Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Snooker

I saw this edit for British Seniors open final being added as a non-ranking final.

I don't see this as a non-ranking event as it's not professional. I've been thinking for a while we should be more descriptive and specific as to what events we include and where they should live. If like your thoughs. Here's my thoughts on what we should have:

• Ranking finals

Specifically events that are labelled as ranking events by the World Snooker Tour specifically - no change

• Minor Ranking finals

Same as #1. No change.

• Professional non-ranking finals

Could also be named "Tour non-ranking events" or otherwise. This would only contain events on the Tour, or otherwise listed as strictly professional events. Amateur wildcards notwithstanding.

• Other major finals

This would be to sort of merge everything else. Pro-am events shouldn't be distinct from team events, or under 18 events. We'd have to be strict on this, but I think we could include events on the seniors tour here, national titles (such as the English Amateur title), international titles (such as the World Games, etc), variant events (such as Snooker+ and six-red world championships) and junior events. I think potentially a good judge as to whether an event is justified is if there is an article on the event as a whole.

The only other thing to be added is potentially on the women's bios events on the Ladies tour. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:53, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

I've never been comfortable with seniors events being lumped in the non-ranking section for the same reason. I agree with separating them.

I'm not so sure about putting pro-am/variant/amateur etc into one section as it could potentially end up enormous. Using Darren Morgan#Career finals as an example, the "other" table could end up with over 50 rows as almost all of his non-ranking finals would end up in one section. Also a difficulty with the team event layout being different.

Or would you envisage a layout similar to Neil Robertson#Amateur titles? I think putting everything into a prose section like that rather than a table would work better for a large "other" section. Or if retaining the career finals section tables as they are now, maybe splitting off Seniors into a table of its own would work? I had proposed this here before but never ended up implementing it (the reason for which escapes me). Andygray110 (talk) 20:18, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

you are right, we could have it as it's own section. I'm keen not to split things too heavily when they are just non-professional events. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 20:38, 27 December 2025 (UTC)

Throughout the whole of 2026, Women in Red is focusing on women in sport. This provides opportunities for creating biographies of notable women in a wide variety of sports, including snooker. If you are not already a member of Women in Red, feel free to join up under "New registrations" here.--Ipigott (talk) 10:12, 31 December 2025 (UTC)

An anonymous editor, or possibly several anonyous editors, is/are making a number of changes to articles inlcuding adding qualifying events to lists of tournaments wins. (Sounds familiar...). See e.g. Paddy Morgan, Kingsley Kennerley, John Spencer (snooker player). A few of the edits, IMO, are OK so I haven't reverted those. If you have snooker articles on your watchlist please keep an eye out! Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 17:59, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

Also for the Scottish Masters from 1997 to 2002, the qualifying events are listed in the players' articles as tournament wins (not sure how long they've been there). Think it's a stretch to class those as a title. Andygray110 (talk) 18:53, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

The victories in the Scottish Masters that are listed are on the Snooker.org website, They added them as a separate event and title, just like the Masters qualifying tournament counts as a title.

That isn't the consensus we have. We don't include qualification events. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:31, 5 January 2026 (UTC)

So to be clear, the Masters Qualifying win for Neil Robertson should not be included in his non-ranking wins table? This table also includes the recent Crucible Cup which is a snooker 900 rules event. Is this okay? Thanks. Canary757 (talk) 17:58, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

I don't know anything about the Crucible Cup, something being on different rules isn't that much of a problem, but certainly not the Masters qualification event (or even when it was the Benson and Hedges championship). Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:11, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

My edit here was reverted, citing that the "legend table does not allow for this configuration". I would like to make the point that the definitions used for the legend of the table does not account for the fact that the Championship League is a group-based format with league stages and group play-offs, which do not fit the definitions that the legend is meant for. Using "WD" for Championship League events, when the player clearly competed in it and then withdrew later for other reasons is not appropriate imo, because that implies the player did not even play in the event at all: using the reverted edit for this discussion, Zhao clearly played 3 groups of this event and then withdrew after Group 6 (probably so he could go and prepare for the German Masters), so to say WD is nonsense and misleading, considering we use WD primarily to indicate players who were expected to play an event and who chose to pull out. WD would make more sense on the CL Snooker when the player didn't play a single match in the event [ie entered, then had to be replaced].

Therefore, I would like to recommend that we should not be using the Legend codes -- as they're written -- on the Championship League (both its ranking and invitational formats) because they do not fit this tournament format and also do not make the slightest sense if taken as literal as they're given. It would be more logical that we specify the furthest group the player reached in the event if they competed in the event (eg for the invitational Championship League, we should use `GX` -- where X is the group number they stopped at -- WG referring to them participating in the Winners Group but not participating in the play-offs and then SF/F/W as usual for the Winners' Group play-offs), and use a symbol or note to denote any player who technically could play in a subsequent group but chose to withdraw for various reasons. This would avoid misleading readers and be more accurate. For the ranking version, 1R/2R/3R for the first 3 stages, with F/W on the final, would probably work well enough.

Thoughts welcome please. @Andygray110 @Nigej @Lee Vilenski @HurricaneHiggins @BennyOnTheLoose @KDayne CitroenLover (talk) 13:55, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

I don't believe that indicating a player withdrew from a tournament when they actually withdrew from a tournament (regardless of their reasons) is "misleading readers" regardless of whether they withdrew prior to the tournament began or on the day of the final. I don't agree the Championship League is a particularly special case purely because of it's format as a withdrawal is still a withdrawal. Also not keen on disapplying how the table works for one tournament as that's just asking for trouble; it would be better to either change the approach for all tournaments or not all.

