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Template:Infobox snooker player / "Professional"?

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The template documentation for Infobox snooker player suggests that there is a parameter for "Women's World champ" but actually there isn't. (Seems like the sort of thing I would have done, but I don't see any edits from me in the history.) I think we could add this so that players on both WST and WWS tours can have that info included. Or is it better to have a different infobox template for WWS players?

On a different issue, are there really "professional" and "non professional" players and events now, or should we refer to "World Snooker Tour" events and particiants? The 2020 WPBSA constitution mentions that membership includes "any current amateur player of billiards and/or snooker who participates from time to time in competitions or other events sanctioned by the WPBSA ('Associate Members')." My question comes from it being more difficult than I expected to find sources that verify tournaments are "professional", and seeing an editor add "professional" to describe players joining the WST tour this year. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 16:54, 9 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Hi @BennyOnTheLoose, I'd be supportive of a different infobox for WWS players, if only because we need a way to summarise how many women's ranking titles and women's world championships a female player has won. E.g., the infobox for Reanne Evans currently shows no ranking titles or world championships, but she has won a lot of women's ranking titles (58, I believe), including 12 women's world titles.
I do think the distinction between professional and amateur players matters, since the former are guaranteed entry into at least the qualifying stages of every tournament. "Professional" should indicate a player holding a current tour card — of which the WST has published a handy list here for the upcoming season. If a player doesn't have a tour card, they could be described as an amateur or a former professional (if dropped off the tour). HurricaneHiggins (talk) 19:29, 9 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In relation to having a different infobox for women players, what would happen in those cases where women players have played on both tours? Betty Logan (talk) 19:34, 9 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We'd clearly need some way to differentiate, e.g., highest ranking on the women's tour vs highest professional ranking. Or number of century breaks in professional competition vs number of century breaks on the women's tour. And so on. Another issue is that these stats don't seem to be as reliably tracked and published in the women's game. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 20:08, 9 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think having a seperate WWS infobox just complicates things. That said WWS records like centuries and stuff should be put into infoboxes, just <br> it or bracket the WWS data to differentiate with the WST data is fine. TheVictoriaHarbourer (talk) 21:51, 14 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Bit of an old thread this (as you can tell I don't really check the talkpages much now), but going to answer various points here with my thoughts.
@BennyOnTheLoose wrt a separate infobox: I think that would be convoluted and hard to maintain. There's a lot of players on the WWS that are not very notable and are probably not going to get an article on the wiki. I would suggest the solution is to add some sort of parameter to the main infobox that says "player-on-wws" with a true/false value: if its true, it shows a section in the infobox with details about WWS results, which can either be centrally managed or through additional parameters prefixed with wws-name_of_parameter_here. If the parameter is not provided or is false, then the section is not shown.
WRT pros/amateurs somewhat covered by @HurricaneHiggins above: the proper distinction to make imo is "professionals" (WPBSA members who hold a valid tour card to play on the World Snooker Tour and are automatically eligible to play on WST events) and "non-professionals" (WPBSA members -- or local wildcards of other governing bodies such as the Chinese players who play in China events run by the CBSA -- who do not currently hold a valid tour card to play on the World Snooker Tour, are not a part of the two-year ranking list, but may be invited on a discretionary basis to play in WST events, subject to approval by necessary individuals like governing bodies, broadcasters etc). It is better to use the word "non-professional" than "amateur" nowadays, primarily because the non-professional circuit includes a good number of former WST professional players and are clearly not amateurs: they simply lost their tour cards because they didn't get the results, but they're not bad players. In effect, all players are WPBSA members: some just happen to hold an additional "automatic ticket" to play on WST events without having to ask for permission or be given permission to play. --CitroenLover (talk) 16:41, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

2025 English Open

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I should, in theory, post this on the article talkpage, but nobody reads them anyway, so I'll post here instead.

