Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Snooker/Archives/2024/February

Duplicate Wiki links in prose
I've been writing the summary section of the German Masters, instead of linking them once at the beginning and referring to them using their unlinked family names afterward, I added Wiki links to all the players' names in each section (Last 32, Last 16, etc.). MOS:DUPLINK says: "Generally, a link should appear only once in an article, but it may be repeated if helpful for readers, such as in infoboxes, tables, image captions, footnotes, hatnotes, and at the first occurrence in a section." I think this is clearer, as the linked names are a bit more visible. Also, readers may jumps directly to read the later sections like the final, and would have to scroll all the way up to find a Wiki link to click on. What are your thoughts on this? AmethystZhou (talk) 02:56, 2 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Yeah, duplink only just changed (it used to read once in lede and then once in body). I still read this to mean once per level 2 section (so, overview, summary, draw, etc.) rather than per every header.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 07:08, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Tend to agree with that and with the OP's point: avoiding people having to go "name hunting" is a large part of why the RfC about DUPLINK concluded to soften it. Many readers do arrive at particular sections, or jump to them from the ToC, and we can't depend on linear reading from the top. But we also do not want to create a "sea of blue". It's a balance.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  10:39, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I brought this up at another location, but this doesn't seem to effect first and last names though. Until now (at FA at least) if you introduce someone, you then refer to them by their surname throughout. However, this consensus suggests that users might not understand a name if they click a specific section.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:43, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, I was still referring to them with last name, but just adding a full name with Wiki link at the beginning of each "section" rather than at the beginning of the entire article. Although it'd be nice if the MOS clarifies on what level of a header is a "section". AmethystZhou (talk) 13:07, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * WP:SECTIONLEVELS says ==Section== and ===Subsection=== so Lee Vilenski's reading of the MOS would appear to be correct.  Alan   (talk) 13:30, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, have a look at the 2024 German Masters article, which is now indeed a "sea of blue" after determined editors have repeatedly linked players' names in every sub-section of the tournament summary. This can't be a rational way forward. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 14:52, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * MOS:DUPLINK says links may be repeated at the first occurrence "in a section", but it doesn't clarify to which WP:SECTIONLEVELS. Maybe repeating it at each of the last 64, last 32, etc. is too much, and we can instead do it at the "early rounds", "later rounds" level. AmethystZhou (talk) 15:12, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It's got to be level 2 headers. The main reason for the change is that mobile users can skip to section heads without expanding the rest of the article. However, that's not true for level 3 (or lower) headers.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 15:35, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I've put a thread on the talk page of MOS:DUPLINK  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 15:39, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thank you Lee, I'll clean up the article later if the way I'm linking them now is too much. AmethystZhou (talk) 15:44, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * What's a level 2 header, though, @Lee Vilenski? It would be far more sensible to have each player wiki-linked only once within the "Summary" section of each tournament and referred to by surname only after that. I appreciate that editors are trying to abide by the ambiguous language of the current MOS, but there is too much unnecessary linking. Si Jiahui's name is currently linked six times in the Summary section of this article alone. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 16:43, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * WP:SECTIONLEVELS basically says the section level is how many equal sign is in the Wikitext of the title, e. g. ==section== is level two, which correspond to the "Summary" section of the tournament articles. Currently the 2024 German Masters article has player names linked once per level four section (last 64 level), and I agree that might be too much. But since the "Summary" section is the bulk of the prose and can be quite long, perhaps a better middle-ground is to link once per level three section (qualification, early rounds, later rounds level). AmethystZhou (talk) 17:06, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * In that case, wiki-linking names once per Level 2 section (i.e., once only in the Summary section) is what I'd advocate. This is how we've always done it in the past, and to my knowledge it has never caused any issues, while helping articles be free from "sea of blue" over-linking. As for conventions like "Early Rounds" and "Later Rounds" headers, these are not strictly needed, and many tournament articles have been written without them. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 17:30, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Actually, historically, level 2 headers would actually be overkill. It was historically once in the lede and once in the main body.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 17:40, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Well, there are also wikilinked names in the main draw, qualifying draw, century breaks section, etc., none of which I take any issue with. I think once in the entire main body might be too restrictive for that reason. But linking a player's name in every single round in the summary is overkill, in my view. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 17:53, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * tables, captions, templates and the like are generally exempt from DUPLINK.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 18:00, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Fair enough! HurricaneHiggins (talk) 18:48, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * This should resolve it. The consensus in the RfC on the matter was one link per major section, not again and again in every sub-section and sub-sub-section, and sub-sub-sub-section, forming a sea of blue. Everyone should have understood that already.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  05:14, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't think there is any Wikilayering going on here. That word change makes all the difference.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 05:45, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I did not intend to cause any drama, and I'm not sure what exactly is "Wikilawyering", that's not what I'm trying to do either. I honestly thought that linking the names more frequently than once per level-two section would be better, but wasn't sure of the exact meaning on MOS:DUPLINK, so I started this discussion for some clarification. I have now removed the extra links in the German Masters article per consensus here. AmethystZhou (talk) 05:48, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * That's fine. Good work.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 05:54, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Redundancy in match descriptions
There's a tendency in tournament summaries to give redundant information when reporting scores. E.g., constructions such as "Trump whitewashed Ding 5–0." If we know that the match was best of nine, and one player won by a whitewash, then the scoreline by definition has to be 5–0. So it's adequate to say "Trump whitewashed Ding" without adding "5–0". Same with deciding frames. E.g., "O'Sullivan won the deciding frame to win the match 5–4." If a best of nine match goes to a deciding frame, then the scoreline has to be 5–4, by definition, so it's perfectly adequate to say "O'Sullivan won the deciding frame" or similar. Also, there's a growing tendency to explicitly remark on every single break over 99 as being a century break — "Higgins made a century break of 127" rather than "Higgins made a 127 break." Fine on first usage, so as to wikilink "century break," but not every single time. These may seem like small points, but repeated numerous times over a tournament article, they add up to a lot of redundancy for a reader that quickly becomes tiresome. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 18:05, 5 February 2024 (UTC)