But I do agree that WD could be improved as it is quite stark and doesn't signify the stage a player reached. I reckon it would be simpler to add an inline nb note next to WD to indicate the tournament stage reached before the player's withdrawal - this is already used in Zhao's table to indicate the reason for tournament withdrawals during his suspension. Andygray110 (talk) 14:45, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

I'd be using RR and having a note. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 15:22, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

@Lee Vilenski Saying RR with a note would work, although I'm concerned that if we don't link to the specific group they reached, it would also be confusing if you don't read the individual page, as it would potentially imply it was just "one large Round-Robin group". This is also a problem when -- validly -- we do not link to the individual edition tournament page for players who withdrew, so no context can be obtained for the withdrawal short of abusing the notes feature, which I'm not a fan of doing as it already stretches columns [such as in the Zhao page example where we have notes in the 2022-23 column]. The CL Snooker being the way it is makes it very unique from all other tournaments, so I feel like it might be better to handle it separately (but without creating a new entry in the legend table to make it stand out). I would hope readers would be able to understand the nuance themselves without it needing to be explained somewhere below the table.

@Andygray110 I get your points, however the CL Snooker is a very unique format where the current set up of these performance tables would not have taken it into account. Its the only tournament using round-robin groups: the invitational version is also the only tournament where you can progress to the play-offs of Group 1 but move into the next group and continue in the tournament (the ranking event version does not do this: in that version, only the top player of the group progresses, the rest get eliminated there and then). So we really need to be treating at least the invitational version with a different application of the legend description, since that table is assuming every single tournament are straight knock-out single elimination tournaments, which this tournament basically isn't (except for the Group Play-Offs).

I would agree with you that a WD is a WD, however this should only apply in cases such as that with Zhou Yuelong, who had signed up to play in the tournament but was expected to join in Group 7: he then withdrew before that group commenced (which meant someone could replace him in the group), so that is definitely a WD, but Zhao's withdrawal isn't really the same in this format, because he'd played the three groups before it and earned money from it. You could argue we shouldn't be using WD on players who withdraw half-way through events and should be noting the stage they reached with a separate indicator of WD, but I just want to focus on the Championship League for now because it is just a fact that its format is unique and thus needs a different way of being handled in these tables (if we're consistent in application for a tournament, it should be fine, we don't need the CLS to be consistent with other tournaments because its just not lol). --CitroenLover (talk) 15:45, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

RR^[a]

Seems like a suitable way to handle this. Player did play in event, note explains all details. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:08, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

There are other tournaments that have used a round-robin setup at certain stages of the tournament e.g. 2006 Grand Prix where Mark Williams withdrew. So there are other tournaments to consider with similar setups other than the Championship League (Six-reds is another). A note seems to be the easiest solution. Andygray110 (talk) 17:46, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

Personally, I think this highlights a problem (that we have discussed before) about these tables. 1R could mean the last 16, or the last 128. RR could mean the 128 round or the last four. It doesn't accurately explain where the player managed to progress too. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 17:49, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

I agree. I think it's difficult to find a solution that works. The limitation with the present setup is as you pointed out, whereas an alternative L128/L64 visual is also troublesome as it doesn't indicate for some tournaments that a L16 elimination is a first round elimination, and that could mislead some readers into thinking the player progressed through a few rounds. I guess that's where the tournament wikilinks in the table come in useful for info that can't really be visualised in the table. Andygray110 (talk) 18:17, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

@Andygray110 You're right that historically, other tournaments have done round-robins, but I'm only really bothered about the tour as it stands, where group-stage formats are basically not used anywhere other than the CLS (let's pretend the WST Pro Series never happened for the purposes of this lol). It would help if we could nail down a format for one tournament (so for group stage tournaments, lets set a format that works in the CLS, since its the most prolific example of group-stage formats in the last 15 years; and for single elimination knock-outs, lets set a format that works for, say the World Championship), and then replicate that across all other events.

We could also do with merging duplicate entries (like how the Shoot-Out and Shanghai Masters get shown twice because the tournaments used to be of a different status than now: eg Shoot Out was NR, now its ranking, so its even more confusing).

I personally would rather the tables were wider in terms of the individual season columns to allow us to be more flexible than super narrow. This would allow us to have more space to have more text in each individual cell. For example, if we do what I did on Zhao's table recently and start colspanning/rowspanning repeat entries, we'd save ourselves a lot of editing time as we wouldn't need to repeat the same thing over and over. --CitroenLover (talk) 18:36, 25 January 2026 (UTC)

@HurricaneHiggins your thoughts on the above would be welcomed as well (both on the initial proposal, and also on the idea of colspanning/rowspanning repeat entries in the performance tables where visible). I have another proposal in mind, which I'll post separately over weekend. -- CitroenLover (talk) 20:55, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

@CitroenLover, I agree that it's inappropriate to use WD if a player has competed in the event. Typically a withdrawal happens before an event begins and suggests that the player did not compete at all. I think your other proposal sounds good as well, but will wait till you post your other ideas over the weekend and weigh in again. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 22:25, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi all, per a discussion thread on Talk:2026 German Masters, @CitroenLover suggested raising this point here. I'd like to request that we all respect precedent and consensus when we are editing snooker articles. The way we do things will naturally evolve over time, which is understandable — and yet we're also trying to maintain an archive of professional snooker events going back a century, which editors past and present have put a lot of painstaking work into building. It's been noted that WP:BOLD is being used frequently as a rationale for making significant changes to established procedure, without any input or consensus from the community.

