Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cricket/Archive 12

Batting Graphs
I just had a nice idea for something I can contribute. For a while now I've been using Microsoft Excel to create batting graphs, the kind that show a batsman's scores and average over time (the sort of graph that HowStat gives). I was just doing this because I wanted to (and because I didn't know HowStat did the graphs when I started), but I just thought that they would make a nice addition to Wikipedia. They are all just generated from lists of figures in Excel, nothing fancy, but I think they are a suitably encyclopaedic sort of diagram, quite interesting and informative, plus a good way to put my interest in cricket stats to some sort of use. Technically I could produce them for every single test player, but I like to do the interesting ones like Bradman, Tendulkar etc.

I've uploaded some example graphs of Don Bradman and Steve Waugh for people to comment on. Image:Bradman Graph 1.JPG is the way that all of mine already are. Image:Bradman Graph 2.JPG has a different line style as the first can get messy for a player with lots of innings as the points all blur together. Image:Bradman Graph 3.JPG has the innings labelled by year, which looks a little messy I guess as the innings aren't evenly distributed by year. Image:Waugh Graph 1.JPG shows a player with lots of innings. Notice that it's on the same scale as the Bradman graphs. This allows comparison but can cause a lot of empty space at the top in some cases. Image:Waugh Graph 2.JPG has the automatic scale which fixes this problem.

These are just some of the things I can do with them. Does anyone think putting these in articles is a good idea, and does anyone have any more suggestions or points for improvement? Raven4x4x 10:36, 6 October 2005 (UTC)


 * What I think would be really interesting is some sort of moving average &mdash; for example, the average of the last 20 innings, although there are more sophisticated and possibly better versions that gradually fade out older innings. The problem with the career average is that it wobbles around a lot at the beginning and then pretty much settles down however well or badly the player does. A moving average would show how well he was performing at various stages of his career. Stephen Turner 11:06, 6 October 2005 (UTC)


 * a great idea and a few suggestions:
 * 1) graphs need a meaningful title eg. "Steve Waugh career batting average"
 * 2) I agree a moving average trend line would be good - suggest 5 point
 * 3) I'd remove markers from lines
 * 4) x-axis labelled with years means heaps more than 1,11,21,31 etc. Otherwise you really need an x-axis title
 * 5) y-axis should auto-scale like Image:Waugh Graph 2.JPG

-- Ian &equiv; talk 13:01, 6 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Suggestions:

=Nichalp  «Talk»=  17:04, 6 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Please save it as png format. jpeg is meant for photographs only. (Ideally the graphs should be svg).
 * the extension should be in small case (png and not PNG)
 * Would prefer you use more bright and colourful graphs. Background=white, bars=red, average=bright blue.

Thanks for your comments and suggestions. Most of them are very easy changes to make, and now I think of it they probably would look better that way. One question though on the file extention: I know .png is prefered for diagrams and that isn't a problem at all, but may I ask why this is so? I assume it's some sort of quality thing that I don't know much about. I don't think I have anything on my computer that can save in SVG format, I've certainly never used it before anyway.

Oh, and a point on the moving average suggestion. If I just take the average of the last 5 innings (or 20 or whatever) the line will pretty much just follow the scores. It's doesn't seem to tell you a lot that can't be got from looking at the individual innings. Raven4x4x 11:17, 7 October 2005 (UTC)


 * JPEG is a "lossy" format &mdash; that means it compresses the image well, but it loses information. You can't recover the exact original image from a JPEG. PNG is "lossless" &mdash; the image is exactly the same afterwards. Diagrams are small enough not to need lots of compression. Furthermore, the information which JPEG loses is designed to be details you won't notice missing on a photograph. It makes the image a bit smudgier, which is fine for a photo, but a disaster for a chart.


 * As for the moving average. I think if you take enough innings it will be informative. That's why I suggested 20 not 5. Of course, maybe I'd be proved wrong if I saw one. But the career average doesn't tell you much more than what the player's final average is. You could almost replace it by a single point on the chart.