Excessive use of seedings in tournament summaries?
Just looking at the summary section for Welsh Open qualifying. I'm noticing a lot of seeding being listed, often for players well outside the top 16 or even top 32. Sample:

"The 80th seed Daniel Wells defeated 37th seed Thepchaiya Un-Nooh 4‍–‍2. ... The 31st seed Pang Junxu made a century break of 103 in the second frame to lead 46th seed Graeme Dott 2‍–‍0, but Dott won three frames in a row for a 3‍–‍2 lead."

I would propose that it's entirely unnecessary to identify players as seeded 31st, 46th, 37th, and 80th like this. I see the seedings as noteworthy in a tournament summary only when a lower seed beats a highly ranked player or does especially well in the event overall, e.g., Si Jiahui reaching the semifinals of the World Championship while ranked 80. Otherwise, listing the seeding for every player like this leads us to get bogged down in minutiae that is off-putting to a general readership. The question I'd ask is what the justification is for this? How relevant is it that the 31st seed beat the 46th seed in a qualifier? HurricaneHiggins (talk) 16:08, 7 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Agreed on your point, maybe limit such discussions with certain thresholds, such as when a top-16 seed is defeated by someone outside of the top-64? AmethystZhou (talk) 18:34, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Something like that would work, @AmethystZhou. It's definitely noteworthy when world champion Brecel loses to Ishpreet Singh Chadha, ranked around 100th in the world. It's noteworthy when a top-16 player gets knocked out of an event, especially at the earlier stages. But I don't think it adds anything to note the seedings of numerous mid-ranked players, especially when rankings/seedings are constantly shifting anyway. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 23:44, 7 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I can't say I do it all that often. The qualifiers for these tournaments are often pretty dry, as the summaries in the RS are just "this guy beat this guy", or it's just a score from an RS. Personally, I'd rather we just covered things that happen in the qualifiers, we don't need to make any attempt to cover all matches or anything.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 08:04, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Good point, @Lee Vilenski. The qualifiers for the World Championship are a bigger deal, with four rounds and best-of-19 matches, so I've tended to give that more space. I'd prefer to focus on the main points or notable happenings in the qualifiers for smaller events. E.g., Bingham and Zhou potentially getting fined after the Welsh Open qualifiers for conceding frames without requiring snookers is an interesting story, because some readers may not know about that rule. Broadly, we should aim for more varied and interesting tournament summaries, beyond dry repetition of (as you put it) "this guy beat that guy", which is all in the draw table anyway. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 08:34, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yeah, we do need some sort of prose, and covering some upsets is very suitable. The World's naturally gets more coverage, so we have the luxury of more coverage. I'll tell you now there's a lot of pain trying to write up a summary for the 2020 Snooker Shoot Out for example. Some are easier to source than others, but I'm not the biggest fan of stating info that's not all that relevant to what's happening (such as seedings if the match goes with the favourite).  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 08:38, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Fully agreed. More broadly, the goal should be to write summaries that are informative and engaging, but don't get bogged down in arcane details that a general reader will find off-putting. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 21:54, 8 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The overuse of seedings in prose is definitely a problem. I agree that we should only use seedings when necessary, but remember that the only point of seedings is to make sure that the defending champion is marked as 1 in the draw, with the reigning world champion marked as 2, after which its just the world rankings in the order they appear at the cut-off point (after withdrawals). The entire purpose of this seeding format is just to make sure that neither the defending champion or the world champion can meet each other until the final. Beyond that, seeds are mostly just the players' world ranking plus 2. We are better off just saying "World Champion Luca Brecel was defeated by the world number XXX Ishpreet Singh Chadha in the first round of the German Masters in a match that was held over to the Tempodrom" or something like that, rather than referencing seeds. -- CitroenLover (talk) 19:32, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Timeline graphics in season pages
I decided to be WP:BOLD and added a timeline graphic to the 2023–24 snooker season page under the calendar. But as @Nigej and @Betty Logan have raised concerns over the usefulness of similar timeline graphics at List of world number one snooker players, I want to ask your opinions on the calendar timeline.

I think it adds a visual representation of the season, and the Wiki links to each event can be convenient. But I had to use EasyTimeline instead of making an .svg image to include the hyperlinks. I'm not completely satisfied with the EasyTimeline template as its functions are quite limited, and the output image doesn't look nearly as good as .svg graphics.

Do you find the timeline useful? Should we keep it? If so, is there any way we can improve it? AmethystZhou (talk) 23:45, 8 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I can't say I understand why we'd have a timeline for a series of events. Only a handful of the events overlap, which is when a visual timeline would be helpful. (Generally it's for things like different memberships that is a bit covoluted).  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 07:30, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't understand the need for this either when the tournaments are presented in chronological order in the table? HurricaneHiggins (talk) 11:45, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Not a fan myself. Works ok for things like geological time periods but here it doesn't add anything here. (my impression is that they were much more used in the early days of Wikipedia, but have really fallen out of fashion) Nigej (talk) 12:17, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, the EasyTimeline template really shows its age, it’s quite clunky to work with and the resulting graphic isn’t all that great. I’ll remove the timelines then if no one supports them. AmethystZhou (talk) 15:48, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I saw this earlier in the week but have been busy so unable to properly reply to this until now. Yes I agree this timeline is not necessary and relatively redundant since the table above it is in date-order. -- CitroenLover (talk) 19:29, 9 February 2024 (UTC)

Opinions please re: "fluff"
I was going to add yesterday's 147 made by John Higgins to the list in the Championship League article, only to find that the list (and all its references) had just been deleted completely by User:Mrloop, with the tag "Removing fluff".

This data has been in the article for a long time, but I changed it from prose to a list and added missing data and a number of references at this edit last July. I also added the 147 made by Kyren Wilson a few days ago.

I have not reverted Mrloop's edit as I don't want to start an edit war, so I put a message in User talk:Mrloop but have had no response.