Therefore, I'd like to request that if anyone has suggestions for how we can improve the presentation of articles, either in terms of content, structure, formatting of results, etc., please discuss them on this project page first and establish a consensus for your proposed improvement(s) before forging ahead on a solo run. WP:BOLD shouldn't be used to override WP:CON. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 12:55, 29 January 2026 (UTC)

WP:BRD is the structure of Wikipedia editing. If someone is bold and makes a change to an article and isn't reverted, there's no issue. The only issue really with being too bold is when a change is made unilaterally across a wide range of articles in a short period of time without a consensus. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 07:56, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

The problem with Bold/Revert/Discuss, at least in my opinion, is that bold editors get their edits reverted for seemingly little reason and when a discussion happens, people just stick with the status quo and don't really see the benefits of a "bold edit". Take the performance table discussion above: while it resolved the primary issue highlighted, its not really resolving the underlying core problem that the tables just suck, and we're still stuck with a status-quo of "improving the table is welcome, but any time someone is bold in doing so, it gets reverted". There isn't any consistency with BRD in the pages: either we're bold and nothing changes by people maintaining the status quo, or we're bold and we just hope nobody gets mad (turn of phrase, not literal "mad") at the page being improved.

That being said, the point about "BRD" is well-made and it works in some cases -- such as with the agreement not to put timestamps in headings for non-Shoot Out pages -- but its not a universal thing in the snooker wikipedia pages. Like, right now, I could go through all the top players and clean up the performance table in line with what i suggested in the previous heading (colspanning/rowspanning repeat entries), and someone will be highly likely to come along and say "bad edit, revert", even though the edit is neither bad, nor something that needed to be reverted to begin with.

Speaking of which, I'll make a more concrete proposal to improve the performance tables across all contexts over the weekend (either later tonight, or over the actual weekend days, time permitting). I really want to improve these, even if only in a minor way, to declutter / simplify our editing of this table. --CitroenLover (talk) 11:07, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

We've discussed performance tables a few times, without really achieving a consensus. I made a few (perhaps too bold) changes for the one at Alex Higgins, e.g. having tournaments on a single line, rather than multiple lines for something like the World Championship. We can't fit all the info in them we would like. One issue that bothers me a bit is that SF in a four-player tournament is very different to SF in a large tournament. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 14:50, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

@BennyOnTheLoose In terms of performance tables, I don't think there's an issue with being bold on these, as nobody wants to tackle them, and as long as the salient structure and points are made in them, go for it.

That being said, I think we need to perhaps stop including "one-off" tournaments in the "career-based" tables, and just stack them in their own separate collapsible table (the table containing these columns: link to tournament page, season it was held in [with link to said season], players' performance and a reference). This would deal with the very irritating issue of having the words "Not Held" colspanned across the entire length of the table, with just a random cell containing the one time the event was played.

I'd also like to see us doing away with the currently rare situation where tournaments change their status: for example, we have the Shanghai Masters listed twice because one instance of it is a ranking tournament and another is a non-ranking tournament. This is confusing: we should merge the two into one row and just put a symbol next to those editions where it was played as a ranking event (or vice versa, like with the Shoot-Out going from Non Ranking to Ranking). I also don't know why we put "MR" for minor-ranking editions of tournaments, and would prefer this was replaced with the same (performance in event with a note or symbol to indicate its minor-ranking).

Overall, I do like your table structure, but its a lot simpler for someone like Alex where the table will never change from this format: compared to say Ronnie, John, Willo or any other currently serving player where the width just keeps growing every season they are actively playing. --CitroenLover (talk) 16:45, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Lee Vilenski, it's quite morale-sapping to be told this. The WP:BRD concept sounds great in theory, but in practice it depends on a significant number of people being willing to spend their time analyzing, reverting and discussing the activities of a "be bold" rogue editor on a case-by-case basis. The snooker editing community is already small and dwindling; I don't recognize many of the names on the "list of participants" as active contributors anymore. None of the few remaining active regular editors has the time to methodically trawl through articles edit by edit to see which new innovation is being implemented this week ... and if this is our only recourse, the venture seems pointless. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 22:41, 30 January 2026 (UTC)

I'm afraid it's not really our choice as how editing works on a project level, we don't have any additional rights over articles in our purview (snooker articles) than any other user. A WikiProject is simply a group of people who have said they edit in that sphere and then a good location for discussion and notices. Outside of general sanctions,^[b] there really is no subject based editing rules, so it is what the regular policies and guidelines we already have sitewide that are what we rely on. They do include WP:BOLD which I do think works well with the cycle of revertion and discussion. FWIW, BOLD doesn't mean just do what you want, you may be interested in the wording of the guideline:

Also, changes to articles on complex, controversial subjects with long histories or active sanctions, or to Featured Articles and Good Articles, should be done with extra care. In many cases, the text as you find it has come into being after long and arduous negotiations between Wikipedians of diverse backgrounds and points of view. A careless edit to such an article might stir up a latent conflict, and other users who are involved in the page may become defensive. if you would like to make a significant edit—not just a simple copyedit—to an article on a controversial subject, it is a useful idea to first read the article in its entirety and skim the comments on the talk page. On controversial articles, the safest course is to be cautious and find consensus before making changes; but there are nevertheless situations in which bold edits can safely be made, even to contentious articles. Always use your very best editorial judgment in these cases and be sure to read the talk page.

