Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Tennis/Archive 9

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Mass page move request

A mass nomination to move articles about sportsmen based on diacritics in their name has been filed at Talk:Dominik_Halmosi#Requested_Move --Ohconfucius ¡digame! 03:50, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Mens/Womens tour season and tournament articles

I think we should make an effort to carry on improving and adding to the pages such as 1990 WTA Tour. I have made a big effort to create and work on these pages, as well as individual yearly tournament articles e.g. 1990 Newsweek Champions Cup. WTA tour pages have not been created for 1968-1982 and apart from the last few years and the ones I have worked on, there has been little progress made. Any editors interested in helping. 03md 17:05, 11 November 2011 (UTC)

I didn't even notice these pages existing before your post. One question I have is isn't there too much info given? I kind of like the 1991 WTA Tour page as being enough for readers to wet their appetites and if they want more detail they can head over to the tourney link to go as far a semi-finalists and finding links to the actual draws. Fyunck(click) (talk) 21:02, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
But we are aiming for consistency in page layout. The WTA page for 1990 should have the same details as the 2011 WTA Tour page if we can find the information. This is what I have tried to do with 1983 Virginia Slims World Championship Series. There are also still so many gaps in tournament pages. 03md 22:54, 11 November 2011 (UTC)
Here is the tournament task force I set up: [1]. 03md 01:08, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Yannick Noah's drug allegations

I was thinking about creating an article/entry about this topic although I'm not sure where is it appropriate to insert to. I'm thinking on merging it to the 2011 ATP World Tour Finals since it happened simoultanously and affects the players. Any ideas? Lajbi Holla @ meCP 07:25, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

I would say it has nothing to do with the tour finals and should not be placed there. This is more a minor news entry (it's not like it's the first time it's been mentioned) and I'm not sure where it would go other than under the Yannick Noah article. Maybe 2011 ATP World Tour or 2011 in tennis but the latter article is in poor shape. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:36, 21 November 2011 (UTC)
It just coincidently erupted the same time as the ATP World Tour Finals, though it may concern the outcome or just the mood of the players and the atmosphere (or indirectly questions their qualification). Participants Nadal, Ferrer and Llodra have already answered to it during the press conferences at London. Of course Noah didn't say "Spaniards are doping on the Tour Finals", but he timed it to match this event...Anyways the proposed articles are fine for me as well. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 08:12, 21 November 2011 (UTC)

Notable?

Are these notable exhibitions 2011 La Grande Sfida Singapore Women's Tennis Exhibition cause if they are then you might as well add Raonic v Samprass this from last night the exhibitions played in March and April in New York and the other American city etc. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.147.22.241 (talk) 11:49, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

I would differentiate between exhibition tournaments and exhibition matches. Matches (as matches in general) are rarely covered by Wikipedia and are restricted to have some major notability beside having top players to compete. Tournaments (as the Hopman Cup) are usually notable, mostly because of their historical background and the more number of top players involved. So the Bogota Exhibition this year between Djokovic and Nadal doesn't deserve its own article neither does - in my opinion - the Raonic/Sampras match. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 12:03, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

Naming issue

We need some concensus on creating the article for the upcoming exhibition event of Mubadala World Tennis Championship. As 2011 Mubadala World Tennis Championship already exists and was the earliest tournament of the year the following one will take place between December 29-31 the same year. I think it's a misleading and thus wrong idea to name it as the 2012 Mubadala World Tennis Championship, because obviously it isn't in 2012 and part of this year's calendar. Any loopholes that could save the day? Lajbi Holla @ meCP 11:55, 22 November 2011 (UTC)

I've created the 2012 page but I'm still looking forward to have a concensus on this and have it redirected to whatever we will agree on. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 09:13, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
One precedent is 1977 Australian Open (January) and 1977 Australian Open (December). Another way might be "4th Mubadala World Tennis Championship". --August90 (talk) 16:29, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
I like the first one. Thanks. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 16:48, 23 November 2011 (UTC)
I like the first one also. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:13, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Davis Cup articles under WikiProjects Tennis and India

Many articles on year-wise Davis Cup tournaments which are part of this WikiProject are unreferenced and being tagged with {{unreferenced}} tags as I come across them. They lack a "references" section also. Requesting interested editors to please do the needful on articles which are intricately constructed with loving care by Tennis enthusiasts. AshLin (talk) 18:24, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

In the absence of References Section, they are being assessed as "start" class by me, as they lack a key element, ie referencing. On being referenced, they may be directly converted to C class (or B class, if it is felt that effectively the information already present is all thats needed). AshLin (talk) 18:33, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Tennis player articles tend to get too detailed

Hi, I've noticed a tendency for tennis player articles to grow to great length and become overwhelmed with minute match-by-match detail, rendering them almost unreadable to a general audience (Roger Federer was a recent example that has now been trimmed by another editor; Li Na is another that could do with major surgery). If necessary, separate articles can be created for match-by-match results, but the main article only needs to cover significant career events, in my opinion. 86.179.4.128 (talk) 02:43, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Agree. Too much detail in many tennis articles. The project Tennis should work on some guidelines for articles about tennis players. I looked at articles about football players and they also do not mention details and scores of almost every match they played in the year. Only the main results like cups won. If we do that for tennis player articles then they would get much shorter and more readable. Results and the names of opponents that were faced are already found in the WP article about each tournament, no need to repeat this in the articles about the players. MakeSense64 (talk) 08:03, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
Are those articles featured or at least good (just asking)? Because if we are about to go by the football standards we should make sure we do it at their best level. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 10:11, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
Tennis currently has very few GA or better , see [2]. There is also an enormous backlog of unassessed articles. To see what we mean with player articles getting too detailed, Andy Murray is a typical example. Just try to read his 2010 season if you can. Compare that to a football player like Ronaldo, or the current nr 1 golf player Luke Donald, and I think we have to agree these articles are much more readable and short, especially in the career sections. So I think the question becomes what can we learn from these other sports, in order to make (and keep) the tennis articles shorter and better?
One of the WP guidelines is to avoid same information being repeated in several places. But here we have a lot of tennis information being repeated in 3 or more places. For example the result of a certain match is not rarely found in: 1) in the articles of both players.2) in the article about given tournament. 3) in the articles showing the draw of the given tournament. How do we reduce that and thus make the players' articles more readable? MakeSense64 (talk) 15:50, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
I am going to put an overdetailed tag on some tennis player articles and I want to ask some communtiy input how we can best address this problem.
I don't know how many tennis article editors are around, but now in the tennis off-season is a good time for doing some much needed cleanup.MakeSense64 (talk) 08:46, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
I didn't mean the tennis articles but the other sports-related ones that you are referencing to. Neither Ronaldo nor Luke Donald are featured or Good. I'm just saying if we like to compare our articles to those let them match to actually promoted wikipages. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 09:16, 5 December 2011 (UTC)
OK, I see. Well, we can easily find the FA and GA in the projects related to other sports. I notice that similar overdetailed articles also appear in other sports, so this problem is not limited to tennis.
Other than comparing to other GA in sports we can also look at the WP guidelines. I think we should consider WP:NOT#NEWSREPORTS, where it is stated that: routine news reporting on things like announcements, sports, or celebrities is not a sufficient basis for inclusion in the encyclopedia.
But isn't that what we have in many tennis player articles? E.g. in the Andy Murray article we read things like how he complained about the speed of the court after some 3rd round loss, or was two points away from forcing a decider in some 2nd round loss in some smaller tournament, or his mind hadn't been fully on tennis... If that is not routine sports news reporting, then what is?
Afaik, the idea of WP is that we need good reputable sources for everything we include in the encyclopedia, but we are not supposed to include everything we can find in such sources. Routine news reporting is to be excluded. Correct me if I am wrong. MakeSense64 (talk) 09:53, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

US Open edition numbers

At Wikipedia:Help desk#US Open (tennis) editions is a discussion about the edition numbers of the US Open (tennis). It started in 1881 and has apparently been held every year so 2011 should logically be the 131st edition but nearly all sources say 130th in 2011, 129th in 2010, and so on. Can anybody find an official numbering from the US Open itself, or find an explanation for the discrepancy? If not then should we follow the large majority of sources or make a seemingly more logical numbering? If we try to follow the sources then we may get problems going far back because it seems hard to find anybody who numbers old editions. Is it possible the problem started in Wikipedia and was copied by reliable soures? PrimeHunter (talk) 22:41, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

I also see sources that are calling it the 130th "anniversary" of the US Open, which would be correct. I'm thinking it's the press simply making the error. The US Open website calls the 1981 edition the "100th anniversary of the U.S. Championships." Fyunck(click) (talk) 22:59, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Tennis rivalries

According to WP:NSPORTS, rivalries are not inherently notable and need good sources to warrant a separate article. I think we need to clean up a bit in the tennis rivalries: [3]. By nature tennis players will play each other many times if they are contemporaries. That alone does not make for a notable rivalry. I think we only have a great notable rivalry between two players who are : 1) multiple slam winner and both have been nr1 ranked, 2) have met in several important finals, and 3) have met in a lot of matches stretching over a period of years, and the results were not too one-sided. I have nominated Agassi-Chang for deletion, because I think it is too weak. Agassi-Rafter was also deleted for the same reasons last year. [4] I think Dementieva- S.Williams is another one to remove, because they never met in a slam final and Dementieva was never ranked nr1. If we keep this ones, then where will we stop with such head-to-head articles? Would welcome your comments. MakeSense64 (talk) 14:56, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree these could all get trimmed. Simply put, an article needs to be referenced from multiple, verifiable, independent, reliable sources. If the existence of a rivalry can be proven on this level, then an article can stay. --Pretty Green (talk) 12:12, 7 December 2011 (UTC)

drawsheets source(s) for pre-Open Era tournaments

Drawsheet articles for the grand slam events (at least) before 1968 don't have a source. The supposed source, the one given, links to the ITF Men's Circuit website but not to an actual drawsheet or results page for the tournament in question, and there are not, actually, drawsheets for these tournaments anywhere on the ITF website (that I can find). Anyone know if there are any online sources? I couldn't find any and suspect we'll need to give book or encyclopedia sources instead for these WP drawsheet articles. Mayumashu (talk) 00:32, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

For older tennis articles we have to rely mostly on book sources. Thanks to google book search we can refer to them online. You can go here for a start: 100 years of Wimbledon. You can search inside the book, and at the bottom of the page you find related tennis books and tennis encyclopedias, which can also be accessed.
As much as possible we should not just mention the book, but also the page in the book that supports our article. We can do that by posting the entire url we get from searching inside the book.
Lots of high importance tennis articles, like these old grand slams, need better sourcing. We should also consider merging the draw articles back into the main articles for some pre-open era slams and tournaments. Then we don't need to source and maintain so many articles. We are not supposed to split articles when they are under 100 kB size. Tennis has created too many content forks imo.
A recommended tool if you want to improve and add sources to articles is ProveIt [5]. You can activate it in your account preferences, and then it makes adding sources much more easy. MakeSense64 (talk) 07:20, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
I just created an example on 1877_Wimbledon_Championship_–_Singles. If you now click on reference two it will take you to google book search page showing a piece of the draw on page 133. This way readers of the article can verify the information, and that's what references should do. MakeSense64 (talk) 07:37, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
For articles about historical players this book is a good source: Historical Dictionary of Tennis. You can search the entire book for any name you want.MakeSense64 (talk) 07:53, 8 December 2011 (UTC)
I'm sad to say this but not really. That book was publsihed in 2011 September and mostly relies on Wikipedia. The basic evidence for this is its Hungary entry on page 141, which totally encompasses the articles Hungarian National Tennis Championships and Hungary Davis Cup team both of which I've created and I can ensure you they are trimmed down and embedded in that paragraph. E.g. The origin of the name translation of the Championships (required for proper titling of the article in accordance to Wikipedia standards) also comes from me. The "dictionary" uses the same format, so coincidence is excluded. Considering this : using a source built upon Wikipedia to reference an article in Wikipedia is just like a redirect not a real reference. I don't know if it's true for other topics as well, but I suppose the same author would also grab material from wiki for players/tournies outside of US/England/France/Australia. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 11:24, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

An article that you have been involved in editing, Mario Ančić career statistics , has been proposed for a merge with another article. If you are interested in the merge discussion, please participate by going here, and adding your comments on the discussion page. Thank you. MakeSense64 (talk) 13:03, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

Article needs attention

This Top-important tennis article has been without references since 2007: Tennis_strategy MakeSense64 (talk) 11:49, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

I just used Cat Scan to generate a list of tennis articles that lack references (and are thus at risk of being deleted).
You can find it here: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Tennis/Collaboration#Articles_needing_attention
MakeSense64 (talk) 12:26, 6 December 2011 (UTC)
I have now also updated the Cleanup listing page with the newest tool. The old listing was out of date for nearly two years.
Cleanup listing for tennis
MakeSense64 (talk) 07:53, 7 December 2011 (UTC)
I have to say in regard to Wikipedia:WikiProject_Tennis/Collaboration#Articles_needing_attention, that there are more unsourced articles, but they are not tagged. Most tournament articles don't have any sources at all, and almost every draw article has only primary sources. Armbrust Talk to me about my editsreview 15:43, 18 December 2011 (UTC)

Women ITF 10K tournaments articles

Do these low ranked tournaments realy deserve an article? (eg: 2011 Kolmangal ITF Women's Tournament, 2011 LIC ITF Women's Tennis Championships, 2011 ITF Djibouti Open (1), 2011 ITF Djibouti Open (2)) the seeds are very low ranked and the participants among top1000+. I think they shoul be deleted along with the singles and doubles draws. What do you think? (Gabinho>:) 23:15, 18 December 2011 (UTC))

Absolutely should be deleted per ladies tournament guidelines. "From 2008–2012 the ITF Women's $35,000–$100,000+ tournaments (excluding qualifications) are considered notable. From 1978–2007 the threshold for notability in the women's ITF circuit is a $25,000 event (excluding qualifications)." Those are speedy delete candidates if they are $10,000 ITF tournies. I see the same person created them all. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:47, 18 December 2011 (UTC)
Yes, such small tournaments should be deleted. And probably also some of the $25000 ITF tournaments. Currently there is one in AfD Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2011 AEGON GB Pro-Series Foxhills and I think it will get deleted. If so, then we better clean up some of the tournaments listed in 2011 ITF Women's Circuit and also look at the previous years. I would use ProD, which gives authors of these articles the chance to bring their good reasons to keep an article. MakeSense64 (talk) 07:51, 19 December 2011 (UTC)
 Done - all nominated under one heading. What a pain to nominate them all. Fyunck(click) (talk) 09:11, 19 December 2011 (UTC)

Virginia Slims Championships articles

I raised this issue at WP:AN, and it was suggested that this might be a better place. I took a look at the women's sports project, but it doesn't seem to be very active.