 * Stephen Turner 12:22, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

You can publish SVG with openoffice, and I believe there is a plugin for excel and word. SVG enables you to scale to any resolution without losing quality as it is a vector image not raster. =Nichalp  «Talk»=  18:59, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I took all your suggestions on board, and came up with Image:Bradman Graph Modified.png. I found that 10 innings seemed pretty good for the moving average. Raven4x4x 09:27, 8 October 2005 (UTC)


 * If you could remove those black borders from those bars, it would look brighter and redder. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  09:48, 8 October 2005 (UTC)


 * It's definitely improving, but I think the moving average still isn't right. Bradman had 11 consecutive innings below 80 in 1933-34, none of them were not out, and yet your moving average only drops to 100. (This also makes me think that out and not out innings should somehow be distinguished on the graph). Stephen Turner 10:43, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Ah, I see why the moving average wasn't right: I was taking the average of his last 10 career average figures, rather than his last 10 scores. Damn. I've uploaded a better version with the correct average. I think this is pretty much what they should look like. Raven4x4x 07:07, 9 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Yes, the moving average line is just what I was hoping for. But I'm afraid the calculation still isn't completely right :) You just divided by 10 without ignoring not out innings. For example, in his last 10 innings, Bradman scored 565 but three of them were not outs, so his average should be 80.7 not 56.5.


 * I would still like to see the not out innings distinguished on the graph somehow. For example, I remember Andrew Strauss getting a 0 not out near the beginning of his career, when England had to get 1 to win in the fourth innings. It would be unfair to make him look as if he got a duck.


 * Stephen Turner 07:47, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree that indicating not outs would be a good idea, but the problem is how to do this. A different coloured bar seems the obvious choice, and would be very easy to do, but of course I can hardly do that to Strauss' zero not out can I? I suppose you can tell that he didn't get out for a duck because his average didn't go down. Still I'd appreciate any other suggestions. Raven4x4x 11:18, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I've decided to start making the graphs and adding them to player's articles. This might be a slow process until Uni finishes for me, but I'm eager to start. I've added the Don Bradman one to start (I fixed the moving average to include not-out innings, but I still couldn't think of a good way to indicate not out innings). I'll list the draft example graphs above for deletion, as we won't be needing them anymore. Raven4x4x 08:15, 15 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Well done! It looks good now, and a worthwhile addition to the Bradman article.


 * Sorry, I missed your message of 2005-10-13. The only idea I have for the not outs is some sort of blob on top of the bar. A little yellow circle or yellow star maybe, or perhaps an upward-pointing arrow of some sort. I'm not sure what any of these would look like though. They would increase clutter a bit, but I still think it's necessary information. (The moving average could go still down after a 0* if the innings 10 ago was very a large one, and has now dropped out of the reckoning).


 * Stephen Turner 08:44, 15 October 2005 (UTC)


 * The innings that comes after the 299* in 1932/3 is the duck in the first innings of the Bodyline series. In the graph, the running average goes up a bit after this duck. None of his seven ducks seems to have caused a significant dip in the running average. Shall I hazard a guess that the ducks somehow got ignored while calculating it ? Tintin 09:44, 15 October 2005 (UTC)


 * By my calculations, the average should drop from 138.8 to 136 at that point. I'm also not convinced that the average is 80.7 at the end as I calculated above &mdash; it looks more like 70 or 75. I think something is still wrong &mdash; sorry! Stephen Turner 15:01, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Thanks Stephen, I'm glad that someone pays attention to these things: it turns out that all the 'not outs' were one innings early on my spreadsheet, thereby throwing out the calculations. This was the error that caused the problem with the duck that tintin mentioned above; it's correct now at that point, and every other point I've checked. I've also added a little blue dot above the not out innings. I don't think it looks too cluttered. Thanks guys for taking the time to check all my figures like that. I guess I needed it! Raven4x4x 12:02, 20 October 2005 (UTC)


 * It's great! Thank you. Stephen Turner 12:18, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Style again (sorry!)
At the moment, someone going to 1971-72 South African cricket season will see a blank page, although the summary has been written, because it's at 1971/2 South African cricket season. There's also Gillette Cup in 1971/2 rather than 1971-72 Gillette Cup, 1971/2 Gillette Cup etc, though I think this is less of a problem since readers are somewhat more likely to look directly for the season than competitions within it.