Realistically, no one is going to be able to say "don't make changes until it is discussed", as that is kinda contrary to how Wikipedia works, BUT when we do see something that has been added and could do with further discussion before being allowed, WP:QUO exists, usually meaning we should retain the previous status quo until it has been discussed. Yes, it can be frustrating seeing things you've worked hard on not look the same as they did, but I guarantee it is much worse in other sections of Wikipedia.^[c]

I hope this isn't too long a response, because I agree that making a big change to an article (or a series of articles) is better off discussed first.

Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 19:57, 31 January 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the lengthy and thoughtful response, @Lee_Vilenski. I appreciate that people will always add or change things here and there, which is fine, but I'm more concerned when WP:BOLD is interpreted as a broader licence to institute structural changes without consensus, in a way that amounts to "flying under the radar." So it's useful to have the actual wording of the guideline available and see, as you say, that it doesn't just mean "do whatever you want." Also, I'm absolutely not calling for sanctions, and I appreciate your point that the editing rules are the same for snooker as everything else. Thanks again. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 15:49, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

No drama. I didn't want you to think I was being blaze. Yeah, BOLD isn't a "do what you want". It's more, you don't HAVE to discuss everything before you do it. I think in reality, with what we are dealing with, anyone trying to fix some of our templates should be lauded. I don't have a plan for the performance table. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 16:32, 2 February 2026 (UTC)

Hi folks. I know we discussed performance tables recently (in the context of Championship League regarding WD usage), but I want to bring up the wider topic of how we can improve these tables long-term, while sticking to the existing format as much as possible. I intend to just list the proposals and then see what you folks think of them individually (though I have provided context to explain what they mean), in the hope that we can finally get a consensus on how to improve them.

Here are my proposals:

1. Any tournament entries which are duplicated -- because the tournament was previously a Ranking/Non-Ranking event, and then converted to Ranking/Non-Ranking -- should be merged into one row representing the in-progress version of the tournament. At the moment, this only applies to the Shoot-Out and the Shanghai Masters, however it could extend to others in future. Combining these into one row will make it easier to edit and reduces the need to colspan "Non-Ranking" or "Ranking" over multiple columns for the editions which were NR/WR. A symbol should be used to denote editions of tournaments which are of the alternative version (eg in the Shoot-Out, the symbol denotes that the edition of the tournament the player competed in did not carry ranking points; and vice versa).

NB: Championship League should NOT be merged: instead, these should remain separate, but should be clearly denoted in the text as "ranking" and "invitational", this will ensure we do NOT have the nonsensical colspanning of "Non-Ranking Event" in the ranking row for this tournament, when clearly its a relatively new event from 2020.

2 (Various points regarding the legend keys, there is a separate point about it later in the topic):

a. Where a player has repeatedly failed to qualify for an event over multiple seasons, the individual "DNQ" cells should be replaced by colspanned "Did Not Qualify". This will cut down on the amount of text in the pages (reducing their overall size), reduce the necessity of maintaining historical entries in an ever-growing table list, and also look cleaner in the page anyway. This should NOT apply to individual tournament editions the player played in, only generic text strings that can be colspanned in this way. You can see examples of this in the Zhao Xintong article, where it does not change anything in how the page is displayed.

b. In the same vein as above, "A" should not be used for invitationals or restricted-field events: we should use "A" for general ranking tournaments in which the player obviously chose not to enter, but any event which has a defined qualification criteria should use DNQ/Did Not Qualify if the player was not eligible to compete. Using "A" implies the player was eligible and just didn't bother entering, which is nonsensical for something like the Masters.

c. A row representing a tournament that a player has never participated in should NOT be added: many players will not participate in the Masters (for example), so adding the Masters to a players' performance table for it to just show "Did Not Qualify" over and over is redundant, we should add the row only when the player makes their debut appearance in the event.

d. We should do away with "Minor Ranking Event" designations in the table: instead, the players' actual performance should be included, and a symbol should be used to denote that the tournament was considered "minor-ranking" (whatever that means).

3. If a player has a column for a season, and the column only exists for one single tournament that they were playing in, the column should be removed and the relevant tournaments they participated in should be noted elsewhere, perhaps in a smaller -- compacted -- table. The likely impacts for this will be on players from China who competed in the Haining Open as amateurs: having a whole column for basically single entry tournaments is a waste of characters and doesn't really add anything. The same should apply for non-WST professional players who only played on a WST event for the World Snooker Championship qualifying phase, while participating in nothing else for that season, thus keeping things more focused on the times when they actively participated on the WST itself, rather than "one off" appearances.