This all started because I was clicking on "Random article" and came across a series of pages about these championships, and it's kind of a mess. I thought of going through an AfD process, but it really needs attention on how to clean things up, even though part of that clean-up will probably entail some deletions and redirects.

This is the random article: 1985 Virginia Slims of California. There are similar articles for other locations: 1985 Virginia Slims of Central New York, 1985 Virginia Slims of Dallas, 1985 Virginia Slims of Denver, 1985 Virginia Slims of Pennsylvania, 1985 Virginia Slims of Indianapolis, 1985 Virginia Slims of Washington, 1985 Virginia Slims of Utah, 1985 Virginia Slims of Boston, and 1985 Virginia Slims of Florida. Some of these are redirects. For example, the Boston name redirects to Virginia Slims of Boston. A lot of these articles need to be cleaned up, but I don't particularly want to do that if some of the articles are going to be deleted or the "tree" of articles is going to be restructured.

Then, there's TWO "main" articles called 1985 Virginia Slims Championships and 1985 Virginia Slims World Championship Series. There's also a redirect called Virginia Slims Championships, which points to WTA Tour Championships, which, in its history section, discusses the Virginia Slims stuff.

What to do?--Bbb23 (talk) 02:19, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

Good place to ask. From my quick look these are all legitimate tournaments that will not be deleted. Today's WTA tour has many tournaments and they are all notable and should all be on wikipedia per tennis project guidelines. However, from 1983 until 1987 the WTA tour was replaced by the Virginia Slims championship series, which is just as viable for being here on wiki as today's tour. These were big events. They may need clean-up but they certainly belong. Fyunck(click) (talk) 03:16, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
This may take a bit of work to clean up. Honestly, I think it may be better if we actually completely re-write the entire series of articles. SellymeTalk 04:28, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Exactly the same problems exist for the (now) ATP men's tour in the 70s and 80s. The name was changed from 1970 Pepsi-Cola Grand Prix to 1972 Commercial Union Assurance Grand Prix to 1977 Colgate-Palmolive Grand Prix to 1980 Volvo Grand Prix to 1985 Nabisco Grand Prix to become ATP tour from 1990 onwards. These 70s and 80s articles are often fairly empty. These are High importance articles in the tennis project, so if possible we should improve them.
While we are at it, I wonder what to do with these sponsor names. Aren't we supposed to try to avoid them in article names? Why don't we agree to rename these articles to for example 1977 Men's tennis and have 1977 Colgate-Palmolive Grand Prix redirect to it? MakeSense64 (talk) 07:23, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm glad people are now looking at it, but at a minimum the series structure needs to make sense, the individual articles need to be looked at, what redirects and doesn't redirect needs to be reviewed, but most obvious to me are the two "main" articles. Why are there two articles that have almost identical names and appear to cover the same topic (1985 Virginia Slims Championships and 1985 Virginia Slims World Championship Series)?--Bbb23 (talk) 15:26, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

They need separate articles. The first is equivalent to the current WTA Tour championships, which are held at the end of the year and only the best 8 players participate. The Series is equivalent to the current WTA Tour, which encompasses all the tournaments in the given season/year. That's why at the bottom of each article you have an infobox with links to the articles for the other years.
The structure is not very clear because the confusing names. That's why I would be in favor of trying to drop the sponsor names. We already did that for more recent years when the WTA Tour was officially named "Sony Ericsson WTA Tour". But the sponsors name was dropped in the article name, e.g 2006 WTA Tour. We can do the same for these older WTA Tour and ATP Tour articles that still have sponsors like Virginia Slims in them. MakeSense64 (talk) 16:57, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Thanks, I think the best thing for me to do now is to bow out and let you folk deal with it. Too much I don't understand.--Bbb23 (talk) 17:07, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
I think dropping the name of the sponsor only works if the remaining name is meaningful and the it shouldn't dropped from 1985 Virginia Slims Championships. In other cases it's fine, but we shouldn't create exotic names for these articles, for example the 1977 Colgate-Palmolive Grand Prix should be renamed to 1977 Grand Prix (tennis) and not 1977 Men's tennis. Armbrust Talk to me about my editsreview 18:52, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
Agree with Armbrust. I was about to say the same thing but he beat me to it. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:32, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
That looks good to me. So we agree to rename them and put the full name including the sponsor in the lede, like is done in 2006 WTA Tour?
What about creating redirects like 1977 ATP Tour which would go to 1977 Grand Prix (tennis)? While the name ATP didn't exist before 1990, most people may not know that and they will search WP for "1977 ATP Tour" rather than for "Grand Prix" or "Virginia Slims Championships" MakeSense64 (talk) 07:17, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Or like we do in many other articles with the lead sentence... The 1977 Grand Prix tournaments (sponsored by Colgate-Palmolive) blah blah blah. We don't have to be cookie cutter the same with every article. The ATP has been around a lot longer than 1990. The "ATP World Tour" began in 1990 but the ATP and its sponsored tournaments has been around since 1972. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:34, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
Good. Then it makes even more sense to create such redirects. MakeSense64 (talk) 15:14, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
I just moved the 70s and 80s main tour pages to non-sponsor names in the "xxxx Grand Prix (tennis)" format. Also updated the "ATP seasons" navigational box to reflect those changes. Hope I didn't make an errors.
I also noted that all these 70s and 80s main tour articles are orphaned pages. For example the 1986 Heineken Open is described as an "ATP tennis tournament", but is that factually correct? Shouldn't it be "Grand Prix tennis tournament" for the years before 1990? MakeSense64 (talk) 08:22, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
I concur and have changed quite a few pages for tournaments saying its an ATP event example between 1970-1989 when it should be Grand Prix--Navops47 (talk) 08:53, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
Thanks. This is a question we should try to resolve. Even though the ATP existed since 1972, is it correct to describe tournaments as "ATP tournaments" between 1972 and 1990? If not then we will have to correct more articles to "Grand Prix tournaments". MakeSense64 (talk) 07:15, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
The answer would be no the historically correct term to use on all articles dated 1970-1989 would be Grand Prix the ATP did gain full control on the tour until 1990 they were involved as part of the Mens Tennis Council made up of representatives from the ITF, ATP and Tournements who adminsitered the tour. I have be changing lots of from ATP to Grand Prix for the years relevant.--Navops47 (talk) 08:26, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Why It Is Difficult To Write About The History Of Open Tennis

I'm not certain if this is the right venue for talking about this, but I thought I should address - given the fresh interest in historical tennis articles like the Virginia Slims World Championship Series - the issue of making progress with them head on.

This may not be true of all contributors to these articles, but the chief reason I have added little on this front is a relative lack of information. We do not know precisely how the tennis tours worked - particularly in the 1970's and 1980's - which in turn means that it is difficult to write articles about them and their tournaments with sufficient knowledge. This has led to one botched attempt in particular to create an article that was well meant but is factually incorrect - this one.

The comment at the bottom of this page is absolutely spot-on - I possess a source which fully refutes the idea that there was such a thing as the Championship Series then. Other sources indicate that there were more than nine big tournaments in these years - unlike this suggestion - and that there were as many as twenty-four tournaments in the Super Series - the chief category of Grand Prix tournaments since about 1979 - of the 1989 (Nabisco) Grand Prix. This last statement is an example of the sort of information that we can infer from sources but cannot necessarily verify because other reliable sources are not openly available.

I emphasise that the article mentioned was well meant - it just needs an overhaul and some reliable information. In the meantime, patience should be the watchword when it comes to writing articles on tennis tours and tournaments of the past - when (reliable) information is available, new (and reliable) articles will be created. Totalinarian (talk) 21:19, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

I have tagged it for factual accuracy, so that other editors are also made aware of it. There is plenty work to do in the older tour articles. MakeSense64 (talk) 07:16, 25 December 2011 (UTC)
I am the creator of that article whilst I accept you may have sources that state the contary I have sources that state other wise the point of the article was to redress the over emphasis on ATP records and stats that were not giving historical players any recognition to winning tournaments that carried ranking points and status equivilent in there day to the Masters Series in this time when I started this article I posted a talk topic on it in these pages and welcomed assistance on compiling the article which was not taken up. I accept that people will dispute elements of it and as was previously said an overall and sourcing of further reliable data is not a problem but to remove the article completely would be an historical error all round.--Navops47 (talk) 08:49, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
I am not suggesting to remove the article. But if there are doubts about factual accuracy then it is something we should try to solve, hence the tag I put. If we have conflicting sources of information, then we can also mention both in the article. Basically we are to report on what we find (in proper sources). MakeSense64 (talk) 07:12, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

WTA color scheme

This is about the choice of colors used for tournaments categories in the 2012 WTA Tour page and the 2012 WTA Tour template. So far we've had dark colors but I think we should use the ones of the player statistics pages (see Wozniacki, Kvitová, Azarenka...). They are 1) much easier on the eyes than the current ones and 2) consistent with the ATP colors and the WTA player pages. I brought this up already a year ago (here and there) but didn't get a lot of response and eventually didn't make any change to the 2011 WTA Tour article. This year I dedided to be bold and go ahead with the new colors (now we have this instead of this), but there have been a couple of reverts already so perhaps we should find a consensus before the season starts. --JMDP (talk) 11:41, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

From what I can see you are completely correct. Those dark colors suck and yours are much much better for the reasons you stated. I'm not as concerned with the pulldown template as it's only a menu and not a chart. I like it better with soft colors but then it would be best if we also changed the 2011 and earlier year templates so they match. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:16, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
I definitely agree with the new softer colors! It is a good idea to change the old seasons colors as well. (Gabinho>:) 19:55, 28 December 2011 (UTC))
Absolutely. If most users are fine with the softer scheme, I'll apply it to the 2009-11 seasons and templates as well. --JMDP (talk) 20:13, 28 December 2011 (UTC)
I see where you guys are going with the softer colours but the WTA had the system changed completly unlike the ATP — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dacreativeimage (talkcontribs) 03:32, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Woman ITF 25k tournaments

A lot of $25k tournament articles have been created this year and are now being deleted. See: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2011 ITF Djibouti Open (1). I am ProDing more, and we may also have to look at the previous years.
I notice that the ITF Women's circuit infobox at the bottom of these pages, has a well-filled subcategory for $25k. That's probably one of the reason why people start making articles for them. Can we agree to remove the $25k category from that infobox template for the year 2008 onwards? MakeSense64 (talk) 07:54, 29 December 2011 (UTC)