As more non-English season summaries are written, this problem will become more severe, so we really do need to resolve it quickly. Putting aside my own personal preferences, I think the pragmatic view would be to ensure that someone looking for the page will find it; that seems to me to be more important than rigid consistency. That being so, wouldn't the easiest thing to do simply to leave season summaries wherever they're written at first, and create redirects from the most obvious other styles? It would mean a lot of redirects, but redirects are cheap and it would avoid another James-style argument! Loganberry (Talk) 15:45, 6 October 2005 (UTC)

Further to this... regarding the 1990 ICC Trophy (yes, I am still working on those things!), should I include a Category:1990 Dutch cricket season or would that be excessive given that there was no men's first-class or List A cricket in the Netherlands that year? (The Women's European Championship, which is List-A standard, was also held there in 1990.) Loganberry (Talk) 23:21, 6 October 2005 (UTC)


 * In the absence of any comments on this, I probably will unilaterally add those redirects at some point, while I probably won't bother with the Dutch cricket season cat. Loganberry (Talk) 23:36, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

The Invincibles
I made a request to move the article Invincibles to The Invincibles. You can vote at Talk:Invincibles. -- Ian &equiv; talk 09:42, 10 October 2005 (UTC)
 * That's fixed. -- Ian &equiv; talk 01:07, 13 October 2005 (UTC)

Articles for deletion/2011 Cricket World Cup
Unfortunately my article, 2011 Cricket World Cup, has been nominated for deletion. Since this row has just erupted, and the venue will be selected next year, I think it's fair that we already have an article on it. I'd be grateful for supportive comments on the AfD. Thanks, jguk 21:57, 13 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I looked for this article when I wrote Major League Cricket, so I could link to it, and was surprised it didn't already exist at that time. I'm glad it's up now. -dmmaus 04:25, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Featured list candidates
I've add three more featured list candidates. Unfortunately, at present they haven't generated much comment. Any votes (either support or object) and constructive comments would be welcome. The nominees are as follows:


 * Featured list candidates/List of English Twenty20 International cricketers/archive1
 * Featured list candidates/List of Australian Twenty20 International cricketers
 * Featured list candidates/List of Asian XI ODI cricketers

Thanks, jguk 11:46, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

A few suggestions...
I think the pending tasks list on the top of this talk page should really be on the main project page. There are other things that's qualify as 'pending tasks' on there and I'm sure that more of them would get done from there than being hidden away on the talk page.

Also is there a 'List of Cricket Articles' that we could make into a cricket-specific recent changes page? WikiProject_Cryptography has one of these. I imagine a cricket one would be significantly busier, but it would still be useful for keeping vandals out of the cricket topics.

--Cherry blossom tree 13:35, 16 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I don't think cricket articles get vandalised much. The cricket page ofcourse does; there are always some crackpots who think that cricket is boring, but other than that, I've hardly come across vandalism. But there's no harm in doing what you say. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  13:41, 16 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Shane Warne has been getting vandalised a lot recently. I must have reverted it a dozen times in the past few weeks. -dmmaus 23:25, 16 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I think this is a great idea. It could be a chore to put together though. Could it be automatically populated with all the players from the national Test player pages as a start (preferably including the redlinks)? Stephen Turner 10:16, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Agree, and It never occurred to me that you could do that until just now. There is already a List of cricket topics page, which generates Special:Recentchangeslinked/List of cricket topics. Like you said, it'd be a job creating and maintaining the topics page.  There's 2449 Test cricketers, plus the same number again if you include talk pages, so it'll be a big article. -- Ian &equiv; talk 10:52, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I tried doing a "Related Changes" on the List of English Test cricketers but it was useless &mdash; all the recent changes were to dates or years. So we would need a separate list to make this work. Stephen Turner 13:57, 18 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I made a list of all Test cricketers. And here are the recent updates. Fun! Stephen Turner 15:45, 18 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Not only fun, but useful. I've found several little corrections I can make as a result of reading this. I've also learnt how much work jguk and Bobo192 are doing! Stephen Turner 17:35, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Bobo doesn't even appear to have signed up as a participant. There are also lots of edits from anons there. We should encourage them to get accounts and sign up to WP:Cricket too, jguk 18:01, 18 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Stephen's list seemed too good not to steal - so I've cheekily moved it to WikiProject Cricket/List of Test cricketers. I've also updated Template:WP Cricket Test bios so that it includes links to the list and to the recent changes. I hadn't worked out to find out what the new articles were before seeing that. Thanks. Just need to find a way of signing up the contributors who aren't yet in WP:Cricket, jguk 18:20, 18 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Thanks, jguk. I've removed my copy now.
 * I've discovered (as jguk has too) that one thing it's particularly good for is finding required disambiguations &mdash; cricketers without articles who share their name with someone else.
 * Stephen Turner 10:13, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