4. Tournaments which have only been played once in the entire history of the tour should not be included in the performance table. The reason for removing these is because they are always prepended and appended by "Not Held" over many columns, which is a waste of characters and adds nothing. Single-instance tournaments would be better off being included in a separate -- collapsible -- table which contains the following details [in this order]: a link to the tournament page, if one exists; the season in which that tournament was held, as a link; the players' performance in that tournament, following the standard key but in longer-form; a reference to confirm the information. Separating this information into its own table will make maintenance of the players' career table much more straight-forward. It also means we can document those COVID-era events (WST Pro Series and WST Classic) without having it clutter the performance table for the rest of time. I also think this should include the invitational Hong Kong Masters, which has only been held twice and which many players would not have been involved in to begin with.

5. Regarding the legend keys, we should perhaps transition to more clear "values", as its been raised that the designation of 1R is not uniform. There are two ways this could be dealt with: replace LQ with a more clear indication of what Qualifying Round the player participated in (QR1, QR2 etc), with 1R only referring to rounds played at the final venue; OR, replace 1R with Last-XXX designations, where XXX represents the number of players left in the round. This should not apply to QF, SF, F and W, which have clear designations and are used over Last 8, Last 4 and Last 2.

Okay, that was a lot of text! But hopefully we can have a discussion around all of these points and come to a suitable agreement on how to deal with this table. Obligatory @ mentions following this to get users to comment (pinging just active editors, could not find anyone else): @HurricaneHiggins @Lee Vilenski @Nigej @AlH42 @BennyOnTheLoose @Andygray110 -- CitroenLover (talk) 12:47, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

On point 1, there are definitley more. See the Alex Higgins example I mentiioned above, where there are seven tournaments that switched between non-ranking and ranking. 2a i agree with using spans aross rows or colums to reduce visual clutter. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 14:28, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

Hi @BennyOnTheLoose good shout that. I only included Shoot-Out/Shanghai Masters because I was just thinking of current tournaments with this problem, but we'll have the same issue on historical events as well: whatever we decide to do with current tournaments should be duplicated to older historical records as well. --CitroenLover (talk) 14:42, 1 February 2026 (UTC)

Hi @HurricaneHiggins @Lee Vilenski @Nigej @AlH42 @BennyOnTheLoose @Andygray110 this topic has been open for 2 weeks now, with only one reply -- the one from Benny above on two specific parts that he could reply to. I'm hoping you guys can see this ping, so you can share your thoughts and opinions on the proposal. If I don't receive a reply within about a week or so (ie by the end of the Welsh Open), I'll assume there is no opposition to the suggested changes and will start making them -- relatively slowly -- to some articles (Zhao, all top 32 Chinese players, and a sample of others). So would help if you can share thoughts to shape the future of this proposal. Thanks. --CitroenLover (talk) 19:00, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

@CitroenLover, here are some of my initial thoughts:

• 1/2(d): would including symbols not widen the table more, making it visually more unwieldy?
• 2(a): agree
• 2(b): may be difficult for invitational tournaments where there is no defined qualification criteria (e.g. General Cup). Perhaps DNP/Did Not Participate (which could be easily colspanned) would work instead of A?
• 2(c): I think this is already the case in the tables? I think the only time the Masters (for example) appears in the timelines of players who didn't participate Masters is when those players lost in qualifying for the tournament pre-2011.
• 3: I would suggest simply removing all the tournaments they didn't participate in (currently designated as A/DNQ) and just leave the tournaments they did participate in (per Jin Long, for example)
• 4: this could work if the table was clearly designated as something like "tournaments that were only played once"
• 5: this is a tough one. I think it's flawed either way - agree that 1R doesn't mean the same for every tournament, while including an L128 style will widen the tables (perhaps ludicrously so). I very marginally lean towards 1R being the lesser of two evils.

These are not criticisms - merely playing devil's advocate. It's definitely good to have this debate and I'm very much coming at this from the position of "do these changes improve the tables?" Or do they simply have the effect of rearranging them?

Or (more likely) I could be misinterpreting some of the suggestions. Maybe you could build an example here of what you envisage? Perhaps new suggested tables for someone like Judd Trump, whose table is close to spilling off the page. Andygray110 (talk) 23:11, 16 February 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Andygray110 thanks for replying!! I'll answer each of the points you queried here and looking forward to your reply to the below:

• 1/2d: This shouldn't widen the table too much: it would effectively remove an unnecessary row and the extra symbol added should still fit within the existing width bounds (assuming we use relatively generic unicode symbols, not {{Efn}}, to do this).
• 2b: DNP would work quite well (or Did Not Participate for colspanning purposes), if that gets consensus.
• 2c: As far as I can tell, this doesn't happen on a regular basis, but it would be good to confirm this in all player pages just to make sure its not been added by someone trying to make all tables consistent (ie add all Triple Crown Series events, even if they never played in them).
• 3: This should work, but only problem is when you have cases such as Wu Yize, Si Jiahui or He Guoqiang -- to name a few -- who have a column for a season because of the Haining Open, but have then subsequently participated in main tour events like the World Championship. This situation is largely going to be unique to Chinese players, who all will have participated at some point in the non-ranking Haining Open for amateur players, so we'd need to come up with a solution for these kind of cases.
• 4: I agree: any such table to hive off such events would be denoted as being "the following lists performances in tournaments which have only been played once in the players' career". Which would just make things so much easier for us in terms of one-off events.
• 5: Agreed, there is no perfect solution for this tbh.