Yep. Fyunck(click) (talk) 08:32, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
I also note that for the previous years there are some $100k ITF tourneys that do not have an article. E.g. 2010 Dow Corning Tennis Classic. They should be created while the $10k and $25k get deleted. MakeSense64 (talk) 08:58, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
I also see that there are ITF $25K that are played in combination with an ATP challenger event, which is notable. E.g. 2011 McDonald's Burnie International. So, it looks like we have to keep the $25k section in the ITF women's infobox. I will just clean it of unnecessary entries. MakeSense64 (talk) 09:36, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
The 25K Women tournaments are very notable because Women's 50K tournaments are just a handful comparing to men's 35K. A tournament which offers 50 points for the winner is definitely notable. Many women base their performances on 25K tournaments. I propose that the treshold for notability for women's tournaments to be 25K. Just look at the seeds rankings. They are consistent with the men's seeds rankings for the 35K events. (Gabinho>:) 12:34, 29 December 2011 (UTC))
In addition to what Gabinho wrote there are also ATP Challengers having less than 35k prize money (30k) and they are not deleted as well, so as he said it, I think they should be kept in the way they are.Catgamer (talk) 12:38, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
Just to put this in better perspective. The ATP challenger tour had a total of 150 events in 2011 (including the few odd 30k events). If you count the ITF women's $25k and higher events for 2011, you have 213 of them. So the current guidelines look about right to me. If we were to include the $25k, then we would have 40% more women ITF events as compared to the ATP challengers. I don't see how we would justify giving such an undue weight to women's tennis. And what you are going to do a few years from now, when the men's futures events may pay $25k as well? Create another 200 extra small tournament articles every year? MakeSense64 (talk) 13:27, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
No I just would change it for the women and leave it for the men as it is and in my opinion 40% more tourneys for women isn't such a big difference and of course there are some editors, e.g. Keroks (who has done it for most of 2011 in a fantastic fashion), probably Gabinho and me, that would take care of these little tourneys.Catgamer (talk) 14:50, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
That's all very nice, but WP does not work by your or my opinion. WP works by concensus, and if the concensus is not to have tourneys under $35k then we shouldn't have them. As I learned recently, there is a wikia for tennis where you can create any tennis article that doesn't qualify for notability here, see Tennis Database Wiki. The wikia for icehockey has over 24000 such articles. It offers a way to save your articles (and lot of work) if they are deleted here.
MakeSense64 (talk) 15:27, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
40% more IS a big difference. There are many in wikipedia arguments of the past that don't want the men's challengers being notable. And what about the points that challengers bring the men? This has been brought up here before. The $25,000 ITF ladies event winners get 50 points and 6 wins brings them within the top 200 players. But the bottom of the mens Challengers gives 75 points (80 points if it supplies food and shelter). Winning 3 of these (according to the wikipedia article) will put a male in the top 200 players in the world. The lowest win on the men's challenger tour, which is the lowest notability we have for men, is far more important than a $25,000 ITF ladies victory. That's why we compared to begin with, so we could have a reasonable cutoff. My opinion was even the men's challengers weren't notable but consensus overruled me and I'm fine with that because that's how things work. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:40, 29 December 2011 (UTC)
Right on. Notability does not come from ranking points being awarded at these tournaments (and Futures give ranking points too). And notability can also not be inherited from notable players appearing in them.
These very small tournaments typically get NO in depth coverage in any reliable third sources, and that's why our articles about them contain almost no prose, it's just a list of the participants and results, which can as well be found on the ITF site. One of the principles on WP is that if we can't find well sourced prose about something, then there should not be an article about it. Most of our articles about Challenger tour fail that criterion, so we have put the bar very low already. Now you want to put it even lower by allowing the 25k ITF as well.
I have Prodded all the under $35k ITF tournaments. If editors think that the concensus will be changed in the future, then they can also ask for userfication of these articles WP:USERFY. This will allow the articles to be brought back if and when the guidelines change. MakeSense64 (talk) 08:14, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
This has been brought up before along with the threshold on what makes a player be notable. Having the $35k cut-off for tournaments is reasonable as it helps in making the Men's and Women's threshold somewhat equal. It also makes the cutoff on players the same as tournaments. Bgwhite (talk) 08:18, 30 December 2011 (UTC)
Ok. Then, delete all the 25K tournaments and the related draws. The list is here for the 2011 season: Template:2011_ITF_Women's_Circuit. Also I find it nonsense to nominate them for deletion separately. They should be listed all in an afd and deleted 5 seconds after nomination because it seems consensus was reached by certain users long time regarding the 25K articles. (Gabinho>:) 17:40, 30 December 2011 (UTC))

Now one point that I hadn't considered was something MakeSense64 mentioned. What do we do with a non-notable $25,000 ladies event when it is attached to a notable men's event? I don't think it's been discussed before. My only intent is fairness in notability to our readers and to tennis players and to not bog down wikipedia with trivial events. But now we would have an article on it where both the men and women players would naturally be talked about. In these cases my first thought would be to keep these particular women's $25,000 events. Maybe I would eliminate the respective women's singles and doubles draw pages and just list the semis and finals players on the main page, but either way would be a "fair" solution in my book. Do others have any thoughts about this? Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:35, 30 December 2011 (UTC)

Delete all 25K tournaments as per here. No need to keep unimportant 25K tournaments only because they are tied with men's tournaments (which by the twist of faith have notability being over that 30 or 35K margin). Also if we delete at least one 25K tournament according to guidelines I don't see why we should keep some other 25K's that clearly need to be treated the same. (Gabinho>:) 23:34, 30 December 2011 (UTC))
But the fact those few womens ITF tournies are tied with Men's Challengers might impart a little more notability to the ladies than they might otherwise receive. And it's not just a twist of fate in determining things. The ATP sponsors the mens high level tournaments and the Challenger circuit. What the don't deem ATP worthy is handled by the ITF. The WTA sponsors their own set of tournies too. What they don't is covered by the ITF. The fact that the WTA has thrown way more tournaments into the ITF is what leaves editors and wikipedia in a balancing situation. We could make the ATP mens Challengers and all ITF events non-noteworthy, and it was discussed and consensus said Challengers squeak by in notability. I don't think I've ever seen a tv news report, a newspaper, tennis channel, almanac, etc ever cover a mens Challenger (maybe when Agassi was making his comeback?) so to me they are quite obscure low level tournaments that only need to have the finalists mentioned, not entire draws! But I could not convince enough editors to agree with me. Then I simply moved on to work on what we did agree with and also made sure no one messed with these now legit Challenger events. So again my thoughts are that if a $25,000 ladies event is attached to one of these legit Challengers it might just be enough to tip it into borderline notability. That could easily be added to the guidelines if editors agreed. I just wanted thoughts on what to do so that future editors will have the right info at their fingertips when working on tennis articles. Fyunck(click) (talk) 00:16, 31 December 2011 (UTC)
You have an opinion, I have one. As far as I see we are tied at 1-1 on keeping/deleting 25K ITF events tied with men's challengers. (Gabinho>:) 11:40, 31 December 2011 (UTC))
I didn't ProD the articles where an ITF 25k was bundled in an ATP challenger article. In these cases the ITF 25k gets mention in an article that we shouldn't delete. But I think we can delete the standalone draw articles for them, because they do not meet the $35k minimum. We do not need to adapt our current guidelines for it.
In answer to Gabinho's recent question. Bundling all these articles in one AfD would be a very complicated work, also because it is difficult with the singles and doubles draw content forks for each tournament. And I saw on Fyunck's Talk page that speedy deletion is refused for tournaments User_talk:Fyunck(click)#The_A7_speedy_deletion_criteria. So I have PRODed the 25k, which went reasonably quick with twinkle. Most of the articles should be gone after one week.
I notice that a lot of the 25k articles have been created by User talk:Keroks, who doesn't seem to be on the project here. Maybe he should be invited, so that we spend our time on the articles we do need. Keroks must have spent a lot of time creating these articles, but nobody noticed it.
I think we have newer editors who are not aware that they can join the project tennis (recently, I explained Catgamer how to join here). So how about changing the main project page a bit, so that it is more clear that any tennis editor is welcome to join (and how)? MakeSense64 (talk) 12:32, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

Awards and records in player articles

I notice an ever growing list of awards in the Novak Djokovic article, most of them unsourced. Do we have any guidelines on what awards are to be included in player's articles? I think non-notable awards should be excluded, otherwise the list will become ridiculous.
And how about the records: Novak Djokovic#Records? Things like consecutive titles in Dubai or Serbia Open should not be mentioned in my opinion.
We better try to set some standard before this gets out of control. MakeSense64 (talk) 13:00, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

List of tennis players

We have two top importance list of tennis players articles: List of male tennis players and List of female tennis players.
But as you can see they have evolved differently. Only top 25 men players are in the list, while the women's list includes all top 200 players. As a result the women's list article is well above the 100 kB size limit (223 kB). We can harmonize those lists and improve them to GA status. Ideas? MakeSense64 (talk) 13:44, 31 December 2011 (UTC)

$25k umbrella articles

I had PRODed several $25k ITF women tournaments like Open GDF SUEZ 42 and ITF Women's Circuit Pingguo, but Armbrust has contested these ProDs suggesting that the $35k limit is for the year articles but maybe not for the tournament umbrella articles.
If this is the case then we should update our guidelines accordingly.
But I think this are just non notable $25k, regardless whether it is a tournament by year article or the umbrella article. Before I put them in AfD I would welcome other project members' thoughts on this.
Of course some of these tournaments may upgrade their prize money to $50k in the next years, and then it would become notable tournaments. So, I think the best way is to WP:USERFY or WP:INCUBATE these articles until they reach the notability criteria. MakeSense64 (talk) 07:36, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

If the tourney is only 2008 and later it should be scrubbed as not notable. If on the other hand it also has 2007 and earlier events that were $25,000 then it should be kept. The userfy thing is ok but if we did that to all tournaments "just in case" it seems a bit weak to me for a reason. I think userfy is something to be used if it's extremely likely that in the next year the article would be brought back. Remember also that if it goes up in value but the men's challengers also go up in value it still may not become notable. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:52, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
OK. So, we treat these umbrella articles by the same guidelines. Then all the articles I prodded got to go: Open GDF SUEZ 42 , ITF Women's Circuit Pingguo , Launceston Tennis International , Ace Sports Group Tennis Classic , Mildura Grand Tennis International , Open GDF SUEZ de l'Isère (was only a $10k until 2010) and Plantation Open. Does anybody know how to use twinkle to make a group AfD nomination?
I don't think you can use twinkle to group nominate. I had to do my last set the old manual way. Fyunck(click) (talk) 08:26, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
 Done I group nominated them for you. Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:53, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Project page and portal

I have added tab bars to all project pages and updated the navbox. This should make navigating a bit easier for newcomers. If there are any other suggestions for the project page, then let me know.
I also noticed that Portal:Tennis has not been edited for almost a year and is getting out of date, especially the 'News' section. MakeSense64 (talk) 10:51, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

New invitation template

I have created a invitation template for the project. If you see editors actively editing tennis related articles, than you invite the editor to the project with {{subst:Tennis invite}}. Armbrust, B.Ed. Let's talk aboutabout my edits? 11:51, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

Waaw, after I updated this template Template:WPTennis-tournamenttaskforce-invite I was creating just the same page, only to see that you beat me to it by a few minutes. You must be reading thoughts. MakeSense64 (talk) 11:58, 2 January 2012 (UTC)
Well the creation of the template was inspired by your last comment in the Woman ITF 25k tournaments section. Armbrust, B.Ed. Let's talk aboutabout my edits? 12:17, 2 January 2012 (UTC)

2012 Australian Open – Main Draw Wildcard Entries

What to do with this article: 2012 Australian Open – Main Draw Wildcard Entries ? In AfD it was speedy kept because nominated by a banned user: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/2012 Australian Open – Main Draw Wildcard Entries. But it does fail our article guidelines. MakeSense64 (talk) 10:00, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Another nomination would solve this problem.Lajbi Holla @ meCP 10:27, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
Or we could agree to merge the article, because that's what the AfD seemed to be going to. MakeSense64 (talk) 11:23, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
I don't feel so committed about merging. I followed the wildcard tournament events when it happened, and it looks like an invitation tournament for a majority of Australian players selected by Todd Woodbridge and Pat Rafter. It's seems like much of a hype event and a loophole for creating an extra tournament instead of just giving away wildcards granted by ATP (as it usually happens). Imagine if all other tournaments around the world decide to create pre-inhouse-play-offs and we'll include all of them within the main draw pages (adding the already merged qualifications as well). Ton of data, which are not part of the main draw. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 15:07, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
The US Open also held this kind of wildcard playoffs last year: [6] and did get some media coverage about it. I agree it doesn't need a standalone article. If properly sourced, this kind of wildcard playoffs can get a mention in the main draw article. MakeSense64 (talk) 15:47, 3 January 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, I'm aware that it's new trend but hopefully it won't spread to lower level tournaments. It won't do no good to the articles...Lajbi Holla @ meCP 16:22, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

New articles

Newest tennis articles can be found via this toolserver link New Tennis Articles (toolserver)
It provides a way to monitor new article creation. I have also added it at the bottom of our Project main page. MakeSense64 (talk) 10:06, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

It takes awhile to load but when it does it is quite convenient. Thanks. Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:59, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

I would like to ask the community to find concensus on this article. There is an ongoing "discussion" about the categorization of this exhibition 6-men tournament whether it is a 2011 season or 2012 season event. Not much has been said in the favor of 2012 other than Djokovic's statement that it is his sole preparation for 2012 and that the tournament was moved from January to end of December. Since I don't want to engage an edit war and cross the 3-revert rule limit, I'd like to have a common decision here. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 13:19, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
Some news coverage quotes regarding it as a 2011 event:

  • Times Of India - a New York Times subsidiary "Novak Djokovic ends 2011 in winning style"
  • ESPN "Novak Djokovic ended 2011 in the same vein in which he started the year, beating David Ferrer", "Meanwhile, Rafael Nadal avenged his thrashing at the hands of Roger Federer last month as he closed out 2011 with a victory"
  • BBC "Meanwhile, Nadal and Federer will next play in the season-opening Qatar Open, which starts on 2 January."
  • Sporting Life "Djokovic has been the tennis sensation of the year and he believes he can carry his good form into 2012"
There are precedents for this. E.g. in 1973 Grand Prix (tennis) you will see that the Australian Open was put in the 1973 season , even though it started in December 1972. In 1977 there were two Australian Open , because a change from January to December 1977 Australian Open (January) and 1977 Australian Open (December). Next there was no Australian Open in 1986, because change from December to January again.
This year's Mubadala tournament was pushed into late December, because January 1st is on a Sunday. But it is actually the 2012 edition, and the 2013 edition will probably have finals in January 2013 again. So I would opt for 2012 Mubadala World Tennis Championship and make 2011 Mubadala World Tennis Championship (December) redirect to it. MakeSense64 (talk) 15:43, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
You mention the 1973 Aussie Open but the key point you missed was that it ended in 1973 and that is why it was put in the 1973 season. It may have begun in 1972 but the championships were in 1973. Fyunck(click) (talk) 21:55, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
I agree with MakeSense64. It's not like the tournament's date was moved : since its creation in 2009, it has always been held in the week-end preceding the first official ATP/WTA week of play. This year it's in late December, but it will eventually be back to early January. It happened in 2011, but it is a 2012 event. --JMDP (talk) 15:53, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
We can't be sure about it's final place in the calendar. 2012 tennis season is two weeks shorter than the previous one so it could easily happen that its date remains like this for the upcoming years. It's creation is in 2009 so it's not like a hundred year old tradition to have it at the very beginning of January. I feel it a crystal balling to guess the reasons behind ("Sunday", "eventually be back") as no sources are backing these up and probably none will. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 16:05, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
For me good enough reason is that this tournament was already held for season 2011, in January 2011. I see no reason to put two same tournaments in single season.Nightfall87 (talk) 16:45, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
November-December are generally considered the off-season in tennis, even though you still have the 8 player masters and davis cup final. Whatever happens after this off-season is considered the beginning of the new season. It is also clear from the tournament main article Mubadala World Tennis Championship that it is considered the start of the season. Quoting: "...was created to take place early in the season, before the start of the actual tour events, as a warm-up exhibition for the top players...". The same sentiment is expressed on the tournament website [7] , where you can read right in the heading: "The global tennis season starts here".
This is the 2012 edition and the start of the 2012 tennis season. MakeSense64 (talk) 18:22, 6 January 2012 (UTC)
Well then we would have a problem with the 1977-1985 Australian Opens which were held at the end of December yet always placed in the year they were actually played. Your solution would create a big problem anytime in the future when someone wants to create an exhibition event in November or December, even with only 2 players, that we MUST post-date it to the next year. This was a 2011 event no matter what the tournament calls itself. Fyunck(click) (talk) 21:04, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

So far, we have seen only one source with statement that this edition is part of the 2011 season Times Of India. On the other hand, I have found 3 sources with statement that this edition is part of the 2012 season: ESPN, The Gazette and SuperSport. As most media says it's part of the 2012 season, we must go with it. All material added to Wikipedia articles must be attributable to reliable published sources. BoDu (talk) 12:37, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

Plenty of places talk of this being the end of the year or season tourney. Herald, Tennis Earth, Daily Mail, Khaleej Times Sky Sports and the Jakarta Globe, Pakistan Times, Herald-Sun and Sydney Times all use the AP story of it being the end of the 2011 season. But we also have another pieces of evidence..... that actual date of the tourney itself has it ending in 2011. Most casual readers will look for 2011 events in the 2011 season and those that don't can link back to it easily enough. But I had linked to it from the 2012 season just so it was in both places on the off chance someone looked for it in 2012. I mean this is really inbetween time for players so they play a meaningless exhibition touney to warm up their bones. That's what it's for. Of course it's sort of a kick-start to the 2012 season but an exhibition isn't really part of any season. This one took place in 2011 so we tack it onto the end of the 2011 season. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:06, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
1. Daily Mail, Khaleej Times and Sky Sports do not talk of this being the end of season
2. Is Tennis Earth a reliable source?
3. Herald, Jakarta Globe, Pakistan Times, Herald-Sun and Sydney Times all republished the same story as Times Of India. According to Wikipedia's guideline each single story must only count as being one source. BoDu (talk) 13:39, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
I asked for an admin intervention in this case however unfortunately the current protected version is mixed up (the text is removed while the wikitables with Abu-Dhabi remained). Not the best the way it is now but at least we have one week the get to some decision. I emphasize that the basic of the problem is its date. No matter what happened with the past tournaments or what players think about it or what is hyped about it. It's a simple tournament that was moved to the end of 2011 and thus it qualifies for that season. If there's no other criteria for an all-round season (ATP,ITF,charity matches...whatever) then it lasts from 1st January to 31 December, right? If we let personal interest interfere with this then the result will be that every player will have their season articles ending at different dates. It's obvious that Djokovic would likely want his 2011 wrapped with the Finals and wants a clean card from then on and it's also obvious that the tournament directors want to make this event look more important than it actually is. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 22:02, 8 January 2012 (UTC)
I just want to re-emphasize one thing: the tournament was not moved from one calendar spot to another, like the Australian Open was in '77. Abu Dhabi has had the same calendar spot since 2009: the week before the first official week of play. Because the official year doesn't always start at the same date, Abu Dhabi sometimes falls in late December, sometimes in early January. But the calendar spot is still the same, and I believe the latest edition should be considered the 2012 Mubadala World Tennis Championship, and its page re-named that way. That being said, I also believe the event and the matches should be mentioned on the players' 2011 season articles. --JMDP (talk) 22:48, 8 January 2012 (UTC)

God, I wish you all peace on this matter! I think the only consensus to this matter would be to include it both place and call and let bigones be bigones on this matter. I think both arguments are great, so that is the reason I am calling it down the middle on this one. If you all don't let it be mentioned on both then you all need to remove all non-season exhibitions from season articles, which would avoid this senario from playing out in the future. By the way, if you all do take it off of one it should be done to the other as well, and put onto Djokovic's main page. So, I will go ahead and remove it from the 2012 season page till it can get ironed out. So, you all need to choose to be inclusive on both or deletionist on both and exhibitions. What will the decision be on the matter community?HotHat (talk) 07:27, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

It is only an exhibition tournament, so it does not belong to the official season. But I think our main article about Tennis should have some paragraph explaining the official "season" and the "off-season", so it is good to have this discussion. Most sources consider the ATP tour finals the end of the season, and then the off-season starts (except for the few players who play in Davis Cup final). Off-season lasts until the start of first tournaments of the new season (typically in Australia, Chennai...). Reliable sources mention this off-season , e.g New York Times article. Such articles reviewing the season appear in early December, when the season is considered over. If the season was supposed to last until 31 December, then such reviews would not appear before the last matches of the year are played. Mubadala is a "pre-season" exhibition event. Because it is pre-season it intuitively belongs with the season that comes right after it. On Yahoo answers you can also see that most people consider the season to be roughly January-November: [8].— Preceding unsigned comment added by MakeSense64 (talkcontribs) 09:15, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
That is not intuitive in my book. Off season is off season... that is no season...and it's only for the highest level events. If you are going to put it anywhere it would at least be in the proper year. And I didn't see that percentage in your yahoo link. It also says the best answer is "The tennis season starts end of Jan/Feb with e the first big grand slam in Australia." Well that's nutty. If you ask most readers what year the 2011 tennis season takes place they will say 2011. If you ask them what year the 1986 tennis season took place they will say 1986. Tennis has professional events taking place the week of Christmas such as the "Aberto de Brasilia 2011"... shall we also call that a 2012 event? The tour doesn't. By my count there were 12 men's pro events and 15 women's pro events AFTER the ATP Mens Tour finals on Nov 27, 2011... Right up to Christmas week. And Davis Cup 2011 was also after the Tour finals (Dec 4, 2011). Shall we tell the pro tour and Davis Cup to re-label those tournies as 2012 also? The season starts on January 1st and it was listed on the Djokovic 2011 page correctly. I however also linked it on the 2012 Djokovic page as a courtesy to readers who might look in the wrong place. That seemed fair and the right thing to do. Both were removed, though I understand why the 2012 link was removed since it now linked to nothing on the 2011 page. Fyunck(click) (talk) 09:09, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
Well, "pre" means before, so if a tournament gets described as pre-season it is being linked to the season that follows. The other possibility would be "post-season" and then it would indicate it is attached to the end of the season.
Anyway, there are enough reliable sources that mention and describe the off-season, so we don't need to rely on our intuitive feelings about it. E.g. : [9] and this: [10]. Since we have enough sources about it we should add a paragraph about the "season" and "off-season" in the respective WTA and ATP tour articles. This is then also useful in other cases where the "season" is being considered, for example the season-stats for individual players.
Seasons do not need to be strictly within a given calendar year. An example is the Alpine skiing seasons. See: 2011 Alpine Skiing World Cup, which runs from 23 October 2010 until 10 March 2011. MakeSense64 (talk) 11:45, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
So now we have pre-season, post-season and season with different intervals? Maybe I'm wrong but until a general end-date can't be set in mid-year (more precisely than "sometime in November") - which at the mean time won't change each year - I must say we must stick to the single season with a single date existing at this very moment : that is when the year ends. If you want to pull it earlier what is the permanent date that defines a single moment and not an ever-moving tournament final. And let's say if it's the ATP World Tour Finals then there's the Davis Cup, if there's the DC then there are the Challengers for others (e.g. the 2009 Challenger tour lasted one week after the Finals!). What if a player reaches his breakthrough career peak on the December 4 quarterfinal of the 2009 Yugra Cup/2009 ATP Salzburg Indoors as it was for contemporary top-10 doubles Aisam-ul-Haq Qureshi after the latter competition (ranked 59)? He did that the next year/pre-season/off season? It would be senseless to say that. I think it would cause an immense confusion in all tennis articles if you would agree on anything else than the tennis-unrelated year-end. In any other case consider adding this to all tennis-related pages "...in that year the season ended on xxx November/December...". Wouldn't it be simplier, more comprehensive to all kind of readers and more logical to say December 31? Lajbi Holla @ meCP 12:13, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
Note that in the recent peer review of 2011 Novak Djokovic tennis season, one complaint by the wikipedian who wrote 55 featured articles and seemingly isn't a devoted tennis fan was the lack of explanation of the 250/500 tournaments and how they work. Now you want to divide the season and move their transitions around the calendar? It's like walking backwards. Think with the mind of a laic reader, who doesn't even care to post a question on Yahoo Answers about seasons because he/she only wants to know what Djokovic (or anybody else) achieved in a certain year. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 12:38, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
Just a reminder. What you and I think about the season, off-season and so on doesn't matter. On WP we are only supposed to report on what our reliable sources mention about given topic. We have plenty of sources mentioning the end of the season with the tour finals, and about the subsequent "off-season". We have sources about how ATP and WTA are trying to make the off-season longer. There are media articles about players asking for a longer off-season.
So there is clearly a season and an off-season. It doesn't matter that people may find that confusing. We are supposed to report on what we find. The December tournaments that Fyunck has mentioned are from the Futures tour. The WTA tour season ended in October and the ATP Tour season ended in November, that's what our sources tell us. So, that's what we have to work with. MakeSense64 (talk) 14:29, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
I gave you Challengers too...Lajbi Holla @ meCP 14:51, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
And I must argue with the season-thing as well. The one you are referring to is the ATP season. The word season as in the article title means else for readers (there's no ATP/WTA/ITF in the name). I agree with you on adding the ATP-notion of the season into the Tennis article but for players articles it covers every activity a player does and concerns playing tennis in a given year. Would it be better like this :Novak Djokovic's 2011 year in tennis? I don't think so. For Mubadala it's also obvious that since there are different categories for Category:2011 ATP World Tour and Category:2011 in tennis it goes into the second and not the previous one. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 15:01, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
The last challengers in 2011 were played in the week of 21st November, the same week of the Tour finals.
Okay but now we have this discussion open regarding the seasons we should agree on all grounds to avoid having another one at another article. Or should I jump to the aforementioned two challenger articles and write into them that they weren't on-season tournaments? Lajbi Holla @ meCP 15:46, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
To add this information about season and off-season to ATP tour and WTA tour articles is what I mentioned. Player season articles is a different topic altogether. But for the top players, their official season win-loss record is also taken from their matches in the given ATP (or WTA) season. Results in challengers or exhibition matches are not included in the official player's win-loss record. And all official player stats like aces hit, breakpoints saved, and so on.., are always on the basis of the matches played in the main tour season. So the "season" is relevant for the individual player season articles. Let's also not forget that exhibition tournaments and matches are barely notable. So they shouldn't get much coverage in the individual player season articles, otherwise we can get undue weight problems. MakeSense64 (talk) 15:15, 9 January 2012 (UTC)
I think a Hopman Cup is notable enough let alone the tradition behind it, which is also just an exhibition. And it's the second time I came across the win-loss reasoning... It has nothing to do with consensus but that the ATP is the only referencable(!) record we can put on. We could count the wins on our own but it would have been original research. And since no other sites has the background to track down the matches as their main profile they rely on ATP as official (you can list any betandwin sites here but they all just copy-paste the ATP records). So leave the infobox, W/L and statictics behind. Other than that we CAN decide what to include in a player/season page because there aren't any fully covered articles floating in the internet but we compile it ourselves from a vast collection of sources. As for the Tennis article addition I still agree with you but it has little to do with this debate and the player's season articles in question (that has been admin-protected until we find a solution here - which is the main priority). Lajbi Holla @ meCP 15:46, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