I don't think we should really mention that there are qualifiers for this event. WST are not considering there to be qualifiers for this tournament, due to the first two rounds being played at the same venue literally the few days before the main televised stages occur, and its been subsumed into the main stages on the WST calendar. I would suggest this should just be treated as "early rounds" or something, rather than qualifiers. --CitroenLover (talk) 16:45, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, @CitroenLover. I've made that change. What you say makes sense, and the WST itself is calling the matches on September 11th to 14th rounds 1 and 2: https://www.wst.tv/tickets/english-open-2025-tickets/ HurricaneHiggins (talk) 17:28, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@HurricaneHiggins thanks so much for quickly making that edit! Page looks better now. Probably going to be very rare occurrences of this happening in future tournaments (or even future seasons), but we can handle them on a case-by-case basis. --CitroenLover (talk) 18:00, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No worries, @CitroenLover. I don't see any further instances of this over the current season (either a tournament has no qualifiers, or the qualifiers are held at a distinctly different time and/or venue) but if it comes up again we can definitely handle it case by case, as you say. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 18:27, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Edits by IP

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An IP has systematically added (see this edition as an example) the number for a lot of ranking events. Do we really want that? Besides, do we need to have all the prize funds with their equivalences in pound sterling as in here? Kind regards, Alavense (talk) 05:35, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

On the numbering question, ranking events have never had official numbers, and so this numbering venture is entirely unsourced. So I would vote to revert and ideally ban the IP that is doing it. As for prize funds, it seems to be standard nowadays to denominate the prize money for all tournaments, including those held outside the UK, in pounds sterling. But for former tournaments like the Australia Goldfields Open, where the prize fund was denominated in Australian dollars, we should leave them alone, in my view.
On a broader note, IP editors seem to be becoming ever more disruptive on snooker articles. We also have cases like the editor formerly known as "Alan," who is now editing prolifically under anonymous IPs while claiming to be an elderly man who is no longer healthy enough to contribute. Why engage in this kind of behaviour? I know we're supposed to "assume good faith," but this kind of stuff seriously detracts from the collegiality of the snooker editing community. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 11:26, 19 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Prize funds should be reported in the currency that is consistent with the promoter at the time: this is why most of the editions of the German Masters report the currency in Euros, before changing to GBP later. In some respects, we should really be using Chinese Yuan on the events played in China [if that currency is being used on the "fake cheque boards" they often show in their post-final presentation ceremony], but its hard to verify this information because the presentation ceremony would often be cut off by Eurosport in the past.
Regarding ranking tournament numbers, that is just fluff with no valid source and also, nobody cares that it is "ranking tournament number 1234": this kind of stat is only useful in Formula One where the commentators make a point of making statistics out of most aspects of the race, but in snooker, its not really that kind of sport.
Also, I assume the use of the IP address by someone is for malicious reasons. I do agree that "assume good faith" should go so far until its obvious that assuming good faith is detrimental. It would be good to get @Lee Vilenski's thoughts on this, as our resident "admin" of the snooker articles on the wiki. CitroenLover (talk) 18:02, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Archiving references, especially WST & BBC

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Hi all, could I please make an appeal to all snooker editors not to archive articles, especially from the World Snooker Tour website and BBC Sport, as soon as they appear online? This is because both of these key sources frequently add information to their articles over subsequent hours, meaning that the initial version posted is often a stub or a work in progress. However, the Wayback Machine will always default to the earliest archived version, which can lead to frustrating situations during the GA and FA review process, where reviewers are checking material against archived sources that appear incomplete. Admittedly, the main issue here is with the editor formerly known as "Alan." I politely asked him to stop doing this during the World Championship, which seems to be when he abandoned his account and started operating under anonymous IPs instead. There's now no effective way to communicate with him. But I want to request that others not to do this either. No disaster is going to befall us if we wait a few hours, or even a couple of days, until articles are complete before we archive them.