Stephen, you don't happen to have lists for ODI cricketers and Twenty20 International cricketers like the one for Test cricketers, do you? (he asks cheekily as he doesn't know how ST did it), jguk 22:01, 19 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Just a one-line Perl program... I'll get round to it some time in the next few days. I just want to avoid duplicates because the page is already so long. (Are there any international Twenty20 players who haven't played a Test or ODI?). Stephen Turner 10:09, 20 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Not yet. Not judging from flicking through the Twenty20 list, anyway - England v Australia had both teams' regular ODI line-up, Australia fielded Hopes against NZ, but he also played one ODI, and Jeff Wilson had played ODIs in '93 before he played Twenty20. Sam Vimes 10:34, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

And while we're on the subject of lists - is it time to start Category:Cricket-related lists as a subcat of Category:Sports-related lists? I can think of at least 30 lists which could make that category... Sam Vimes 22:10, 19 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Most of those lists are listed in List of cricket topics -- Ian &equiv; talk 09:35, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Created Cricket articles -- Ian &equiv; talk 08:24, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Note &mdash; there's no automatic updating from the national lists to the full list. So if you change a player on one of the national lists, for example add a disambiguation, it would be helpful to do the same on the full list. And vice versa. Thanks. Stephen Turner 10:29, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

OK, I think this is the complete list of all Test and ODI cricketers: list, changes. Note the new address: we can redirect or remove the old one when links to it have been updated. Stephen Turner 15:23, 20 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Oh, I was expecting a separate WikiProject Cricket/List of ODI cricketers (to help keep tabs on the scores on the doors there). Any chance you could compile one? (I have no idea how you do it quickly.) jguk 18:16, 22 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Oh, I misunderstood. I can easily make one, but is it really useful to have both? I use the page just to see which cricketers have been edited recently, and two lists would be worse than one. And for calculating the scores on the doors, don't you just look at the number of players in the lists? Stephen Turner 19:15, 22 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I realised my program could easily generate the two separate lists while it was generating the combined list. So I'll try and get round to it later today (although I may not have time). I would have done it already but I decided that first I should resolve all the people who had different names in the two lists (so appeared twice in the combined list). It took longer than I thought because I found 55 of them! Stephen Turner 10:33, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

I rewrote my program so it now goes and fetches the lists for each country and generates the combined lists in an entirely automated way. The only thing I have to do is upload them. This means that I can update them pretty much as often as you like and it will pick up all the changes in the individual country lists.

So here are the lists: List of Test cricketers, List of ODI cricketers, List of international cricketers. Stephen Turner 22:42, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

West Indian cricket pictures
If anyone has freely licensed pictures of anything to do with the West Indian cricket team - players, grounds, crowdshots, whatever - could they let me know. I'm trying to get West Indian cricket team up to FA status and the lack of pictures is a big hindrance. Any help would be much appreciated, jguk 14:07, 16 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Here's some:
 * Image:West Indies cricket team 1930-31.jpg
 * Image:George Headley.jpg
 * Image:Tony Cozier - 50 years of Test Cricket.jpg
 * I'll keep an eye out for more. If you browse the Don Bradman collection  there's heaps of photos which are out of copyright.  Anything taken in Australia pre 1955 can be tagged PD-Australia. -- Ian &equiv; talk 00:37, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. Seems like I'll have to search the net for Aussie pictures, jguk 05:54, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


 * And the bonus is that you get to mention the world champions in your articles. -- Ian &equiv; talk 06:00, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Only till the next Ashes series (assuming you don't slip up to the Windies first!), jguk 06:23, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Bring it on baby! -- Ian &equiv; talk 06:28, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