So my question is this: Is the list "fluff" or not? The footnotes and the detail about opponents and groups could be regarded as being a bit "fluffy" and could easily be removed, but I think the list is valid, properly referenced, information that should be restored. Opinions please. Alan  (talk) 07:34, 11 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Looking through the list on Maximum break, many of the tournament pages have a paragraph describing the maximums made throughout the tournaments' history, such as Scottish Open, British Open, Masters, Paul Hunter Classic, etc. But many don't have such a paragraph, such as UK Championship, German Masters, China Open, etc. Personally I think it's worth including. AmethystZhou (talk) 08:06, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Why would we want a list of maximum breaks on an article about a tournament? Whilst some sources are going to say "wow, there's been only X number of maximum breaks at the Masters/World Championships", we wouldn't individually list them in a bulleted list. The location for the list should remain at maximum break and not become a content fork.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 08:51, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I get your point about a content fork. So, that being the case, should the other tournament pages containing data about maximums, as detailed by AmethystZhou above, also have this data removed?  Alan   (talk) 09:04, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * ...alternatively I could just change the list back into prose like the other tournaments, the way it was last summer, getting rid of the detail about opponents and groups, but retaining the references.  Alan   (talk) 11:25, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I've just done that, and I think it's an improvement.  Alan   (talk) 21:20, 11 February 2024 (UTC)

WST player template
Now that we're stuck with the new WST website, and I don't suppose they'll ever provide redirects, the WST player template which is used in the "External links" section of many players' articles, does not work anymore. Using Jimmy White as an example, it is clear that there is no easy way to sort this out. However, the List of snooker players article has references for 262 players, all of which now have working archives. Please feel free to use this as a resource in order to add the archive numbers to the WST player template call. Again using Jimmy White as an example, would become  and at least the archives all work. Alan  (talk) 14:44, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * comparing the old URL: https://wst.tv/players/jimmy-white/
 * with the new URL: https://www.wst.tv/players/6100064a-0ea4-4a0c-b8ee-0e2ddaa3def4


 * I've just updated Jimmy White's article as above, and it works OK.  Alan   (talk) 15:18, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * We probably need to get a template editor in. As this is a bit of a change, we could probably rework the template to request the info from Wikidata, rather than define it locally. I'll see if I can grab someone.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 16:29, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I put up a thread at WP:URLREQ  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 19:42, 2 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The response there doesn't look very promising. Looks like there's a lot of changes that have to be made manually. However, for the WST player template it's easy to use the archive numbers from the List of snooker players article. Of the 616 players in the list, 262 have references with working archives.  Alan   (talk) 08:40, 3 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I do think we should send an email through to them. I'll see if I can send something through this week, it's important for their website visibility that links from Wikipedia are live.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 15:41, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm fairly sure that you won't get any response from WST. It might be better to contact their software suppliers direct. There are two companies involved. One is https://urbanzoo.io/ and the other is https://www.imgarena.com/.  Alan   (talk) 17:32, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I e-mailed them a month ago about the broken links in their news articles and specifically mentioned the problem with Wikipedia, but no response. :( AmethystZhou (talk) 22:34, 4 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Not surprising. I've sent them a number of emails since this nightmare started, and have never had a response or even an acknowledgement.  Alan   (talk) 09:30, 5 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Should we implement a new "snooker.org template"? Many of the past player pages have disappeared from WST, and they also don't have player profiles for non-main tour players. AmethystZhou (talk) 21:04, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * That's a nice thought. You would need access to Hermund Årdalen's database, since he assigns a number for each player. i.e. Jimmy White is number 20.  Alan   (talk) 21:43, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * That's actually less of an issue than you'd think, as those numbers are (I believe) already handled on WikiData.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 21:52, 11 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Indeed, it's this one: P4502 I'll see if I can figure out how to make the template... AmethystZhou (talk) 00:01, 12 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks to the existing Template:WST player template, I have created the new Template:snooker.org player template! AmethystZhou (talk) 02:43, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Just tried that out - works well.   Alan   (talk) 09:01, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
 * ...and I've added it to the "External links" section of the Jimmy White article (with no parameters) and the Class of '92 article. Works perfectly.  Alan   (talk) 19:31, 14 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, it pulls the article name and cross-reference it to Wikidata, so unless there's some error in Wikidata or the entry doesn't exist, you don't need to manually specify the snooker.org ID. Same as the WST player template! AmethystZhou (talk) 20:46, 14 February 2024 (UTC)

External links on player pages
I recently made a new Template:snooker.org player template, which works just like Template:WST player to pull the page name and cross-reference Wikidata to get the snooker.org player profile ID, and generate a link to that page. I'd like to add this to the "External links" section on player pages where applicable. However, this section in the pages seem a bit of a mess, with various websites linked (or not), such as WST, GlobalSnooker, World Senior Snooker, etc. I did a search in the archives of WT:SNOOKER and didn't find much discussion on this.