In answer to your example, I am more than happy to build some examples to help visualise all of the above. I'll use Ronnie O'Sullivan and Judd Trump as examples of "big tables", with Zhao Xintong and Wu Yize as more recent examples to deal with their unique table entries. It might take a few days for me to get this done, but keep an eye on my user space for page creations relating to this. --CitroenLover (talk) 17:43, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

Honestly, I'm probably a bad person to ask as I don't think these tables are very fixable and are probably not really suitable for the encyclopedia. If we can make them less gaudy and readable, I'll support it. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:33, 17 February 2026 (UTC)

@Andygray110 Hi, unfortunately I was super busy over this weekend, so didn't get a chance to create any sandbox pages. Hopefully this weekend I'll be able to do that... hopefully lol. --CitroenLover (talk) 18:44, 24 February 2026 (UTC)

@Andygray110 @BennyOnTheLoose @Nigej @Lee Vilenski @AlH42 please refer to the following link for the first sandbox version I've made of the performance table for Zhao Xintong: User:CitroenLover/sandbox#Example_3:_Zhao_Xintong.

Appreciate any feedback on this layout and structure (changes are ideally needed on the heading name for one-off events, and the symbols used to denote ranking/non-ranking editions of tournaments that changed status, currently just using * and ** which are not ideal). I'm also looking into moving various columns associated to events Zhao participated in under non-professional status into its own table in a two-column layout, next to the heading for "one-off tournaments", to keep things more tidier. -- CitroenLover (talk) 17:05, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Hey @CitroenLover, responding here to your note on my talk page. I definitely think the Zhao Xintong draft in your sandbox looks cleaner and better than the existing one. Excellent work and I'll be curious to see how this looks when applied to the Trump/O'Sullivan examples. Seeing Zhao's table makes me wonder, though, if we need a separate code for when a player did not participate in a tournament because they were suspended or banned. This, to me, is a distinctly different case from a withdrawal, which is a decision made by the player, while a suspension or ban is imposed by the governing body. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 20:53, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks a bunch for the comments @HurricaneHiggins! Regarding withdrawals from events due to suspension/ban, I think something like S, SU or SUS could work, or alternatively, B. I agree that WD should be when a player actively has to withdraw due to medical, personal or visa reasons [and gets an announcement about it on WST’s website]. When a player is withdrawn because the WPBSA suspended them, thats quite different. Let me play around with some stuff, check the sandbox either later tonight, or tomorrow, and see what you think! — CitroenLover (talk) 11:13, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

Fantastic @CitroenLover, and thanks so much for all your great work on this! I'll check back later and see how things look in your sandbox. Great to see this taking shape. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 11:22, 3 March 2026 (UTC)

@HurricaneHiggins apart from the 2014-15 column that will be removed tomorrow (by all of its pertinent information being moved to the table below the main one), its largely all done now. Let me know your thoughts on the (mostly complete) Zhao Xintong performance table and tell me what you think! Zhao's "Pre-Professional Career Events" table is a bit longer than most, due to being invited to participate in so many pro tour events before he qualified, so is a bit more of an anomaly, but overall, I think this structure looks better: it preserves all the "he was an amateur" stuff in a way that doesn't create an egregiously wide "table" containing loads of A's and "Not Held's" over and over as well, making it much simpler to edit. I'll need to spend a LOT more time on other players because they have bigger tables, but this is a starting point if anything! --CitroenLover (talk) 20:39, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Hey @CitroenLover, I love what you've done here. It preserves everything important while also condensing the table down so that it's easier to navigate and read. Getting rid of all those A's and Not Helds makes a huge difference, I think. It's definitely going to be more complex for players with 30+ year careers but this is a fantastic start. Great work! HurricaneHiggins (talk) 12:35, 5 March 2026 (UTC)

(reset indents)

I'd appreciate some more thoughts from others on the sandbox article showing Zhao Xintong's redesigned "Performance Table" section. Does it largely match up with what I described before in my initial proposal, or anything else I should look at improving?

If there are no specific complaints about the new table layout, then I'll update Zhao's page to use this new structure and then will slowly update a selection of pages with the new structure. It will, however, be impossible for me to update "every single" snooker players' pages, so will need support of the community to update things (which means we take our time to update it slow, rather than rushing). --CitroenLover (talk) 17:19, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

@Andygray110 seems like I can only do @ mentions through the reply box, but ^ see above, your thoughts would be great. -- CitroenLover (talk) 17:20, 8 March 2026 (UTC)

I like the colspanning, the better note referencing and the table legend updates. Rowspanning - meh. I'm not a fan of it in tables along with colspanning (especially when they collide) but I get that Zhao is an extreme example and can live with it.

I was initially open-minded about the additional one-off tournament/pre-career tables, but for someone like Jimmy White (another extreme example I know), wouldn't the one-off table end up being enormous? I just wonder are the additional tables an improvement or does this just end up shuffling table content into three different ones and lengthening the overall section. Andygray110 (talk) 23:02, 10 March 2026 (UTC)

@Andygray110 missed this, but you do make a point. The tables can be broken up into sub-sections and/or made collapsible, which might be worth doing for some extreme examples. Or alternatively, we could do something similar to the Ronnie O’Sullivan career overview page and move very very long tables into their own page so the content can be broken up into more manageable sections.

but then at that point, it would end up being a page of stats, which isn’t very useful. As you hinted at, some people are going to have very extreme outcomes, which may be better handled separately from those like Xu Si or Sam Baird, who have extremely small tables anyway, and would not have as much impact when moving to the suggested layout. — CitroenLover (talk) 23:39, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

I've made some changes at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Snooker. I think they are uncontroversial, but would be happy to discuss this on the talk page there.