My (limited) understanding of fair use is that the Tony Cozier image would only be fair use in an article about the book, not in an article about Cozier. Stephen Turner 10:11, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Agreed; the tag for that particular picture emphasises "to illustrate the book in question". I don't think, for example, that it would be considered acceptable to use it to illustrate articles about any of the players pictured on the cover. We can use it for an article about the book, and that only. Loganberry (Talk) 11:22, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


 * If there is a consensus, I guess I'll have to take down the Shastri pics :-( Tintin 13:39, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


 * It's a shame as they add to the article, but I'm afraid I think they will have to go: the image tag is similar to the one for book covers, and emphasises "to illustrate the publication of the issue of the magazine in question". Really, the whole problem is that Fair Use is a lot more restrictive than fair use, if you see what I mean. Personally I think the Shastri pictures ought to be allowed. The problem is that the law doesn't seem to agree with me... Loganberry (Talk) 23:50, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Presumably it could go in an article on Tony Cozier in a section discussing his writings, jguk 16:20, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I assume so. Stephen Turner 16:26, 17 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't see any problems with that either. All these restictions are irritating to say the least, but we don't really have a choice. =:/ Loganberry (Talk) 23:50, 17 October 2005 (UTC)

Shame we don't have such an article, I suppose :( jguk 16:45, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I took the bait - stub created Tony Cozier -- Ian &equiv; talk 02:00, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

It's not looking good for the MCG either. :-( Stephen Turner 19:35, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

My brother-in-law said he'd work on getting some pix when he gets back to Trinidad next month (may take some work to get him to take the pix through). Still hoping I can recruit him into Wikipedia towrite about WIndies cricket - no luck so far. Guettarda 11:55, 20 October 2005 (UTC)

Image:Cricketball.jpg
I'm using Firefox and just noticed that the small image of the cricket ball in the cricketbio-stub tag displays as a grey box. In IE it displays OK as a clearly defined cricket ball. Is anyone else getting this? -- Ian &equiv; talk 13:41, 18 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Not me, and I use Firefox...weird. Sam Vimes 13:42, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

CB Fry
We need a better picture here, methinks! jguk 18:46, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I found a decent picture on the net, but for some reason it came out all elongated and distorted when placed in the infobox. There's more CB Fry on Google Images, if this one doesn't work. --Peripatetic 08:32, 19 October 2005 (UTC)

.

Was James Pycroft at Edgbaston?
"But, as to stirring excitement, what can surpass a hardly-contested match when ... you win the game by a single and rather nervous wicket, or by five or ten runs! If in the field with a match of this sort, and trying hard to prevent these few runs being knocked off by the last wickets, I know of no excitement so intense for the time, or which lasts so long afterwards. The recollection of these critical moments will make the heart jump for years and years to come; and it is extraordinary to see the delight with which men call up these grand moments to memory; and, to be sure, how they will talk and chatter, their eyes glistening and pulses getting quicker, as if they were again finishing 'that rattling good match'."

Stephen Turner 20:31, 18 October 2005 (UTC)

Redirects
Some of the less famous national cricket teams are being reported at Special:BrokenRedirects:

Bahamian cricket team → Bahamas cricket team Maldivian cricket team → Maldives cricket team Mozambican cricket team → Mozambique cricket team Sierra Leonean cricket team → Sierra Leone cricket team St Helenian cricket team → St Helena cricket team Ni-Vanuatu cricket team → Vanuatu cricket team

Is anyone writing articles behind them, or can they be deleted? Susvolans ⇔ 10:13, 20 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I think those were created by Loganberry due to a discussion on Talk:International Cricket Council in August. I think these articles will be written (all of them have played plenty of games, and have verifiable data lying around the net), but I can't tell you when, and if the broken redirects really hurt then I wouldn't mind them going. I can see the problem with them linking to an article which doesn't really exist. Sam Vimes 10:22, 20 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I suppose so, as long as this doesn't cause any problems with restoring the redirects when the articles are written. I think we should have both adjective and noun forms since (especially with the less obvious ones such as Ni-Vanuatu) people tend to use both. Loganberry (Talk) 03:04, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Categories
I've been thinking vaguely about all the cricket categories. I've got a recollection that there was a big flame-war about this back in the early days of WikiProject Cricket, although I don't remember what it was about, and I certainly don't want to start it again. But I do have a couple of points.


