) 10:45, 6 January 2024 (UTC)
 * - are you happy to pull this one for me? I must have got my wires crossed when I nominated it. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 23:01, 6 January 2024 (UTC)


 * Sure. Bear in mind that there will be the usual two-week hiatus before you can make another FAC nomination. Gog the Mild (talk) 16:26, 7 January 2024 (UTC)

Gog the Mild (talk) 16:26, 7 January 2024 (UTC)