I'd be grateful for input at the Featured Article candidancy page for Joe Johnson:- discussion. There have only been two reviewers since it was nominated on 19 January. The main FAC page has advice about commenting, supporting and opposing Featured Article Candidates. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 09:21, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, @BennyOnTheLoose. I've made some comments on the FAC page for Joe Johnson. Hope they are helpful! HurricaneHiggins (talk) 19:04, 26 February 2026 (UTC)

Yes, thank you for this; definitely helpful. Much appreciated. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 11:27, 27 February 2026 (UTC)

@BennyOnTheLoose suggest replacing Instagram with "social media accounts", to cover various platforms like Bluesky, Threads, Instagram and even things like Patreon pages. Although the majority of players will be on Instagram anyway, its better not to name a specific site (though obviously it would be productive to consider attempting to limit our use of Twitter/X as a source, even if players have accounts there, preferring other social media sites verified to belong to the person).

Also there's a section of text that was removed at the end of the diff summary here which causes the text just before it to make little to no sense. Suggest removing that piece of text just before it (and agree we shouldn't just remove journalistic sentences from snooker pages because most media sources that we use for these articles are journalistic by nature). -- CitroenLover (talk) 16:57, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

honestly, it is just an example, it being a URL or Instagram is not all that important. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 23:28, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Not sure whether I've fixed the second issue, CitroenLover. If not, I suggest you just edit it. Thanks. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 23:11, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

Perhaps we should have a better look through MOS:CUE and see which bits fit with the snooker MOS. I don't think anything is contradictory, but there is some cross over. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 23:36, 28 February 2026 (UTC)

IMO MOS:CUE is too lengthy and there is too much restating of other parts of the MOS. I also don't like "the cue stick is the "cue stick" (or a more specific term, e.g. "pool cue"). A bare reference to "the cue" is usually too ambiguous"; mentions of "cue stick" with reference to snooker are very rare outside of Wikipedia. But agree we should check for, and resolve, any contradictions between the MOS:CUE and MOS:SNOOKER. BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 23:00, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Hi all, @Lee Vilenski has suggested we have a discussion about live scores in current tournament articles, per the thread on Talk:2026_Welsh_Open_(snooker). Probably best to get this out of the way now, before the longer matches at the Tour Championship and World Championship. Currently, we have WP:LIVESCORES as part of MOS:SNOOKER which states that "The current consensus is to not add visible match or frame scores to an article until the match or tie is completed." However, most of us seem to have reached tacit agreement that it's acceptable, in the case of a multi-session match, to update scores after sessions. This issues has arisen because @AlH42 has, in some cases, been updating scores during mid-session intervals.

So, the question is, what should our policy be? My personal preference would be to formalize the acceptability of updating scores only after a session has concluded, using italics to indicate an interim score rather than a final score. But I don't think we should update more frequently than that, on the basis that (a) Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a live scoring service and (b) it will invite chaos, with more and more inexperienced editors jumping in to update scores at inappropriate intervals.

Thoughts? HurricaneHiggins (talk) 15:47, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

I have been doing this every 4 frames for every tournament this season. I'm happy to leave it and only update at the end of a session, there's less work for me then. But what about centuries? We currently update these whenever one is made.  Alan  (talk) 16:06, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

Hi. I'm of the opinion that scores should be updated once a match is over (as is the case with most single-session matches), except when the match is a multi-session match (such as in tournament finals, the Tour Championship or the World Championship). For matches with multiple sessions, I don't see an issue with adding the "end of session" score (eg 7-1, as it is currently in the Welsh Open final), as technically the match is "paused". As for centuries, we should add these at the conclusion of matches in the appropriate session (or ideally, at the end of the days' play), rather than live updating these, especially as centuries are being made more often in tournaments. A bulk edit of all changes necessary is a lot easier than spamming edits: see my edits to 2026 Tour Championship where its not live edited for the seedings, and updated at the conclusion of the days' play, when the rankings can be better understood. --CitroenLover (talk) 16:10, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

For century breaks, it's easier and less prone to errors if they are updated as they occur. Especially if the edit summary is used to indicate who made the century and what the number was. That is the way we have always done it, and it seems to work OK.  Alan  (talk) 16:42, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

I think the century break count is its own separate thing, and I don't have any issue with keeping that up on a rolling basis as centuries occur. It's really separate from match scores, as it's possible to make several impressive centuries in a match and still lose, as we have seen this week. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 17:11, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

Agreed. It's worth noting that some editors do not put anything in the edit summary. It's simple enough to put in something like "Barry Hawkins 102". Also it's important to remember to increment the total.  Alan  (talk) 17:53, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

Both good points. I can definitely see how that would be helpful. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 18:34, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

My worry with people updating centuries made during a match is that, especially during early rounds we see people constantly updating and causing edit conflicts. It's quite easy to get information missed from matches as someone updates a century believing an earlier one has been included (and it hadn't). I tend to stay away from this sort of thing though, so it's not really my thing. Lee Vilenski ^{(talk • contribs)} 18:16, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

I've been doing this for a long time and have only had an occasional edit conflict. Generally it works fine.  Alan  (talk) 18:45, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

I think, in the main, the system we have for tracking centuries works smoothly. @AlH42 in particular has been doing a good job with that. I'm more interested in establishing a clear consensus around when it's appropriate to publish match or session scores, as it would seem the current policy was decided back in 2010 and needs to be revisited. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 18:46, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

That's what I'd support too. Updates at the end of a match, or interim updates at the end of a session, if it's a multi-session match. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 17:07, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

That makes sense.  Alan  (talk) 17:54, 1 March 2026 (UTC)

Okay ... since there doesn't seem to be much disagreement on this issue, I would proposed updating WP:LIVESCORES as follows.