It is a fact that professional sanctioned tennis lasted until the week before Christmas day. There are numerous 2011 tournaments around the world to back that up. Now we also have a set of tournaments sanctioned by the ATP and WTA. Those have a variable off-season...variable between the two and variable from year to year. That doesn't mean no pro tennis is played or that exhibitions aren't played in that off season, but it also doesn't mean that the next season starts either. Just because the press is so attuned to NBA, NFL and MLB style pre-seasons doesn't mean there really is one in tennis. Early lesser sanctioned events have often been called a pre-season for the Australian Open but that's all it is... it's not a real pre-season. And not everyone gets invited to this Mubadala exhibition. Then there's Davis Cup which is sanctioned, a big event, not part of the ATP and after the ATP tour ends. I have seen yearly records in the press that include a player's wins in ATP and Davis Cup. None of this would be talked about if one silly exhibition tournament hadn't decided to play their event entirely within 2011 yet still call themselves a 2012 tournament. One exhibition and we change the official 2011 tennis season from November 28, 2010-November 27, 2011? I'll always go along with consensus but I'm gonna need to see a big poll here before we change to that. I thought it was funny in mid year when I read that Mubadala was moving to be entirely in 2011 yet call themselves a 2012 exhibition event. They can do what they want I said, since they own it and it's not a sanctioned tournament anyway. I guess I was one of the few laughing. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:46, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

Only the Futures/Satellites tour is year-round. The main tours and the challenger tours have a well-known off-season. The season differs from the calendar year. For example in the 2008 season the first tournaments started on 31st December, with several first round matches already in Doha, Chennai, Auckland(ladies) and so on. If you go to WTA tour site and look for Paszek for example : [11]. Select Year 2008 and click search. Her first match in Auckland (against Wickmayer) was played on 31st December, yet it gets counted with her 2008 season for the purpose of win-loss records and so on. Or look up Santoro's season for 2008: [12], his first match in Doha (against Seppi) was played on December 31st, 2007, but counted for their 2008 season. The result of this match was not added to their 2007 record. Qualifiers even started as early as 29th December, but counted for these players' 2008 season records. This clearly shows that "season" is considered different from "year". This doesn't happen every year, but once in a while the season already starts in the last days of the previous year. MakeSense64 (talk) 10:53, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
Correct. It is well known that tournaments have "started" in December but "ended" in January. The Finals ending date has always been the key as to what year the tournament belongs. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:24, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
Although I must note that this doesn't contradict with Fyunck(click)'s thesis whereas the day of the final decides the year which the tournament belong to. So basically we are saying the same. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 14:08, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
It is not that simple. Players like Dushevina and Rodionova were already playing qualifiers for the 2012 Brisbane tournament on 30th December. Men were also qualifying for Chennai on Dec 31st. So they are playing official matches for 2012 season already, and you will see these matches on their 2012 resume on the ATP and WTA sites. On the same day Djokovic, Nadal and Federer are playing exhibition in Mubadala. The Mubadala finals was played when several main tour matches for 2012 season were underway or already finished. Is it then not 2012 season? MakeSense64 (talk) 15:21, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
Okay I have a suggestion. No matter what the outcome of this discussion will be after the protection expires I will mass nominate to rename all the season articles to Novak Djokovic's 2011 year in tennis and the same for other years and players (as btw advised by the peer review just to make it commonly understandable by the viewers). Of course you can add a note to the Tennis article about the definition of seasons as well as a pre-season note to 2011 Mubadala World Tennis Championship (January) and an off-season note to 2011 Mubadala World Tennis Championship (December) or whatever else you'll agree on. The reason is that a reader doesn't want to check two or three more pages just to understand the system of ATP. He only wants to know how many trophies a player lifted in a given calendar year. If he's a die-hard tennis fan then great, he already knows what a season is composed of, no need to split these articles into several seasons. In other words : we shouldn't use tennis-glossary specific terms in titles, if a season has so many variable meanings, then a simplier word is recommended. That's my final vote. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 12:14, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
The title and the lede of an article are supposed to define the "scope" of the article. So an article "xxxx year in tennis" should be about the tennis played in that "year", thus from 1 January to 31 December. But if you have an article "... xxxx tennis season" then it depends what the "season" is. For example exhibition matches are not part of the "season", so they shouldn't be in a "season" article (but they can be in a "year" article). Or when you see discussions about the "greatest season in tennis", then it is not about that player's exhibition results or winning Hopman cup, then it is about that player having a great main tour season (the slams , master titles,..). A person's season record like win-loss is based on his main tour season, not on Hopman Cup results. Exhibitions and Hopman cup are outside the "season" (that's also why they give no ranking points). So, e.g. Djokivic winning Mubadala, it is part of his year in tennis, but it is not part of his official "season". Maybe that clarifies it. MakeSense64 (talk) 13:23, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
And that's exactly what I'm going to do. I think everything relating to tennis should be encompassed within a player's yearly article. This was the main purpose in creating these "season" articles as e.g 2010 Rafael Nadal tennis season includes the Match For Africa in his 2010 page although it was played on 21st December. So until one editor wanted Mubadala to be pushed to the "next" article for no matter what reason it was "clear". So a full year coverage is needed to avoid removing several valuable paragraphs from these pages and considering Djokovic launched Serbia into the Hopman Cup Final and won Mubadala, this statement is underlined twice. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 13:44, 10 January 2012 (UTC)
I find that the statement "when you see discussions about the greatest season in tennis, then it is not about that player's exhibition results or winning Hopman cup" to be inaccurate. In todays games that may very well be true but in tennis history it is incorrect. Too many things were important in the past... winning Davis Cup matches was as important as the Majors, what do we do when there was no ATP tour? We need this to work for everyone, past and future. When we make the "1934 Fred Perry tennis season" it must work just as well as the "2018 Lucia Vrendela tennis season". If a name change is what we need to straighten this out then I have no problem with it. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:38, 10 January 2012 (UTC)


I think you all are going in the correct direction, but now I must weigh in again on the matter at hand. I think a we need to keep the season articles for the regular season and playoffs in tennis such as the 2011 ATP World Tour should be the events covered on the 2011 Novak Djokovic tennis season page, but I might add the ATP does not consider by their calendars the Hopman Cup to be an event. On the other hand, we should create the 2011 Novak Djokovic tennis year to suffice to include the exhibitions with a synopsis of the season, which would include a link to the 2011 Novak Djokovic tennis season, see season is what all other sports use to define what they sanction regular season events and playoffs, which in tennis the playoff is the year end or tour finals in new terms. So, I like the points you all are making by the way though. In addition, the 2011 Novak Djokovic tennis season needs to be reduced in size and scope anyhow, so we might as well use this as a means to an end to accomplish the task of SIZERULE implementation.HotHat (talk) 06:55, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
Wait... so you are suggesting we have a "2011 Novak Djokovic tennis season" article AND a "2011 Novak Djokovic tennis year" article? Both of them? If so I 100% disagree. It needs to be one or the other, we can't have articles bloating out of control. There's too many already with all the yearly pages we have to make to warrant near duplication. Fyunck(click) (talk) 08:55, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
Sorry, first I thought you addressed this to me, but now I see HotHat's idea, to which I also disagree. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 11:01, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
Keep it simple people. One article about a player's year is enough and still you can have your seasons separated to sections within the article. You can have three major headers called pre-season, main season, off-season, or however you want them to be called. That's it. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 11:08, 11 January 2012 (UTC)
  • I get your point, but the Novak Djokovic 2011 tennis year does not adhere to Article titles policy in that "the ideal article title will resemble titles for similar articles, precisely identify the subject, be short, be natural, and be recognizable." So, it does not achieve the NAMINGCRITERIA under the Consistency topic, when it says "Does the proposed title follow the same pattern as those of similar articles?" All teams have seasons not years, and this is probably the same rationale to title them likewise. So, if we are to change the title it will not be done in accordance with policy. See look at the 2010 Green Bay Packers season and the 2011 St. Louis Cardinals season.HotHat (talk) 01:38, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
But it is a guideline not a policy, and a person not a team. With the supposed confusion on what a tennis season is, wouldn't it be better in wiki tennis articles to use 2011 John Doe tennis year just to have peace and get this done with? It's not perfect but at least we'd have everything in the same year and we could dispense with the season dispute. Plus it would be easy enough to move the already created pages with a substitution of year for season. I like "season" better but if we can move on I'd go for "year" instead. Fyunck(click) (talk) 03:58, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
No, it is a policy go and look at the tag on the top of the page, when it says policy. Plus, the title can't just be settled by us we have to research what reliable sources have to say on the matter because "generally, article titles are based on what the subject is called in reliable sources", which most would say season instead of year. The way to solve this is to leave out exhibitions completely because they do not generally arise to the level of GNG, when it comes to a players tennis season in the slightest. Exhibitions like the Hopman Cup or this one would be best chronicled on the main page of Djokovic. Plus, we now have to worry about SIZERULE, which was the impetus for creating these. Now, the 2011 Novak Djokovic tennis season is well over the intended page lengh, and the removal of the exhibitions would help!HotHat (talk) 04:55, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
Yep...my mistake on policy. But again it's not a team and most reliable sources aren't going to talk about Djokovic's entire year so we probably won't find "2011 Novak Djokovic Tennis season/year" anywhere else. We can decide here since consensus still rules the day at wikipedia and seems to trump everything else from my experience. And there is no way to leave out all exhibitions or Hopman Cups or Davis Cups. They are part of what happened during the year and it would be a disservice to wiki readers if they look for it here and fail to find it. We can certainly condense the article to keep it under 100k...I'm not sure what has puffed it up so big. Fyunck(click) (talk) 05:28, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Trying to recollect on what was presented in recent days. I don't think we can create a rigid definition for "tennis season" that would still work for 1934 or will work in 2018 (we don't know the future). The tennis "season" itself is something that has emerged and evolved over time, and is likely to keep evolving. All we can do is try to catch the term "season" as accurately as possible, based on proper sources, and reflecting the changes that have taken place over time. For example season comparisons of players are usually limited to "open era" play, because before that time the tennis was not as clearly organized in a season , making it difficult or impossible to make comparisons to what is currently known as the season.

We already have plenty of material and references to the season, for example also in the article ATP World Tour Finals , where in the history you find this tournament being the described as the "season ending" championship. At the bottom there is also a navigation box called "Year-End Championships". So unfortunately we see here a use of "year" and "season" in a way that could be confusing to readers. The best solution I can see is to reserve the term "year" for calendar year (1 Jan - 31 Dec) as for example in the tennis in xxxx type articles. "Season" would then be reserved for use as in "main tour season", which ends with the "season ending" ATP Tour finals (and WTA Tour Championships for the ladies). By consequence a new season then officially starts with the first main tour play that comes after these Tour finals. The off-season is then easily defined as the period between Tour finals and first ATP tournaments (usually in 1st week of January, but may already begin in the last days of December, depending on the calendar). This is also how most reliable media use the terms season and off-season in tennis. Because it is of course the main tour play that is most notable in tennis.
If we can agree on this then tennis in xxxx articles would be about the year, while any kind of "season" article would be limited to play on the main tour season. Exhibition play and Hopman Cup can be mentioned in the player's main article and in the tennis by year articles, but it is outside the season. Davis Cup is a bit more difficult as it now also gives ATP points, so is not totally outside the ATP Tour anymore.
Keeping the individual season articles to the "season" only would keep their scope to the tennis that really matters and prevent these articles from becoming too long. I think generally we need to learn to "summarize, summarize, summarize" as an editor put it on some other Talk page. Many of our tennis articles suffer from being too detailed. We are not supposed to report on everything that has a source. Per WP:NOTNEWSPAPER we are not to include every "routine sports news reporting", but unfortunately that's what is being added in many player's articles every week, leading to overly long season sections (or even articles). Project Tennis has a real problem there. In some of the top 10 player's articles there are career by year sections that are very long but do not have a single source (especially from 2009 onwards). I tagged some of them recently.
I wonder whether we should ask a RfC on our tennis player and individual season articles. Some outside comments could really help us gain clarity. Are they too long? Should we summarize more, and if so how much more? That will be better then work on these articles only to see large chunks of them deleted by the community later on. MakeSense64 (talk) 11:27, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Then please read the peer review. Everything is there. Nothing about length though. It even asks for addition (!) for clarifying the terms 250 and 500 tournaments. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 14:23, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
What you need is wikilinks to the page where special terms are explained. Just like you don't need to explain what a "bird" is in every article about a bird species, you don't need to explain what 250 and 500 tournaments are in each article about tennis. This peer review is mainly the review of one person and addresses problem of style and so on. That's really a different question from the issue of length of these individual season articles and the intricate details we now typically see in them. It has almost reached the point where every match the player plays gets mentioned (not rarely complete with details like setpoints wasted or coming back from a set down), even for unimportant exhibition matches. That's too much imo. MakeSense64 (talk) 15:39, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
A peer review is for getting an article ready for a GA or FA nomination. It's more than an RfC. The reviewer wikipedian is the 6th on the featured article all-time list so his opinion weighs a bit more for me. He would have noted if he had a problem with the length and also if he needs explanation about tournaments then we should/could insert this for better understanding. Just an idea. Otherwise I collected some recent edits that cost 1000K or more in the article. Having these cut out it could be easily trimmed down.
  • The addition of Finals. Totally superfluous. (3,274 Kb)
  • The addition of French_Open second paragraph :"In what many tennis analysts proclaimed the greatest match of 2011 and an instant classic". Fails WP:PEACOCK. (1,480 Kb)
  • I added Awards_and_nominations also I'm not objecting removing it as it got flooded and unsourced. (1,508 Kb with expansions)
  • Adding atpworldtour link to every single match. (5,552 Kb)
  • I extended the Statistics table with match details. Could be removed. (3,076 Kb)