Just a small illustrative example from today. Thepchiaya Un-Nooh made a 147 in the Wuhan Open. "Alan" instantly archived this version of the WST article, which is now the default on the Wayback Machine. But the WST subsequently added a post-match quote from Un-Nooh, as can be seen in this updated version. I have included the quote in the tournament article, but now, when some future GA/FA reviewer clicks on the "Archived" link, it will default to the earliest published version that does not contain the quote. This kind of thing is happening over and over again and it's entirely unnecessary. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 14:51, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, there is no need to immediately archive an article the minute it is published. As you say, the articles can often be stubs which are being created to immediately get a story on the home page, but which will be updated regularly for the first 24-48 hours, thus archiving the page is pointless until at least two weeks have passed, in which updates are unlikely. I'm not sure why someone would decide to abandon their account and then proceed to spend all their time here editing with IP addresses, but it is possible they don't want to deal with age verification if Wikipedia gets forced into rolling out that functionality. --CitroenLover (talk) 17:59, 26 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Agreed with everything you say here, @CitroenLover. Sorry, I didn't see your comment until now. Yes, ideally we would let a couple of weeks go by without archiving, but even a couple of days suffices in most cases. Absolutely no reason to archive it the minute it goes up. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 08:44, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

First Televised Century Break

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There's an article in the new Snooker Scene called "Was this the first Televised Century break?" As it relates to info I provided, I don't think I should be adding it to articles, and it's not conclusive anyway. Would any editor like me to email them a copy for possible updates to the Joe Davis, Mark Wildman, Century break and Timeline of snooker on UK television articles? Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 12:22, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, please, @BennyOnTheLoose. I'd be curious to see this. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 08:45, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sent via Wikimail, HurricaneHiggins. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 12:16, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you so much, @BennyOnTheLoose! Will look forward to reading this! Much appreciated.HurricaneHiggins (talk) 16:24, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Four Jolly Snookers

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There is an interesting article here that is "a critical re-examination of the origins of snooker". The linked full PDF version includes sources. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 12:41, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

And will look forward to reading this one too. :-) HurricaneHiggins (talk) 16:25, 4 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I'll have a read. I suspect like most things, the exact origins of this will have been misconstrued. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 11:47, 14 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Everything I wrote in the article is backed up with references to the source. Archivist62 (talk) 09:10, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Hendon, in his new book, quotes Ainsworth's research about the weather. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 22:26, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Peter Ainsworth didn't do any research into the weather or climate. Hendon's book is a work of fiction, written by AI. It's just not a reliable source of info. Archivist62 (talk) 18:24, 15 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Any template masters fancy a challenge?

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I had a go in my sandbox at adding the missing matches into the 1999 World Snooker Championship qualifying and failed. If we ignore the five pre-qualification rounds, and rounds one and two of qualifying, and start our article section with round 3 (Day v Selman, Hawkins v Lanigan etc.) as it is now, then there are some missing matches, e.g. Patrick Delsemme won three matches before losing to Mario Guedens; the latter was one of half-a-dozen players who were added into the draw in what Chris Downer calls round 6 and Cuetracker calls "Overseas Qualifiers". Anyone willing to have a go at sorting this out? I can email a copy of the pages from Downer's book. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 22:35, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm willing to try, BennyOnTheLoose. And sorry for including information that was not complete. Regards, Alavense (talk) 05:03, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
No apologies needed. I've sent over the pages. I don't think we need to include the even earlier quailfying rounds in the article; they would have got minimal coverage in other sources. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 09:07, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I've added those, BennyOnTheLoose. Could you please check that they are okay? The rounds may need renaming as well. And please, add the reference, because the one we've got now, snooker.org, doesn't cover those matches. Thanks in advance, Alavense (talk) 09:34, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Looks like you've had the same issue I did, Alavense, which is that the final round (Hicks v Green, Morgan v Pearce etc) disappears. (There are also a couple more of the round 6 matches to add). Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 09:51, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
BennyOnTheLoose: Oh, yes, that's true. It is because the template is not ready to support a seventh round. Back in May, I had to ask for the sixth one as well. And I have requested that a seventh be added now, so it should work as soon as that technicality is fixed. Alavense (talk) 10:01, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
BennyOnTheLoose: Bingham, Hull and Pinches added to that round as well. Any more missing? Alavense (talk) 10:06, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just England Barry Pinches 10–3 Mauritius Richard Somauroo to add, I think. Thank you, Alavense,. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 10:24, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
BennyOnTheLoose: Done. The last round will show as soon as the template is modified. Will let you know. Kind regards, Alavense (talk) 10:39, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

