Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Snooker/Archives/2024/March

1972 Park Drive 1000
The 1972 Park Drive 1000 has been added to John Spencer's page, without a reference. Apart from it being on Cuetracker, the only reference I've found is in Ireland's Saturday Night for 25 March 1972 which says that eight professionals would take part in the tournament on 26 and 27 April at Belle Isle WMC, Leeds. It was due to be shown on Yorkshire Television that Summer. The other details are consistent with the quarter-final draw on Cuetracker. Does anyone have a source for the result of the final being Spencer 3-2 Rea? (It's not listed in the 1972 (or maybe 1973) Park Drive Snooker & Billiards Year Book, which does include the 1972 World Championship.) Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 22:28, 21 February 2024 (UTC)


 * Only references I've found are from newspaper TV listings: 25 June 1972 Sunday Sun (Newcastle) says the second semi-final of the Park Drive 1000 was to be shown that day between Jackie Rae (sic) and David Taylor; the 1 July 1972 Newcastle Evening Chronicle has a TV listing (at 2.20pm) for John Spencer v Jackie Rae; and the 1 July 1972 Lincolnshire Echo has a TV listing (also at 2.20pm) for The Park Drive 1000 from Belle Isle, Leeds. These likely support the final being broadcast between Spencer and Rea on 1 July but haven't yet been able to find a source listing the result. Andygray110 (talk) 23:33, 21 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I've reverted that edit since its clearly banned user User:DooksFoley147 per WP:DENY. Feel free to re-add it if you think it's suitable. Couldn't find any extra details myself. Nigej (talk) 10:19, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Some details on the prize money here . Also a German wikipedia version Park Drive 1000 which is entirely based on cuetracker but strangely has it in 1973 not 1972. Nigej (talk) 11:10, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Remove as unsourced. Something being on a unreliable source is as good as having no sourcing.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 11:13, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Until recently cuetracker had this event taking place in 1973 (see https://web.archive.org), hence the confusion noted above. First archived in 2016 but no indication where the information comes from. Clearly the event took place but, as Lee says, we've no source for the results so it shouldn't be added unless we find something. Nigej (talk) 11:36, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Andygray110 removed the 1973 Park Drive 1000 in 2019 . DF147 has added it back in with the corrected year of 1972 but still no source. Nigej (talk) 13:52, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * There were a few more 4 or 8 player tournaments in 1972-73 that are mentioned in Snooker Scene but where we don't have articles. I created one for 1972 Ford Series Tournament recently, as that at least had coverage in multiple sources. The others probably don't merit their own articles, but what do people here think about adding them to the season and/or to the finalists' Career Finals sections? (Examples: 1972 Castle Professional, a round-robin between Reardon (winner), Higgins (second), John Pulman and Bernard Bennett; 1972 Marackville international (Australia), where Charlton defeated Higgins in the final; Pulman and Paddy Morgan were the losing semi-finalsts). BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 22:21, 22 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Given that we don't have any inclusion criteria at the moment, I don't see a problem with adding them to the player articles. I'd be more worried about creating the tournament articles which would little more than stubs with little or no prospect of expansion. The approach at Park Drive 2000 is a good one, where that's possible. I'm wondering whether the Park Drive 600/1000 events could be combined or even added to the "2000" event article (which would then need a rename), although they were not really part of the same series. Nigej (talk) 08:42, 23 February 2024 (UTC)
 * There was more on the 1972 Marrickville Professional than I expected, so I made an article for it. I've added a couple of others at 1971–72 snooker season and 1972–73 snooker season. The Castle Professional events seem to have typically been Bernard Bennett plus two others; I'm not sure they even merit a mention in season articles. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 22:53, 25 March 2024 (UTC)
 * That's really good work. :)  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 10:12, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Anyone able to track down sources for the Willie Smith Trophy in 1971 and 1973, apparently won by Higgins? We have an article for the 1968 edition and mentions in the season articles for 1971–72 (the source for which says Higgins was the defending champion) and 1973–74. Looks like they were all played in Leeds. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 15:32, 26 March 2024 (UTC)

Dates in draw templates
When was it decided to put the dates of a round in the draw templates for some recent tournaments? Who intends to spend many hours updating every other page [and there are many of them] to use this format, especially when there’s not going to be any information online for some tournaments at all as to when rounds were played? This should stay consistent and simply mention the number of frames that are played in that round, with any dates being in the prose immediately above it.

i’m going to go out there and say it: there has been a lot of extremely minor changes being made lately this season to the snooker articles, seemingly on the whims of one or two users making changes for the sake of it, and its bordering on becoming a nuisance for trying to read any snooker pages on the wiki, because it is creating a wildly inconsistent UX for people who have no idea what logic is being used to justify these changes or why they are being made.