Lajbi Holla @ meCP 16:23, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

I just took a quick look at the season page you mention. There really are serious problems with the English language on that page. For example it is full with sentences starting "Djokovic would...". That's not proper English. You probably put a lot of time in that page, and I don't want to sound too hard, but there is lot of summarizing and cutting left to do before this can become a good article. Some of the special tables and templates that were made for Djokovic only are also questionable. I will comment on the relevant Talk page when I have more time for it. MakeSense64 (talk) 08:51, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
Now you know what we are talking about...that "would" caused my eye twitching too. I haven't written text in it, but helped to referefence much of it, and yes added some wikitables/infoboxes/templates. But that's another page of the matter (apart from season/exhibitions discussion), but I hope you will have a longer look at it and keep on contributing to the page because it's worth the attention. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 09:36, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
And here we can also see another example how season was considered rather than year. Look at 1980 Volvo Masters. The season ending championships was held in mid January 1981, yet it belongs to the 1980 season. And the article was not named 1981 Volvo Masters (January), which is what we would do if we strictly considered calendar year. This situation lasted till 1986, when you had 1985 Nabisco Masters, played in January 1986 and the 1986 Nabisco Masters, played in December 1986. This earlier example also supports using 2012 Mubadala World Tennis Championship rather than 2011 Mubadala World Tennis Championship (December). MakeSense64 (talk) 11:45, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
It was started with 2012 in its title. Then I asked the project about it. It was discussed here. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 14:31, 12 January 2012 (UTC)
I agree with the suggestion that we do not have to include exhibition matches. I think that we should change the name of 2011 Novak Djokovic tennis season article to 2011 Novak Djokovic ATP World Tour. Obviously, we should make the same type of change to the other individual season articles. BoDu (talk) 13:39, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
If we agree not to include exhibition matches, then there is no need to rename all these pages. Other than exhibition play there is not that much that is really outside the season. MakeSense64 (talk) 14:08, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
In the 2008 ATP Tour the Davis Cup wasn't included at all, which is important even if it didn't distribute point at that time. So 2011 Novak Djokovic ATP World Tour and any rename mangling with ATP would result in the exclusion of the DC prior 2008. Same goes for the season. So renaming is vital and the omitting of words referring to ATP/WTA as a sole governing body would be necessary (DC is organized by the ITF). Lajbi Holla @ meCP 15:06, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
We can rename individual season articles from 2009, while those prior 2008 leave with the current name. Anyway, I am not eager for this suggestion. BoDu (talk) 14:31, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
Vice Versa. Renaming prior to 2008 and leaving the current. Although a general naming convention would be preferred. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 14:36, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Timelines templates

I don't know if there has been comment or discussion about the timeline templates that our friend Lajbi has been making for Djokovic. See Template:Novak Djokovic 2009 career timeline , Template:Novak Djokovic 2010 career timeline and Template:Novak Djokovic 2011 career timeline
Similar templates are being used in other articles, e.g. Template:Timeline of the Roman Empire and one of the advantages is that the items in the timeline can be made wikilinks that take you to the relevant tournament article.
Personally I would alter them a bit. The ATP ranking and YTD ranking is not really needed and can easily be described in short prose in our articles. But the timeline could be made to include the results that player achieved in the tournaments. For example below Australian Open could be "SF" if player reached semifinals, or R3 if player reached third round, and doing that for the main tournament that player has played. That way a player's season becomes visible in one timeline and we can have good year sections with less prose than we have now, making for more readable articles that stay under the 100kB limit more easily. Thoughts? MakeSense64 (talk) 09:58, 13 January 2012 (UTC)

It is basically and mainly desgined to be used in conjunction with Template:Horizontal timeline where you can attach all other necessary information above the scale. See 2011_Novak_Djokovic_tennis_season#Timeline. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 13:34, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
But I foresee this discussion focusing on Djokovic's own navbox and resulting in the removal of timelines from it, which I don't oppose to . Lajbi Holla @ meCP 13:39, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
I see what you mean. I am not sure it is even allowed to use wikilinks that go straight to template namespace. Templates are supposed to be used inside articles. Here is the navbox: Template:Novak Djokovic navbox. The timelines link to the template pages. Can somebody confirm if this is OK? MakeSense64 (talk) 14:05, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
I found nothing against it as a rule. Although there was a discussion here with mixed opinions. So it is not forbidden. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 14:58, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
That link is from the village pump, but it are not mixed opinions. They make a clear distinction between #1: putting a template within a template (which is clearly OK by transclusion,) and #2: using direct wikilinks that go to a Template page, which is unanimously described as "bad". You are creating these templates but proper use for them is to transclude them inside other articles, not have links that go directly to them. As such the links that you have added in the Djokovic navbox are not OK. Better remove. MakeSense64 (talk) 10:19, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
The result of the Tfd Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion/Log/2007_September_16#Templates_that_link_to_templates was no consensus not bad. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 14:42, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
Yes, but that's almost 5 years old discussion and concensus can change. If you click on any of the templates that were kept back then you will see that they now all redirect to a normal article: Roads in Canada. So the wikilinks to a Template page have been removed eventually. If in doubt you can also ask a RfC about it. MakeSense64 (talk) 15:39, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
Upon this logic all consensus is questionable...Lajbi Holla @ meCP 16:14, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
Yes, definitely. It is a firm principle on WP that concensus can change, especially when it is not a very recent concensus. See: WP:TALKEDABOUTIT MakeSense64 (talk) 16:30, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
In that particular case it was deletion nominator NE2 who overruled the TfD on the SAME DAY it was closed. Those templates were created as redirects the same day the debate was closed so the archived links in the debate are now altered. He also arbitrarily changed the destination link from template to article. See [this]. I guess WP:BOLD doesn't mean to not obey to votings outcome. Anyway as you can see there are no direct guidelines against it till to this day and has as many votes for it as against it so let's just move on. I guess it answers your original question. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 16:51, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
When I first saw the timeline my first thoughts were ...really? a timeline for a single season? The Roman Empire was mentioned above which is great since I feel these sort of timelines are better for a career than a single season. So a main page item or lifetime statistic page item, but not really needed for a single season. Fyunck(click) (talk) 18:41, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
I've created it to have a quick graphical overview of the season and for two main goals:
  • provide the readers a tour calendar without(!) forcing them to have the current ATP world tour wikipage opened at another tab in their browsers.
  • to have a trackable chronological diagram of the rankings change throughout the year, which - as far as I know - isn't present on any of the wikipages (and I'm not only talking about the world number one)
  • (not to mention that with the Horizontal timeline template it could embed everything that the article is about and it's easy for the eye.)
Once again keep it simple. Look with eyes of a 45 year-old housewife e.g... She won't understand a word in a season article and can't image how the season looks (not to mention he won't know what the season means and is composed of). This timeline will help her for sure. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 19:46, 13 January 2012 (UTC)
It can be a navigation aid. But the ranking change throughout the year is not very important, players themselves are also much more interested in titles than in ranking. Ranking can be mentioned in the main player article, for example in a small table showing their yearly highest and lowest ranking , plus the year-end ranking. In individual season article it takes like one sentence to mention year high-low and end ranking, and that's about all the space it deserves.
I can't mind read Rafa... Let's not decide here how rankings should be valuated. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 17:12, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
A timeline for entire career, as Fyunck suggests, would probably have to be limited to the 4 slams in every calendar year. Otherwise the timelines will become too long and/or unreadable. I think season timelines can be useful for making the player's GA more accessible and easy on the eye. But I don't know yet how difficult or easy it is to make these yearly timelines. Perhaps Lajbi can tell. MakeSense64 (talk) 11:50, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
It's easy. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 14:42, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
I examined the Formula one template and I can assure you that using the {{#switch:{{{1}}} syntax it is possible to have one season template for all players after which a "player code" will be enough to mark anything on the calendar specific for that player (wins, number 1 spans, whatever we agree on). After that it could be easily summoned like that e.g. :{{2011 season timeline|Federer}}, which would result in the same timeline containing Federer's achievements. It would be then easier for editors to handle. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 17:12, 14 January 2012 (UTC)
My prefered choice would simply be Pre-Open Era records men and women (1877-1968) everything in 2 articles. Open Era records (1968-present) men and women everything in 2 articles, which would include the current ATP and WTA records and TMS records articles and other relevant and current stuff, Grand Slam Tournament Mens/Womens records (1877-present)2 articles and Davis Federation and Hopman Cup Records (1900-present) 1 article covering all international related stuff one article. Players individual records could all simply be on their personal pages so doing away with a lot of stuff on the current list of open era records its repeating anyway and possibly a final article called Tennis Trivia Records (1877-present) which could include all things like most aces, fastest, longest, shortest, etc so out of the 35 we currently have we would have 8 just a start--Navops47 (talk) 14:02, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

No scores in prose

We have a guideline to avoid scores in the prose of our articles. See WP:TENSCR. Many of our editors don't know, and are adding scores in player and tournament articles every day. We should remove them and refer to WP:TENSCR in the edit summary. This will then hopefully change this habit. Articles are really difficult to read when they are full of scores. MakeSense64 (talk) 14:50, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Here is the discussion that they had if you want to read it about the rule TENSCR.HotHat (talk) 07:06, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
Just for new editors to remember, it's a guideline not a rule. There are times when out of the ordinary scores should be added. And when they are added they should not include the tiebreak (unless that too is really out of the ordinary). Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:21, 17 January 2012 (UTC)
That's useful. Maybe we should organize some cleanup project some day, at least for the top 10 male and female tennis player articles. There are plenty of scores to be removed in tennis articles.
Some other problems I encounter rather frequently:
  • Too often I see mention of how many minutes a match (or even set) took. This is unnecessary cruft, except for a few special cases (for example a record long match or set).
  • I also see too frequent references to the nationality of the players. E.g. in sentences like "The Serb took the first set from the Frenchman". Nationality is an accident of birth, so we don't need to mention the nationality of players over and over in the same article. We better use the player name, and can switch to "he" or "she" once in a while for variation. Nationality is already mentioned in the player info box.
MakeSense64 (talk) 14:43, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
  • I agree about removing constantly calling a player by nationality is unprofessional. In addition, it is entirely unprofessional to use he/she in an encyclopedia or professional academic medium. We must refer to the players by the last name only.HotHat (talk) 04:09, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
  • Why? It gets boring as all giddup to constantly say Federer, Federer Federer... sometimes to change the pace it sounds perfectly fine to use he or she. I don't have a problem with Roger either if it's used sparingly. Fyunck(click) (talk) 05:36, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
He/She is absolutely okay. In some special cases I would also accept the nationality when it "counts" (home crowd, countryman opponent or in doubles - calling Lllodra-Zimonjic the Serb/French duo doesn't deteriorate the article in my eyes). Lajbi Holla @ meCP 09:18, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

My question is simple. Does this template has to begin with the open-era or is it possible to extend it beforewards? Perhaps in another template? Because I've just come across some real valuable copyright-free tennis newspaper scans, which e.g. lists the "International Tournament Schedule" for 1931 (including the Davis Cup ties). With its help articles such as 1931 in tennis could be easily created. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 09:35, 24 January 2012 (UTC)