Can we establish a "standard list" of links for the player pages? I'd like to propose including WST and snooker.org, and removing GlobalSnooker, as the website has been defunct for many years and the links are all very old archives. The Template:WST player template works great for current players, as well as previous main tour players whose pages are deleted (thanks WST!), where archive links are used instead. WPBSA (e.g. ), World Women's Snooker (e.g. ), and World Seniors Snooker (e.g. ) profile pages could also be included. AmethystZhou (talk) 07:35, 15 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I don't remember any previous discussion on these. See WP:EL. My impression is that a large number of Wikipedia external links sections are way out of date, so it would be a useful exercise to go through these. Tend to agree with you that WST and snooker.org are useful. Probably not GlobalSnooker. We should consider WP:ELNO #1, ie if they don't contain useful information "that is already or should be in the article." then they shouldn't be included. Nigej (talk) 08:46, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * WST and Snooker.org is all we need, provided they only play snooker. As Nigej said, ELNO is the place to check. Things like official websites are fine, and say they also played pool, their Matchroom sport/AZBilliards profile would be suitable. These can get very long if you just let any old link live.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:27, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Agree with all above. When I added the snooker.org player template to the Jimmy White article, I noticed that there's a lot of entries in the "External links" section that should probably be removed.  Alan   (talk) 11:29, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes. Something like https://seniorssnooker.com/player/jimmy-white/ fails ELNO since it's just a brief biography. Quite a few links got added as a form of advertising (although that's clearly not allowed). And random youtube videos make so sense at all. Nigej (talk) 13:27, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the explanation! What about IMDb for players like Ronnie O'Sullivan? AmethystZhou (talk) 20:56, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Personally I'd leave it out. WP:IMDB-EL says its ok, but also says it's not a reliable source. The question I suppose is whether the link contains sufficient extra information that isn't "already or should be in the article." I'm not sure it ever will for a snooker player. Nigej (talk) 21:08, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It was probably added to Ronnie's page because of the several documentary films he was in, but they are not significant enough to need the IMDb link. I'd agree that it's better to leave those for actors, etc. AmethystZhou (talk) 21:53, 15 February 2024 (UTC)
 * It's a "use best judgement". If he was also an actor/director, sure. Him having some credits isn't really enough.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:27, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Just had a look through the IMDb pages for ROS, and I don't think there's anything there of any value that isn't already mentioned in the prose. I think it should be removed.  Alan   (talk) 11:00, 16 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes, I'm going through the category of snooker players by nationality to clean up the external links section. Although I'm leaving the British and Chinese last as there are A LOT of those! AmethystZhou (talk) 20:56, 16 February 2024 (UTC)

Talkpage archives for this page
I've noticed that we have a lot of discussions on this main page, and we're due an archiving exercise. However, I also notice we have two archiving formats: one which seems to be old-style [eg Archive 1, Archive 2, Archive 3 etc] and then a new style where each month of discussions is archived and categorised per year. Personally I find that the style of archiving by year and by month to be much more cluttering than just creating "mega-archives" like the old system. Also, the old style keeps the order of discussions rather than splitting them out into lots of smaller archives. Could we look to clean up our archives a bit, just to make finding discussions a bit easier? Looking through a bigger archive is easier than searching lots of tiny archives. 👍 -- CitroenLover (talk) 19:00, 17 February 2024 (UTC)


 * The order doesn't exactly change. They just get archived when they get stale, the same as another type of archive. I much prefer it being set up by month so I know where to look.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 20:02, 17 February 2024 (UTC)