While i appreciate all editors who contribute to the wiki, I personally can not fathom the logic for this latest change to the pages, which i didn’t notice until just now. Thanks. CitroenLover (talk) 14:32, 31 January 2024 (UTC)


 * I'm not so worried about what we did in the past. What matters to me is whether the change is an improvement. Is it better for our readers than the old system? If it is better we should keep it, if it's worse or no better we should keep the old style. Personally I don't find the "best of 9" that useful, since it's obvious from the scores, but then I'm not sure the dates are that useful from an encyclopedic point of view. We need to include what's important but generally no more than that. Nigej (talk) 14:55, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The problem i see with the dates in draw templates is that it can be very confusing when more than one round is played in a day. When was it played? Was it in the morning, afternoon or evening? Were two rounds played in the same session? Are there other sporting articles that put dates in draw templates? Personally, having the best of X frames removes any of those kind of issues, since that kind of additional context can be included in the summary prose above the template. — CitroenLover (talk) 15:03, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The question is whether it is useful from an encyclopedic point of view. Does someone look back at an event from 2000 want to know that a match took place on the Wednesday. Probably not. Do they want to know whether it took place on the Wednesday afternoon, even less so. For many years we have put the dates in the World Championship article, see eg 2023 World Snooker Championship, but I find it just visual clutter. I'd be quite keen to get of those dates. Nigej (talk) 15:13, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * For what its worth, I think having the top of a bracket explaining the amount of frames is helpful, simply because it gives you a basis for what happens below (and, if the event is in progress, and you look at the draw, you know how long the match is).
 * I don't think having the dates of when it happened actually helps you to understand what the bracket says, it's just more information. In the prose, I always like to give the dates of when the rounds takes place, but outside of that it's not really all that relevant.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 15:15, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * @Nigej I do recall the case of the Worlds, but that for me is an obvious exception: matches take place over multiple sessions and often over multiple days, so the dates are necessary to provide the context of when a match starts and ends. This is unlike other tournaments, where matches are short and only the final takes place over multiple sessions [but also only in a single day]. The questions above from me in my first reply were rhetorical, entirely designed to point out the rabbit hole that we would end up going down by putting dates in the draw template, for any other tournament that isn't the Worlds.
 * @Lee Vilenski Agree on this point. I will leave it a few days and if no one opposes, I'll restore the "best of X" to the pages which had them replaced with dates. -- CitroenLover (talk) 19:26, 31 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Not really a big deal for me either way. I put the dates in the bracket headers for the German Masters since I thought it was useful additional information, rather than the endless repetition of "best of" which is obvious from the scores anyway, and is always stated a number of times in the prose.  Alan   (talk) 08:15, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * The thing about the scores is that it isn't super obvious to a non-snooker reader. "Best of" is only really pertinent to our sport. There's plenty of other sports that have time limits, or scores that can go over the limit (say bowls, where it might be first to 11, but it could finish 12-1). I get to the general reader the info is "obvious", but I don't think it hurts to give this context (especially if the number changes between rounds). In a lot of the articles we write with prose, it's less of an issue, but even then it's no big deal to include.
 * I'm just not a fan of the dates as after it happens, it doesn't matter what date the match itself took place, and we aren't a TV Guide to show when matches are happening during the event.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 09:28, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I thought it was useful additional information (but not as a TV guide) because in this case, as with some other tournaments, there are "overlaps" where rounds 1&2 are played on the same day, and rounds 2&3 are played the following day. I don't mind either way, so can go ahead and restore the "best of" repetition with no objection from me.   Alan   (talk) 09:52, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I've just put the "best of" data back into the brackets for the German Masters, but left the dates info in. Please feel free to revert if you like.  Alan   (talk) 21:10, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Constant tinkering is more than just a nuisance — it's a deterrent to other editors contributing. The quality of tournament articles is markedly deteriorating over this, to the point where many will struggle to reach GA or FA status in the future. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 22:33, 1 February 2024 (UTC)
 * I've now gone ahead and removed the dates from draw templates where they appeared in this seasons' articles. CitroenLover (talk) 19:41, 9 February 2024 (UTC)
 * Fully agree with this. The content and presentation of most tournament pages (especially the Worlds) has been both excellent and consistent for years. But in the most recent pages there have been several minor changes that have really jarred as a frequent reader.
 * Please can we at least keep this year's Worlds page to the same excellent standard and format that's been reliably used for many years now? Rio309w (talk) 01:12, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
 * I've got to say that I disagree about whether our tournament pages have been "excellent" in the past. Personally I find the "final" table at, say, 2023 World Snooker Championship extremely poor. Boxes, numbers, symbols, bold, brackets, etc. Just confusing. Also the original post here was a complaint about the inclusion of dates in the draw templates. But for some unknown reason we include the dates in the World Championship. What's the logic in that? No logic at all, we're just doing it because we did it last year. Nigej (talk) 08:24, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
 * The thing about the big table is that it's accessible. A lot of our finals tables are strings of frame scores that are reasonably difficult to follow, even if they look nice (In comparrison with say 1999 World Snooker Championship. I can't say I have any thoughts on whether or not we include the dates in the draw template, it does seem a bit overkill, but it's hardly super distracting.  Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 09:01, 28 March 2024 (UTC)

Winning margin in the 1955 World Professional Match-play Championship final
Hi, I've started a discussion at Talk:1955_World_Professional_Match-play_Championship; it would be great to see some discussion there. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 21:26, 2 March 2024 (UTC)
 * Pinging, , and as the three largest contributors to the article; if you would like to express an opinion on this please do. If there is no objection after a few days, I'll make the change I'm suggesting there. Everyone else is welcome to chip in too! Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 13:36, 29 March 2024 (UTC)