User:DooksFoley147 has reappeared as User:Sisao25

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Banned user User:DooksFoley147 has reappeared as User:Sisao25 (previously also User:Kentbobo and plenty of IP addresses geolocating to Ireland). Clearly the same person with interests in Snooker, Golf, Darts, Football (particularly Arsenal FC), the band Oasis. Also shows the same style of editing, adding trivial events and then aggressively complaining when they get removed. Nigej (talk) 16:04, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Nigej, can you please make a report about this at WP:SPI so we can handle it? Thanks. -- asilvering (talk) 18:47, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Can do. Nigej (talk) 18:49, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Someone that very much appears to be this user is now editing Alex Higgins. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 20:55, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
If this is the case, can one of ye file a case at SPI with the evidence? I have no idea who this user is but since this disruption has continued for a month after this was filed (including at darts articles, where I keep seeing this editor in edit wars) and the editor is still not blocked (nor any sockpuppet case filed) I said I'd ask. ser! (chat to me - see my edits) 22:46, 4 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Today's featured article draft schedule for November

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Hi all, 2019 Champion of Champions and Terry Griffiths are both listed at Wikipedia talk:Today's featured article/November 2025. Please feel free to improve them before they hit the main page! Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 23:53, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'd forgotten about that CoC article. Might need a touch up. Lee Vilenski (talk • contribs) 18:33, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@BennyOnTheLoose @Lee Vilenski I made some minor edits the other day but I'm sure it could use more sets of eyes! HurricaneHiggins (talk) 14:31, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
In the century breaks section of the C of C article, maybe total reads better than series? A series of 20 century breaks were made during the competition. I was going to change it but I'm not keen on altering an article that's been through a featured review. Canary757 (talk) 14:37, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with you @Canary757, total sounds better than series to me too. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 18:54, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Nomination for discussion of Template:Infobox player of English billiards

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Template:Infobox player of English billiards has been nominated for discussion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the entry on the Templates for discussion page. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 17:12, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The “Channel 5” thing

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It appears Channel 5 are not going to become the broadcaster of anything in snooker under the previous announcement, because a new announcement has been made that ITV signed a one-year extension to continue being broadcaster for all the ITV Snooker events: https://championofchampionssnooker.co.uk/itv-and-matchroom-sign-extension-for-snooker-and-darts-events/

we will need to update 2025 British Open and the 2025 Champion of Champions articles to account for this debacle. — CitroenLover (talk) 12:59, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Not long after i posted this talkpage message, the article has been taken down. Unclear if thats because the information is incorrect or if its been posted too early. CitroenLover (talk) 14:47, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
There was article last year: https://www.wst.tv/news/2024/september/24/itv-and-matchroom-sign-extension-for-snooker-and-darts-events/ with exactly the same title. Nigej (talk) 16:23, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Nigej Interestingly enough, someone pointed this out to me elsewhere. I don't really know what to think.... I can't imagine that someone from Matchroom just decided to troll everyone by finding that old announcement, copy/pasting it and badging it as a new story for publishing today.... -- CitroenLover (talk) 19:24, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I might suggest that individual tournament articles should say only which broadcasters covered that specific event. We already have a dedicated Timeline of snooker on UK television article that can be used to track the kinds of changes being made here. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 00:36, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]