Too wide
There has been a bit of a discussion in Talk:2024 World Grand Prix about the bracket getting too wide. There doesn't seem to be much point in keeping the seed numbers and tooltips in after the first round. It seems like needless repetition and makes the bracket wider than it needs to be. Nigej has also suggested going back to using flagicons after the first round. So - leave the first round as it is, change to flagicons for subsequent rounds and take out the seeding numbers and tooltips for subsequent rounds. Agree/disagree? Alan  (talk) 09:09, 19 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I have commented my opinions there. Tl:dr team width should be 220, flagicon after round 1. Seedings in tournaments such as this, which are restricted fields, really should be going into the seedings parameters and not the player name parameters, thats what it is for. CitroenLover (talk) 13:17, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I disagree. If you look at this previous discussion you'll see that it was (pretty much) agreed to use this style for the seeds since using the seed parameters is "confusing because the seedings and the scores are the same size and font, to the left and right of the players' names". If we just do as suggested by Nigej and myself, then having "team-width=auto" is no longer a problem.  Alan   (talk) 13:51, 19 January 2024 (UTC)
 * What about splitting the last 16 and later rounds into a separate table? It will solve the width issue, and also highlight the later few rounds, which I think most people would be more interested in looking at. It was done this way in the past, especially for the UK Championships with the flat-128 draws, e. g. 2019. AmethystZhou (talk) 07:05, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't much like that style. Anyway - the problem has now gone away, and I don't mind the flagicons so much now that I've got the previews switched off.  Alan   (talk) 07:59, 29 January 2024 (UTC)
 * [Copy of comment from Welsh Open thread as I hadn't been aware of this thread].
 * I would strongly favour keeping the seeding numbers throughout, using whichever draw bracket format works best visually. It's confusing having to trace back to the start of a 64- or 128- entry draw to see what seed number (if any) the semi finalists are! I can't think of any examples from any sport in any medium where I've seen the seed numbers hidden once you get part way into a draw. Rio309w (talk) 22:56, 18 February 2024 (UTC)

WP:SAMESURNAME
In the semi-final section of 2024 Welsh Open, I initially wrote it referring to Gary Wilson multiple times with his full name because MOS:SAMESURNAME says "In an article that is not about either unrelated person with the same surname, continue to refer to them both by their full names." @HurricaneHiggins changed it to only use "Wilson" after the first mention of full name in the same section. I think it's much better than the repeated full names, without causing any confusion. What do you think? Is this worth a discussion at the MOS for a potential change for pages like these? AmethystZhou (talk) 21:19, 18 February 2024 (UTC)


 * We have to be careful when we have more than one player by the same last name (Higgins, O'Sullivan, Robertson, etc.)  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 21:48, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes that's why I brought up this topic (Gary Wilson / Kyren Wilson). Kyren was knocked out in the last 64 so there's minimal mention of him in the prose, but we have to keep using the full "Gary Wilson" throughout per MOS:SAMESURNAME, and it's a bit silly in the semi-final section where his name comes up multiple times. AmethystZhou (talk) 21:56, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree, @AmethystZhou! HurricaneHiggins (talk) 21:58, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
 * After we say that Higgins and Gary Wilson faced each other in the semi-final, we don't need to keep referring to "Gary Wilson" repeatedly throughout the match summary. It's clear that we're talking about Gary Wilson here, not Kyren. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 21:58, 18 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Update: I have created a topic over at WT:MOSBIO, your feedback is welcome! AmethystZhou (talk) 01:40, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Main stage centuries vs Qualifying stage centuries
I'm not sure how this is being handled so seeking clarification!

Currently, the WST holds qualifiers at a different venue several weeks before the main event. But qualifiers featuring highly seeded players are typically held over and played at the final venue during the first day or two of the tournament.