 * 1) Are the categorisations by specialism (Category:English batsmen, Category:English bowlers etc.) actually useful? I tend not to add players to these categories myself.
 * 2) There's a principle that no article should be in both a category and one of its subcategories. This is important to stop the number of articles in the parentmost category getting out of hand. For example, no-one should be in both Category:West Indian cricketers and Category:West Indian test cricketers. The Category:West Indian cricketers should contain subcategories for West Indian test cricketers and West Indian ODI cricketers  (which may of course have some of the same people in) and the only people in the parent category should be those who have not played Tests or ODIs. We seem to ignore this much of the time.

Thoughts?

Stephen Turner 10:35, 21 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Number two we've been through already - I manually removed Australian cricketers from 150 or so test players only to have jguk move them back an hour later :) Last time we had a discussion on this specific thing was here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Cricket/archive5 Sam Vimes 10:47, 21 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I don't understand the argument about players in two teams. There's nothing to stop someone being in Category:Australian test cricketers and Category:English test cricketers &mdash; they just shouldn't also be in Category:Australian cricketers and Category:English cricketers. But maybe jguk can explain why it's useful to break the rule in this case. Stephen Turner 11:04, 21 October 2005 (UTC)

I like having Category:Australian cricketers as complete as possible. It makes it relatively easy to find any cricketer - ok, if you get his nationality wrong, you'll have to search a bit, but then that's the case for Cricinfo and CricketArchive too. If I'm looking for a player, I don't necessarily know whether he played Tests or ODIs, or which county or State he played for, or whatever. Which is why a complete list of all Australian cricketers we have articles on is useful. It makes things easier to find, jguk 18:00, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Cricket quiz
I added a new page at Cricket/Quiz which is self explanatory and which I hope will add a bit of fun to Wikipedia. Please join in. Comments and suggestions welcome! -- Ian &equiv; talk 14:13, 22 October 2005 (UTC)


 * It should be moved to the wikipedia namespace, not the main namespace. And can we use google? =Nichalp   «Talk»=  15:00, 22 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Why the move?, and yes you can use anything you like! -- Ian &equiv; talk 15:12, 22 October 2005 (UTC)
 * That's because the main space (white background) should be used for articles only. Other fun stuff should be in the wikipedia namespace. I'll fix it. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  18:08, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Nichalp, by all means use google - but CricketArchive's much better to answer the first question! :) jguk 17:51, 22 October 2005 (UTC)

Good idea! But is there any way we can hide the answers a bit, so that we can enjoy trying to answer already-solved questions? Stephen Turner 19:46, 22 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I suggest putting answers in comments. to close, if you're unsure of the syntax Sam Vimes 23:00, 22 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I was wondering about a subpage, but I wasn't sure whether it should be a single page, or one page per question (which is more secret but could get out of hand). Stephen Turner 10:29, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

195.50.93.237
seems to have decided to go through all Middlesex cricketers, changing their names to initials (and in a weird format too) &mdash; for example "Mike Gatting" to "M.W.Gatting". He ignored a request on his talk page to desist and seek a consensus first.

I think he's well-intentioned because he has made other useful edits too. He just has his own unconventional ideas about style. Interestingly, his talk page indicates previous occasions where he's applied his own peculiar style to Wikipedia articles and refused to listen to people asking him to stop.

I don't know what else to do, other than go through and revert the bad changes. It doesn't really seem bad enough to ask for him to be blocked, does it?

Stephen Turner 14:56, 24 October 2005 (UTC)