Current text:

Wikipedia is not Wikinews, nor is it a sports ticker tape. The current consensus is to not add visible match or frame scores to an article until the match or tie is completed. Wikipedia should only record the final results of the match, and is not a live scoring service as Wikipedia is not the place for news reports. There was a discussion at WikiProject Snooker's talk page, this can be viewed there. An alternative discussion in 2008 independent of the snooker project arrived at the same conclusion at the Help desk. However, a 2014 proposal to specifically add such rules to the general "What Wikipedia is not" policy page failed to gain consensus, as some feared that enforcing such a policy would result in escalated edit warring between established editors and well-intentioned edits by newcomers. Therefore, it is still important to comply with the three-revert rule when removing live scores.

Proposed revised text:

Wikipedia is not Wikinews, nor is it a live scoring service. The current consensus, for matches played within one session, is to not add visible match or frame scores to an article until the match finishes. In the case of matches played over two or more sessions, interim scores (denoted with italics) may be added after a session concludes. Scores should never be added or updated while a session is in progress, including during a mid-session interval. Century breaks may be added to the rolling century break tally at any time during or after a match. To avoid edit warring between established editors and newcomers, it is still important to assume good faith and comply with the three-revert rule when removing live scores.

@AlH42, @CitroenLover, @Lee Vilenski, @BennyOnTheLoose, @Andygray110, @Nigej -- can you please indicate whether or not you support this proposed revised text? (Please tag anyone I may have overlooked.) HurricaneHiggins (talk) 19:07, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

Sounds fine to me! -- CitroenLover (talk) 19:37, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

Agreed.  Alan  (talk) 20:03, 2 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks, all. Since there doesn't seem to be any disagreement, I've gone ahead and updated the text as proposed. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 11:32, 4 March 2026 (UTC)

Hi all, it has become significantly more difficult to add new content to the summary sections of ongoing tournament pages. As soon as I add any new information, @AlH42 swoops in to "fix" the markup for a non-breaking en-dash (because he doesn't like the default inserted by the visual editor) or "correct" citations inserted by the visual editor (again, he doesn't like how the visual editor formats citations). There is nothing here that actually requires fixing, as the visual editor and associated visual editing templates have all presumably passed muster with the admins. But due to his following me around making constant "corrections," efforts to add additional content to the page is generally met with "Your edit could not be saved due to an edit conflict."

I have told him previously that none of these things actually requires "fixing," but that if he feels strongly about it, he could do a global search and replace after the tournament has finished and the article has reached close to its final form. That way, he wouldn't be interfering with the process of creating the article in the first place. But still this continues, day after day after day. Hence my raising the issue here.

This might seem like a minor gripe, but it isn't. For quite some time, I've been researching, writing, and copy editing the summary sections of ongoing tournaments virtually single-handedly, which is a lot of work. I don't mind that part, and I can do it just fine if left alone; several articles mostly written by me have been promoted to Featured Article status. What I don't need is the significant amount of time I already spend on snooker Wikipedia increased further by endless edit conflicts generated by one person trying to "fix" the default behaviours of the visual editor.

We will have more or less continuous professional snooker from now until the first week in May (World Open --> Tour Championship --> World Championship qualifiers --> World Championship) and I can't produce high-quality articles in this environment of constant obstructionism. Something needs to be done about this. HurricaneHiggins (talk) 21:06, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Having looked at the history of 2026 World Open (snooker) I would agree that many of the edits were for things that did not need "fixing". These minor edits would be fine if they were not impacting other editors. Given the circumstances, though, I'd also request AlH42 to hold off on these minor edits to dashes and citation formatting while a tournament is in progress. There is a long list of snooker articles that do need fixes. Regards, BennyOnTheLoose (talk) 16:57, 17 March 2026 (UTC)

Hi all. If anyone has been following the Q Tour, one should know that the tour itself has expanded itself pretty quickly over the last few years. The current Q Tour article has an "Event finals" section which lists out every competition's result in a table, which could have worked when the tour was only consisted of a handful of competitions - however there are now over 20 competitions under the Q Tour, and the table will be ridiculously long in a few years if it is kept that way. For me I think the article should not list out every competition's result anymore - just like there won't be one under the main tour's article. I would like to know how do you guys think. TheVictoriaHarbourer (talk) 19:35, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

Agree, only adds unnecessary length and the info is already included in the seasonal Q Tour articles. Would also suggest removing the format/prize money section as it is subject to change every season (and is also included in the seasonal articles). Andygray110 (talk) 20:49, 19 March 2026 (UTC)

@TheVictoriaHarbourer agree, those sections should probably be removed and links given to the individual Q Tour Season articles where such details can be provided. --CitroenLover (talk) 18:46, 21 March 2026 (UTC)