No way does this have to be only the open era. I'm not very fond of all the "open era" records as it is. And I keep seeing edits to the page List of open era tennis records and wondering where is the same charts for all of tennis history. Go for it imho. Fyunck(click) (talk) 09:55, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
One the newspapers mentions the longest point in history, which lasted 15 minutes and 425 strokes (and was a match point in addition to this). It took place in Bordighera between Lucia Valerio and Phyllis Satterthwaithe in 1929. It also mentions the shortest match, which was 13 minutes long. It was a doubles match played by the "'Allan brothers" in Montreux in 1927 July. I guess none of these records were broken to this day. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 12:55, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
love it! Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:44, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
Agree with both your points I'm all for showing readers the full picture of tennis history maybe there should be a List of pre-open era tennis records? at some point--Navops47 (talk) 03:43, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Also some serious notable articles are missing including the mixed doubles for the 1924 Summer Olympics, whose champions Hazel Wightman and R. Norris Williams are "suddenly" the defending champions for this year's Olympics. I'm also working on the 1929 Wimbledon Championships - Women's singles since one of the aforementioned newspapers has the complete scoreboard. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 09:12, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Not sure if there should be a list of pre-open records when we could simply have a List of tennis records and include all the players, open-era or not. Fyunck(click) (talk) 09:20, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Yes that would be fantastic and makes a lot sense. I'm really interested in seeing the comparisons side by or up and down--Navops47 (talk) 09:30, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Found this interesting comparison article Deconstructing-no-1-the-top-16-women-who-dominated-on-the-tennis-court one for the List of tennis records at some point--Navops47 (talk) 10:37, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
I would completely agree to List of tennis records. Just keep the pre-open era at the bottom, because the open era is more actual. We already have a lot of articles devoted to tennis records of some kind (many of them problematic articles lacking sources): Fastest recorded tennis serves , List of non-Grand Slam tennis statistics and records , WTA Tour records , ATP World Tour records , List of open era tennis records , Longest tennis match records , Shortest tennis match records , Longest tiebreaker in tennis
Not sure what is meant by "keep the pre-open era at the bottom, because the open era is more actual." Tennis records are tennis records and there were great players and records set in 1925, 1950 and 2005. I have no idea what you mean by putting stuff on the bottom of the page just because they are old. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:48, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
So that's 8 different tennis records articles (= too much). Maybe we should try to merge them into two: one for the men and one for the women: List of tennis records (men) and List of tennis records (women). Keeping them in one article would probably become too long. But I am open to other ideas , as always. MakeSense64 (talk) 12:15, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Agreed, but I'd rather leave the parentheses from the titles. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 12:27, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
There is more stuff. Here is a list of lists : List of lists of tennis records and statistics and some pre-open era records are in this article: Tennis male players statistics (have tagged it for lacking sources). We need to bring some sanity in these tennis records articles. MakeSense64 (talk) 12:34, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Agreed totally I'm not experienced enough in attempting big moves or merges but creating possibly one master article present-past so to speak. Would the use of drop down boxes similar in the case of Roger Federer's records section there growing all time, help solve the issue of size certainly easier to navigate--Navops47 (talk) 12:44, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Performing mergers is not a problem, but we have to agree what to merge and where. Once merged we can improve the articles and use collapsible tables where needed. But using collapsible boxes does not change the size of the article. The 9 records list articles we have now are about 290kB together. This size would probably be reduced by removing some repetitive material, but will still be too much for one article. So, we will need two or three. MakeSense64 (talk) 12:58, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Just the references would take up weeks to find. These are all unreferenced and unupdated material, which makes the pages resemble more to a forum post than an actual encyclopedia. And the shortest and longest matches by year...are they necessary? Lajbi Holla @ meCP 13:11, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Unfortunately such is the case with a lot of tennis articles. All we can do is start somewhere. Since this involves possible merger of 5 or more articles it is something that needs to be done by the tennis project. Too much for a single person. We have to decide what to merge, and then we will need serious cleanup of the merged articles, and we will end up with a lot of unsourced items (which are probably correct, but we will need sources to keep them). But WP is always a work in progress, so we have our time for it. MakeSense64 (talk) 13:29, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
I would the reduce the current 35 lists/articles under these headings Pre-Open Era Records (1877-1968) men and womens articles everything we have merged into that Open Era Records (1968-present) men and womens articles everything we have merged into those including TMS Records, ATP World Tour Records and WTA records minus the GS stuff, Grand Slam Tournament Records (1877-1968) men and womens articles. Grand Slam Tournament Records (1968-present) men and womens articles everything we have in those including intergrating the Pro Slam information or if thats to big having 1 combined Pro Slam Records article and moving stuff like win/loss percentages etc that are spread across a number of these articles so we keep all GS/PS stuff relevant to those article only. Davis Federation and Hopman Cup Records (1900-present) one article covering the international team info possibly Tennis Trivia Records (1877-present) which could include all fastest longest hardest shortest stuff. Players individual records showing on both their profile article and in list of open era records could simply all be on the players pages. So we could end up with 10/11 just a thought--Navops47 (talk) 14:25, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Further optional reduction to Tennis Major Records 1877-present, Tennis Tour Records 1877-1968 Tennis Tour Records 1968-present, Tennis Team Records 1900-present, Tennis Trivia Records 1877-present starting point first Major Wimbledon now down to just 5 articles that was easy lol--Navops47 (talk) 14:50, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
The above could link in with existing or slightly renamed articles Tennis, Tennis History, Tennis Play, Tennis Players, Tennis Technology, Tennis Years, Tennis Tournaments etc--Navops47 (talk) 15:08, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

It's not just the size we are talking about it's length. (there's a joke in here somewhere). When you have charts it may only be 50k in size but you might have to scroll down 10 pages to see it all. I agree there are way too many "record" pages but how to split them? Tennis history is very staggered. It is not baseball. We have 1920 (end of the challenge era), 1925 (start of the Majors as we know them today), 1930s (split of the pros), April 28, 1968 (Open Era begins), 1972 (ATP starts), 1973 (WTA starts), 1970s (WCT/ATP Wars), 1990 (ATP tour).... the reason there are so many charts is that there are so many separations in tennis history and the press/media talks about them all. I hear at Wimbledon talk about records in the challenge era and I'm guessing that people go to look up those records. I hear media mention about records of the pro slams and all the separators I mentioned above... people will look for those records if the press talks of them. So while I agree that there are too many charts it's not all the fault of the editors here. Tennis articles are often a mess because the history of tennis is so convoluted that it necessitates many articles. We have to be careful what we merge and how we merge them. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:48, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

We all agree we need to start something I have listed what I think new/merged articles should possibly be called so technically you could cover (end of the challenge era, start of the Majors, split of the pro's) Pre Open Era records 1877-1920 Pre Open era records 1920-1968 Open Era Records 1968-present for me is the historically correct start point for the whole modern professional game today the current ATP World and WTA Tour Records omit valuable historical data from 68-72/73 in all areas so readers go looking elsewhere for key missing information which is why we have ended up with other articles trying to fill in those gaps by being expanded and I will admit I am one of those continually expanding the list of open era records which actually makes no sense at all when we should simply include the all WTA ATP post 68 stuff together because those pages are receiving the highest page view visitor stats. We could keep those articles simply rename them and integrate the list of open era records into them. At the moment case in point I'm trying to tidy up the WTA tour records page to look more like the ATP one but have been removing some of Margaret Courts, Billie Jean Kings and Evonne Cawleys key records 68-73--Navops47 (talk) 22:03, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
One thing though is we need a page or pages of records that cover ALL of tennis history. When I see slam winners, consecutive tournaments won, longest matches, etc... I don't want to see 1968 onwards. I don't want to see 1877-1968. I don't think readers do either. They want to see all-time records, period. For instance when I look at Major tournament winners I expect to see Court at the head, with the top 5 being Court, Graf, Moody, Evert, Navratilova. There may be a separate page for pre-68 and post-68, but there must be a page for all tennis history also. Fyunck(click) (talk) 22:37, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
I agree totally I did say earlier merging all Grand Slam (Major) stuff from 1877-present. the tricky part is what to call all other 1877-present so you get a complete picture so to speak so we include people like Budge, Perry. Hoad, Tilden or Gonzales Career peformance records win/loss ratios for events other than GS. wait how about All Time Tennis Records 1877-present All Time Grand Slam Tennis Records 1877-present just playing about with the wording--Navops47 (talk) 22:58, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Except for wiki standards wouldn't it have to be "All-time tennis records 1877-present" and "All-time Grand Slam tennis records 1877-present?" If it's truly "all-time" do we need the date range added? Others choices could be simply "Tennis all-time records and statistics" and "Tennis all-time Grand Slam tournament records and statistics" since "Major" and "Grand Slam tournament" are pretty much synonymous but just "Grand Slam" really means something much different in tennis and we could have a problem with the playing card game. This is something where I would love to have all the tennis stat pages printed out and covering my floor where i could see it all at once. Then cut sections and add them here and there and combine this and that. I'm sure when I was finally happy with what I was seeing a gust of wind would sweep through and destroy everything so I'd have to start again. Or it would takes me weeks to fix and when finally brought to wiki it would be shot down by consensus to frustrate me no end. :-) Fyunck(click) (talk) 23:39, 25 January 2012 (UTC)
Agree I would support both those article names All Time is All Time and (drop the date ranges)--Navops47 (talk) 00:19, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
Looking at this Chicago Style Guide, "greatest pancake of all time" but "all-time record." Fyunck(click) (talk) 00:47, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
So if we agree to follow this route there would be a mens and womens Tennis all-time records and statistics and mens and womens Tennis all-time Grand Slam tournament records and statistics look and sound excellent to me I have created an experimental sandbox here User:Navops47/sandbox but I am using the original WTA tour records template/info please feel free to add and or change stuff--Navops47 (talk) 01:26, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
I agree on restructuring into the 4 main articles mentioned in the previous comment, though the first name may have to include 'non-Grand Slam', or it should link to the Grand Slam article. In the main articles, links could appear to other articles with less important records where needed. There certainly is repetitive information right now in different articles. But I'm in general against discarding information unless no sources can be found after careful looking for these. It is also possible to make one top-level article Tennis records and statistics containing only the most important stats (total slam wins, career match and tournament win counts) for both men and women in which the 4 mentioned articles are linked to. Gap9551 (talk) 18:42, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Proposed creation merger of all tennis records statistics into less articles (if possible)

Hi Moving on from the previous discussion I have created this draft User:Navops47/Draft_Article/_Tennis_mens_all-time_Grand_Slam_tournament_records_and_statistics please look at the layout I have come up with add your comments good bad crap etc. We could then do this for Tennis womens all-time Grand Slam tournament records and statistics and create the other non-GS ones.--Navops47 (talk) 05:22, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
Continuing this discussion here, now that it is under relevant topic header.
I would avoid the words "all-time" and "statistics" in the name. Just List of men's tennis records and List of women's tennis records will do, especially if we are going to merge the records into these two articles.
I have been thinking about the problem of different eras in tennis, and agree with doing away the distinction because this ends up being unfair to players who played their career stretching over several eras. But I think there is a more elegant way to bring the open-era in. For example if we make a list by grand slam titles won, then we can mark the players who played only in "Open-era" in a different color. That way we would see that Margaret Court tops the list, but Steffi Graf will be in Open-era color, so we can equally easily see that she has most slam victories in open era, all from one table. Using this method we can always have the all-time and the open-era records together in the same table. This will help with the size and readability of the article, probably allowing us to fit all records in these two main list articles. MakeSense64 (talk) 07:56, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
There is a problem with that method. There may be a list of 10 or 15 players and most might be in the pre-open era. That would leave only room for a couple modern players to be listed. When the press talks about an open era record placement, a reader will come here and not find that player on a list at all. I also can't believe we could fit all the different charts onto two or three pages let alone one page. Fyunck(click) (talk) 08:10, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
The fact is that pre-open era players do have big records which as you say would reduce the post 68 players records thats just historical fact you can't argue with that. Until we agree on headings then start to work on drafts agreeing (content top10 or Top 15 etc,inclusion exclusion of things) we can see where we are going with the information. OK say we start with 4 List of men's tennis records,List of women's tennis records, List of men's grand slam tennis records, List of women's grand slam tennis records we have about 35 articles.--Navops47 (talk) 10:16, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
Agreed. ATP promotes the open era but in tennis in general oldies will definitely lead the charts. Anyway there's still Karlovic, Isner and Mahut with their respective records. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 10:26, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
We all need to compromise and come to some consenus otherwise we'll do nothing meanwhile more articles could be created, Fyunck(click) you are correct about post 68 players but that would mainly be in GST area they would come into there own in the non-Major records article. The draft above has been re-jigged section layout wise how do you feel about that what have I missed? --Navops47 (talk) 10:39, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
This site is doing what were proposing in the some GS areas anyway http://mcubed.net/tennis/consec.shtml
I guess I'd have to see what one article looks like. It seems like it would be awfully long but maybe it will all fit better than I realize. One thing though, you act like we're in a hurry–––we need to give everyone a chance to see what's going on here. This was brought up on the project about a day and a half ago with this section starting just today. There could be many others completely against it that only come on every few days and to ramrod something through quickly would seem to me not the best route we should take on wikipedia. (You know the place... where everyone always agrees and has happy smiling attitudes ;-) I would like to see an article made in a userspace, have time for us to talk it through for a few days, and post a link here so anyone could comment about tweaks. If all looks well then we could implement it and work on the rest. Fyunck(click) (talk) 11:01, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
I'm fine with that and I have commitments outside of wikipedia I wasn't suggesting get in done in the next few days or even weeks not beyond 4 anyway (smiling)--Navops47 (talk) 12:46, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
I think we should take it step by step, and then see what can be done next (renaming is not the first thing to do). Imo, the first articles to merge into others are the ones about longest and shortest match, longest tiebreak and fastest serves. These are very small articles that do not really need a standalone article at all. I don't think we will have disagreements about them, so that's what I would start with. We can be bold and just go ahead with that. The question is then: where do we merge them? I think we should merge into the existing WTA tour records and ATP tour records articles, because they are most developed already. If that goes well we can start thinking about bringing the pre-open era stuff in. MakeSense64 (talk) 13:33, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
Hi I have created this page to experiment on New Article proposal and a Talk page here. Don't know if I have done this correctly more experienced editors can advise in answer to MakeSense64 point what you have suggest to do first would be a List of ATP and WTA tour records and possibly group the fast longest stuff into List of other tennis records.--Navops47 (talk) 06:52, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Tennis figures are presumed to be notable if they

Hi need someone clear something up for me Wikipedia:NTENNIS#Tennis regarding notability this statement 'Tennis figures are presumed to be notable if they have competed 'past participle, past tense of com·pete (Verb) Verb: Strive to gain or win something by defeating or establishing superiority over others who are trying to do the same'in the main draw in one of the highest level professional tournaments: GS YEC, 1000, 500, 250 events can someone define 'figures' to me, I understand that to mean how many finals sf's, qf's, consecutives, w/l ratios, title wins, losses, match wins, losses, appearances, fastest etc anything that's Figure a synonym for number and here http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/figure_1?q=figure. or figures (p) 'Definition or the symbol for a number or an amount expressed in numbers' is related to a players career performance achievements (records correct?) or am missing something--Navops47 (talk) 13:24, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

It is clearly about players, as you can see in the very beginning of that article. MakeSense64 (talk) 13:35, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
Actually, in WP we are supposed to avoid too much stats, numbers and so on, unless we have our reliable sources talking about these numbers. See: WP:NOTSTATSBOOK MakeSense64 (talk) 13:40, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
And this dictionary definition 'Records'. a. An account, as of information or facts, set down especially in writing as a means of preserving knowledge. b. Something on which such an account is based. c. Something that records Information or data on a particular subject collected and preserved: 3. The known history of performance, activities, or achievement: 4. An unsurpassed measurement: also applies to this article List of open era tennis records dictionary point 3 constitutes a record by definition if it is here http://www.atpworldtour.com/Players/Player-Landing.aspx or am I missing the point again --Navops47 (talk) 14:27, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
When we talk about tennis records (or sports records in general) then it is understood to be in sense #4. So you can have record fastest serve, or record in 100m sprint (athletics)... then we are obviously not talking about the "record (of information about)" all times that have been recorded on 100 m sprint, because that would be an endless list. So it is "record" as in "world record" MakeSense64 (talk) 15:21, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

When is a tournament considered to be new?