When players make centuries in held-over qualifying matches, do we categorise those breaks as Main stage centuries or Qualifying stage centuries? Because they are sort of both ... they are qualifying stage centuries, but they are made at the final venue during the early stages of the event. This can be confusing to explain, so it would help to have clarity. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 15:36, 19 February 2024 (UTC)


 * It is confusing. We have the Main stage vs Qualifying stage centuries split because that was how WST split them in the old web site. Personally I take the view that there is no such thing as a "qualifying round" (although snooker.org uses that terminology). We have qualifying matches and held-over matches which make up round 1, and then the rest of the event. So I wouldn't use terms like "held-over qualifying matches", I'd use "held-over matches" or "held-over first round matches". See eg https://www.wst.tv/news/2024/february/12/day-one--murphy-feels-the-pinch-/ which doesn't mention qualifier/held-over at all, just "first round" and "last 64". The trouble is that WST is sometimes quite inconsistent in its terminology. Nigej (talk) 16:04, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I see your point, @Nigej, although WST definitely does refer to "qualifiers" on their Tournaments and Calendar pages. It's been a mess since the flat-128 draws were introduced and then walked back so that the round of 128 became variously "qualifiers," "held-over matches" and "round 1". But maybe it's better not to have a Main stage vs Qualifying stage centuries split at all, but to list all the tournament centuries together as one section? This is especially true now that the highest break prize usually goes to the highest break of the entire tournament, regardless of where/when it was made, so there is little meaningful distinction anymore. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 16:23, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
 * https://snookerinfo.co.uk/2023-24-centuries/ uses the split, with "Welsh open" and "Welsh open qualifiers". The split does help perhaps if someone wants to understand the chronology of a player's centuries (given that there are generally other events in between). But I guess that that's not really our role and we don't list the centuries chronologically anyway. Nigej (talk) 16:33, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Exactly, we don't construct chronological timelines of players' centuries, instead tracking what centuries were made within tournaments and overall stats like the number of career centuries. So the split doesn't seem to matter much in practical terms for our needs. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 17:23, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Personally, if the sources don't make a difference, neither should we. It doesn't even need to be consistent.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 20:25, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
 * However as I noted snookerinfo does make the difference. Nigej (talk) 21:27, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
 * When did we make snookerinfo a reliable source for everything? I thought we'd just suggested it would be ok for total century breaks.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 11:46, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Well we are only really using them as a double check on totals, and they are pretty much all we've got since the WST are totally unreliable, and CueTracker is banned.  Alan   (talk) 11:57, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I had the same question regarding the century breaks section, as well as the prose. Currently we count held-over century breaks as qualifying, but the prose is within the qualifying section. I tend to agree with @Nigej that it's clearer to just call those matches "first round" or even "last 128" because that's what they are. Also combine the century breaks into a single section, as WST no longer distinguish them when it comes to high break prize. AmethystZhou (talk) 22:20, 19 February 2024 (UTC)