 * I think his refusal to discuss the matter and the repercussions that this could lead to must be clearly mentioned on his talk page. If he refuses to respond after four or more times, he can be blocked. Use the &#123;{test}}, test1 etc to try and get him to tow the line. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  13:36, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
 * The problem is, given he is a new user, he might not even know he has a talk page, so there is a possability that he doesn't know that what he is doing is wrong. To me it seems pretty harsh to block someone in that situation. That said, I'm not sure what else we can do, or any other ways we have of contacting him. Raven4x4x 09:37, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
 * You've got new messages is bright enough to catch his attention. =Nichalp   «Talk»=  15:44, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
 * I didn't realise that happened for non-regestered users as well. In that case you are right, he doesn't have any excuse. Raven4x4x 09:47, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Walhalla Cricket Grounds
This article is up for deletion. Please vote if you know anything about it. Tintin 03:20, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Canberra Comets
I'm having a bit of a problem here - Canberra Comets were never a first class cricket team, but I've nevertheless placed them there because there's no other category for them to be in! Given that there's quite a few states that have been changed over the years, is it a good idea to start the category Category:Defunct cricket teams? Sam Vimes 06:58, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
 * The Comets is the only defunct Australian team I'm aware of. Are there any others in other countries? Unluess there is, I wouldn't worry about a new category. -- Ian &equiv; talk 09:50, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
 * Not that we have articles on yet, no. A few minutes of research with cricketarchive reveals the Combined Islands in the West Indies (which was split into Leeward and Windward Islands), and also a couple of defunct states in India, although they have either been renamed (Mysore to Karnataka) or carved into new ones, and Khairpur in Pakistan, which played first class cricket from 1958 to 1973. There may be more, but perhaps it's wise to wait with the category until somebody does the research on all this. Sam Vimes 11:38, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

What about London County? jguk 21:40, 27 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Or maybe someone should just listify them. -- Ian &equiv; talk 00:36, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

BlackJack's article as reference
User:GeorgeWilliams has added an article written by John Leach (our BlackJack) in History of cricket 1697 - 1725. Is it allowed ? No original research says :

''"No original research" does not mean that experts on a specific topic cannot contribute to Wikipedia. On the contrary, Wikipedia welcomes experts. We assume, however, that someone is an expert not only because of their personal and direct knowledge of a topic, but because of their knowledge of published sources on a topic. This policy prohibits expert editors from drawing on their personal and direct knowledge if such knowledge is unverifiable. If an expert editor has published the results of his or her research elsewhere, in a reputable publication, the editor can cite that source while writing in the third person and complying with our NPOV policy. Otherwise, we hope expert editors will draw on their knowledge of other published sources to enrich our articles.''

It is a published work, but does ''the editor can cite that source while writing in the third person and complying with our NPOV policy. Otherwise, we hope expert editors will draw on their knowledge of other published sources to enrich our articles.'' mean that the article should stick with BlackJack's sources as reference (as it was), rather than BlackJack himself as the source ? Tintin 11:52, 28 October 2005 (UTC)


 * Was John Leach's article reviewed by a fellow cricket historian before being published, or was it written first-hand? (Although I'm inclined to say it's allowed anyway if it's been published and we have no reason to dispute it.) jguk 16:45, 28 October 2005 (UTC)


 * The article was originally published by the ACS (and I presume they reviewed it beforehand) and then I decided to adapt it for Wikipedia, although I had to break it up because of its size; its content covers the WP articles about seasons 1726 to 1730 as well. It cannot be original research because of the sources that I used, all of which are verifiable, and which I originally included in both the ACS and WP versions.
 * In my view, I as author of both versions should not be a source for the second. I cannot be my own source unless the article IS original research; but it isn't because I got it all from Buckley & Co. and that means they are the sources as per my initial WP version.  So, to answer Tintin's question, yes, the original sources should be retained.
 * But, if someone else had adapted my ACS version for WP and created the WP article with no input from me, then I would insist on my ACS version being the main source of the WP version. See the difference?
 * I would prefer the sources of all these articles to be reverted to what I had originally and I am going to do that now. I see George has also added my ACS article to List of works by cricket historians and writers but I'll leave that alone as it is not quoting a source.  I won't be offended if anyone else removes the entry. ;-) --Jack 19:43, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

About Tintin's issue, yes, I agree he has a very valid point because if the author is his own source then it must be original research. So we shouldn't have changed the sources. I'm responsible for that and I should have thought on. They've all been reverted now by Jack. I think the entry in the list of works should stay especially after the third version of it was published. You have to remember that this is a comprehensive history and it's freely available for anyone to study it: who can study all those old books that never see the light of day unless you pay through the nose for them? Buckley's book costs over £200 now! --GeorgeWilliams 22:56, 28 October 2005 (UTC)