 * (think there's a typo here - presumably "Currently we count held-over century breaks as main stage). I can see that the high break prize covers all centuries, so perhaps that does lead us to a combined centuries list. However WST doesn't seem to provide a complete list now, so we've become more reliant on snookerinfo for this information. Either way it's no big deal to me and perhaps a combined list does avoid awkward questions about why held-over match centuries are in one list or the other. Nigej (talk) 08:55, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Oops that was indeed a typo! And yes I wish WST could simply centralize these stats to a single page. AmethystZhou (talk) 09:10, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I don't think there's much of a problem with this. The split we make is the same as that made by SnookerInfo which is currently our main source for centuries. This split is down to location, Barnsley and Llandudno for the Welsh Open. So we could just clarify "Main stage centuries" to "Main stage centuries (Llandudno)", and "Qualifying stage centuries" to "Qualifying stage centuries (Barnsley)".  Alan   (talk) 11:32, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The issue is that heldover matches are technically part of the qualifying stage, but centuries made in heldover matches are being categorized under "Main stage centuries" rather than "Qualifying stage centuries." Which is confusing, to say the least. My preference would be to find an encyclopedic way to explain this to readers not necessarily familiar with the ins and outs of how WST does things ... and from that perspective, grouping all the centuries made in a tournament together makes more sense. The exceptions might be the World and UK Championship, where the qualifying stages are more distinct from the main stages. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 14:41, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * OK - so write a sentence to explain it. Let's not make a mountain out of a molehill.  Alan   (talk) 15:04, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * There's absolutely no need for this kind of attitude here, tbh. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 16:36, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I apologise if I offended you. Not intended. I just don't see this as being a huge problem.  Alan   (talk) 16:52, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm still not convinced that "heldover matches are technically part of the qualifying stage". There are "qualifying matches" and "held-over matches", which are played at different times/venues. Nigej (talk) 17:00, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I thought held-over matches were qualifiers that are delayed only because they feature a highly seeded player and/or a local wildcard who may be of interest to audiences at the final venue? I think this is a matter of convenience or cost ... e.g., for a Chinese tournament, it's impractical to fly dozens of low-ranked players to a Chinese venue, only for many of them to crash out without winning a penny. Hence the routine of holding qualifiers at Barnsley or wherever. But ultimately it's all part of the same tournament. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 17:59, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * To me, they're not "qualifiers that are delayed", they're "first round matches that are delayed" Nigej (talk) 18:02, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * World Snooker Tour generally considers that any held-over matches played at the final venue are "Round One" matches and aren't part of the qualifying round. In general, if a match is played at the defined venue of that tournament and not a separate "qualifying" venue, then its considered to part of the "main stages".
 * FWIW, against the original topic, the only tournament where there are two "high break" prizes is the World Championship, as thats been the convention that the qualifying rounds are a mini-tournament in of itself, so if someone gets a 145 in the qualifying there, thats deemed the "high break" for qualifying, and doesn't put someone out of pocket if someone gets a 146 in the Crucible. For every other tournament, the high break prize includes any pre-qualifying round that is played. -- CitroenLover (talk) 19:37, 20 February 2024 (UTC)
 * My understanding is that the WC has one highest break prize of £15,000 awarded to the player who makes the highest break of the entire event (either qualifiers or main stage). But there are separate bonuses for 147s; last year, it was £40,000 for a maximum at the Crucible, and £10,000 for a maximum in the qualifying rounds. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 21:54, 20 February 2024 (UTC)

Archiving Eurosport URLs
The recent nightmare caused by the WST changing their website shows the importance of archiving references. Eurosport is a useful resource as they often have detail missed by others. But whenever I try to archive any Eurosport page it always captures the geoblocked page instead. This page has over 99,000 captures, so it seems that many people have the same problem. Some Eurosport links have been successfully archived though, like this one. I had a conversation about this with AmethystZhou a while back, but we were unable to resolve it. Does anyone know a way around this? Alan  (talk) 12:45, 24 February 2024 (UTC)


 * I assume that archive.org has some servers in places where eurosport.com is available and other servers where it's not. Whether this is under any sort of user control I've no idea. Maybe other archiving sites are available, based in Europe perhaps, which could get round this issue, but I've no idea. Nigej (talk) 15:38, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
 * See m:User talk:InternetArchiveBot/Archives/2023 where I reported this before.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 23:29, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I've never been able to manually archive Eurosport links without it getting geoblocked. But their automated crawls sometimes were able to archive it correctly. Must be due to servers in different locations. Fortunately for us Eurosport doesn't mess with their urls and the links stay up, similar to the BBC. AmethystZhou (talk) 23:37, 24 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The .com links are different to the .UK links.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 00:14, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * But eurosport.co.uk just redirects to eurosport.com.  Alan   (talk) 08:27, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Yes - the links stay up, but that might not always be so. People are always messing with stuff best left alone.  Alan   (talk) 08:25, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I just tried ghostarchive.org and it seemed to work OK.  Alan   (talk) 09:08, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * ...interestingly - other than the ones I just did, there are only a few other Eurosport pages archived there; some football, a couple of motorsport pages, and two "geoblocking" pages.  Alan   (talk) 10:09, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * FYI archive.is works for Eurosport, for example: https://archive.is/KnDdK AmethystZhou (talk) 11:28, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Good - it's nice to have a couple of options.  Alan   (talk) 11:36, 25 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I think it would be a good idea to keep an eye on the Eurosport URLs that I have archived using ghostarchive.org and change them to web.archive.org archives if they become available. This would be tidier (I'm pedantic).  Alan   (talk) 13:14, 26 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I can't say I care where the info is archived too - so long as it is archived. My knowledge of actually doing this is sending IABot to archive what exists.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 13:46, 26 February 2024 (UTC)