At Wikiproject:Formula One there has been discussion about whether a team is considered to be new after either rebranding or ownership change or both. A similar issue is around tennis tournaments, too, when tournaments are relocated. For comparision, the practise with F1 team articles is that rebranding means that the team, despite the same factory, is considered to be new, and that's also how most statistics pages calculate statistics. Of course, in tennis tournaments' case it's not relevant to say rebranding means a new tournament, as tourneys names can chage to "Sponsor A Open" to "Sponsor B Cup" from year to year. But what creates the identity of a tennis tournament is its location. So, is a relocated tournament a new tournament? ATP considers Winston-Salem to be a new tournament, whereas Brisbane is considered to be continuation of Adelaide and Gold Coast by ATP and WTA. Yet, at Brisbane International's website, you can find only the Brisbane tournaments' results:

http://www.brisbaneinternational.com.au/event-guide/honour-roll

So, with Wikipedia's F1 policies Winston-Salem would have an own article as a new tournament, and Brisbane/Adelaide/Gold Coast would be a bit controversial. But, should a relocated tournament be considered as new, and have its own article. --August90 (talk) 19:31, 23 January 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it's as simple as if it's moved it's a new article. The US Championships has moved as has the Australian Championships. Or events like the British Hard Court Championships. We also have to be careful about what an actual tournament website does as opposed to consensus in the media. Look at RolandGarros.com and you'll see it calling itself one of the grand slam tournaments. That's all well and good but under past winners it lists all the way back to 1891 where it was neither held at Roland Garros nor one of the grand slam tournaments. My point is only that I don't think tennis tournament names fit into a one size fits all mold and we have to take them one by one. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:26, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
Yeah, there's really no "one size fits all" solutions. What I'd think to be a good rule of thumb is that once the tournament's identity changes, it's a new tournament(, and it has a new article). Had Australian Open or French Open really moved like there was rumours, those tournaments would've still retained their identity, at least if they had remained in Australia and France. So there would've been no need for new articles. But I wonder if people really think Brisbane is the same tournament as Adelaide/Gold Coast. I think it's not same, it's just precessor. But should we have one or multiple articles? If the identity is retained despite relocation, then one, otherwise two, in my opinion. If a tournament is relocated, but the old venue and the old organization get again a tournament, we may have that tournament organization's history in another, maybe still ongoing, tournament's article. But having only history of one tournament identity per article, it'd be easier to continue from that if an old tournament returned. --August90 (talk) 21:02, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
On this tournament you make good points. Here's where the problem lies I think. The Adelaide tournament was called the South Australian Championships and was always that late December/early January hard court event in Australia. It started in 1972 and while in Adelaide it picked up the moniker of "Australian Hardcourt Championships", and that's where the sticky wicket comes into play. It really still is the "Australian Hardcourt Championships wherever it's located. So to say that the Brisbane tourney is the same as the South Australian championships is as crazy as you make it sound. But to say that they are both the Australian Hardcourt championships, held in January but in different locals, sounds very plausible. Now this is for the men; the ladies have a different origin. They were at least always in Queensland but 60 miles away from Brisbane in Gold Coast. The gals only started in 1997 but it was considered the Women's Australian Hardcourt Championships and was the parallel event to the mens way south in Adelaide. In 2009 the ATP/WTA decided to move the mens and ladies Australian Hardcourt championships to one new venue in Brisbane. If the title of this article was "Australian Hard Court Championships" then everything would work perfectly and that's what the overall feeling of setting up this article was probably all about back in December of 2008, when they were all merged into this one article. But here at wikipedia we also have to take into consideration that "Australian Hard Court Championships" is now the archaic name and hasn't been used much since the mid-2000s. Since Brisbane International is the preferred consensus from outside sourcing that's what we have it under. Fyunck(click) (talk) 22:24, 23 January 2012 (UTC)
Thanks for clarifying the Brisbane case. As Gold Coast obviously was a parallel event for Adelaide, I understand the connection between them, and also, as Tennis Australia was probably behind Adelaide and Gold Coast, as well as Brisbane, this is not a relocation through acquiring a calendar slot (like Winston Salem), this is just another development phase of that tournament.
But, what to include in Madrid Open (tennis) and Winston-Salem Open articles. The New Haven results are already in the New Haven article, so should those be dropped from the Winston-Salem article? And, all Madrid's precessors have own article, so should those tournaments results be dropped from Madrid article? --August90 (talk) 10:01, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
I think the continuity of a given tournament typically comes in two different ways. It can be based on a tournament continuing in same place (even though the name or sponsor may change several times). Or there can be continuity based on a tournament keeping a certain name (throughout changes in location or sponsor). That's the only reasonable possibilities I can see. For example a tournament's spot on the calendar being bought (like happened with Serbia Open), cannot be seen as continuity. I think we cannot put fixed rules on it, we will have to use common sense. Exceptions are possible. MakeSense64 (talk) 14:27, 24 January 2012 (UTC)
I have yet one more question relating to this. Auckland's ASB Tennis Centre hosts an ATP and a WTA tournament on consecutive weeks. But what's the relationship between them? In "Pro Tennis Internet Network" banner, e.g. at atpworldtour.com, men's tournament is marked as a joint event, whereas the women's tournament isn't. According to Heineken Open's Wikipedia article, also a women's tournament was held in 1976-1981, whereas ASB Classic's history starts in 1986, according to Wikipedia and their home page. I checked that both tournament's website adresses are owned by Auckland Tennis Inc, so Auckland Tennis Inc is probably behind both tournaments. Also, they seem to have many common sponsors, yet different title sponsors, but different title sponsors can also be a sign of good marketing to sponsors. ;) But, at ASB Classic's homepage there's no mention it's the same tournament as men's, it's just been said it was founded as there was no women's tournament. Also, those two tournaments haven't always been on consecutive weeks.
So, based on what I know, I wouldn't say they are the same tournament, even though they may have the same organization behind them. But I wonder whether we should mention on those tournaments' articles about the another tournament that's held at the same venue the prvious/following week. If there's same organization behind both those tournaments, I think we should have a mention about the other tournament in tournament article. --August90 (talk) 14:40, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Day-By-Day

Dear Tennis community,
I just want to let us decide once and for all do these get made into a separate article hence 2011 Australian Open and 2012 Australian Open or are they to be incorporated on the tournament main page hence 2009 Australian Open, 2009 French Open, 2010 French Open, 2011 French Open, 2009 Wimbledon Championships, 2010 Wimbledon Championships, 2011 Wimbledon Championships, 2009 US Open, 2010 US Open, 2011 US Open. In addition, we need to decide whether it looks better centered like the current Australian Open or left aligned like most of the others such as the last Wimbledon or US Open. Wikipedia has had a discussion on this matter before AfD, which was closed as a Merge as a rationale. I just want us to come to some communal agreement on how these are to be structured. This will help us now and in the future for reference sake to determine the way ahead. So, lets decide on one way to do these, which I will not give my opinion on the matter until some others have given their opinions.
Thanks,
HotHat (talk) 00:55, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

Wait.... there was already a consensus on that. Damn, but I forget what the decision was. Fyunck(click) (talk) 01:42, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
As I think about it the result at a separate day-by-day page poll was "must keep" but "merge" to main article. Then when merged to the main article it got the attention of those editors who said NO WAY to the merge. So the day-by-days now sit as separate articles to make everyone happy. As I look at the 2011 Australian Open they simply can't be merged. The Main page is 126k (already way over) and the day-by-day is another 50k. Those have to remain separate. Fyunck(click) (talk) 01:52, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
In my opinion we should not have any standalone day-by-day articles. This is the prose that we need to have in the individual articles for men's singles, women's singles and so on. So day-by-day match summary for men's matches belongs in 2012 Australian Open – Men's Singles. These draw articles are about 50kB, so it's no problem to add it there. We have too many content forks already. This is a way to reduce the number and at the same time solve the problem that we have no prose in most of our draw articles. MakeSense64 (talk) 08:08, 26 January 2012 (UTC)
No MakeSense64, You are clearly not getting this in the first place. We need to have the day-by-day's but we must decide in what form either on the main article or on a separate one. Plus, we need to determine if centering is what we want in the tables or left-aligned. We need to have these because they need to tell of what matches took place on the main courts and when. It does not and should not be put on the men's singles or whatever article and these removed entirely. We can make something new for the bracket article, but this is not the appropriate discussion thread to do so.HotHat (talk) 04:56, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
I disagree that we "need" these day-by-days. WP is not a news service , see WP:NOT#NEWS. I will quote the relevant passage:
"News reports. Wikipedia considers the enduring notability of persons and events. While news coverage can be useful source material for encyclopedic topics, most newsworthy events do not qualify for inclusion. For example, routine news reporting on things like announcements, sports, or celebrities is not a sufficient basis for inclusion in the encyclopedia. While including information on recent developments is sometimes appropriate, breaking news should not be emphasized or otherwise treated differently from other information. Timely news subjects not suitable for Wikipedia may be suitable for our sister project Wikinews."
Things like what matches took place on main courts and when... these ARE the routine sports coverage that WP wants to avoid. This is forever forgotten in tennis articles : "most newsworthy events do not qualify for inclusion"
These really means we have to learn "summarize, summarize, summarize". We don't need day-by-day in an encyclopedia. For the first week of a slam we can just mention the notable upsets if any, then from quarter finals onwards, a brief match summary can be added in the article about the draws. We then get more readable articles. If people want to keep day-by-days then WP welcomes them to post it on Wikinews. MakeSense64 (talk) 08:04, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
But consensus is already done to keep them, it's just a question of where. And this isn't just an encyclopedia... it's wikipedia which is a lot different. I can't say I'm a big fan of the day-by-days but they're here––and I have to say ithey're a lot more pertinent then pages on the jr. draws. Fyunck(click) (talk) 08:16, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
On basketball pages, they have the location of the first and second round matches listed for historical purposes, which is similar to what court you play on at a slam. They were making a big whoop about Federer about to play his first match off of Laver in I forgot how many years, but guess what you can not go out and find that information readily availble on Wikipedia. Also, I might want to alert you to the fact after this years tournmanet is done and they start the site looking towards next year in oh about six months this data would be lost forever to the trash heap of history.HotHat (talk) 06:15, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
On that basketball page I see reference to cities, not to courts. But anyway, if as you say, this information will be lost six months from now as they start making next year's site, then that is clearest evidence we should NOT include that information on WP. Because then we will not have any source for this information after 6 months, and WP insists on verifiability WP:V. On what court was being played is exactly the kind of cruft we don't need, it is routine sports reporting (most of which should not be included in WP, according the WP:NOT#NEWS)MakeSense64 (talk) 08:35, 30 January 2012 (UTC)
Can someone remove all the men's singles and women's singles silly draw template thing on all main pages. It has no source not encyclopedic and is a clear piece of over doing it we don't need the information to be in 2 or three different articles/places. I think the seed list and the draw pages are enough. We don't need this table 2.100.238.120 (talk) 23:30, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
Since the problem of length and quality surfaced at the main article which was unnecessarily becoming voluminous and lack of ease of reading the article, the need to create a new page for simplicity & better readability was must. Almost, all the conditions of making the article as per wiki norms is meticulously taken care. (The article has a lede, has reliable references, ....). The article tends to focus on pompous information (Seeds Out, Today's tournaments) related to the Grand Slam event catering to sports news in brief. Requesting not to mark the article for deletion as was done for 2011 Australian Open (Day-by-day summaries). This part of article itself should not have been entertained in the main article in the beginning itself & I would than not have created the page. Ninney (talk) 00:04, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Please also refer and comment on -

  1. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Day-by-day summaries of the 2011 Australian Open (2nd nomination) and
  2. Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Day-by-day summaries of the 2012 Australian Open

Ninney (talk) 10:39, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Seriously. Best player in the world for a year and his article is, frankly, pathetic. Is this project up for making it decent or is there any point in this project? The Rambling Man (talk) 21:32, 27 January 2012 (UTC)

Ouch. It's been worked on quite a bit in the last couple months. What do you find objectionable? Fyunck(click) (talk) 21:38, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
Well, poor lead, very poor prose, over-the-top images, I wonder if this project ever wants to get a featured article to its name...?! The Rambling Man (talk) 21:41, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
If you'd give us a deeper detailed review of what you mean maybe we can get a better insight of the problems and put it/him a priority in our tasklist. Also direct contributions to the article are appreciated. I must note that we are currently working on the 2011 Novak Djokovic tennis season to reach some standards (the year related to him becoming the best player). Lajbi Holla @ meCP 23:24, 27 January 2012 (UTC)
I am pissed off at The Rambling Man, he is suppose to be an Admin for pete sakes. I want him to look at Roger Federer FA first nomination and Roger Federer FA second nomination. See, this article is still abhorrent if we go by your standards. It is hard to almost impossible to get an article to FA status on here. At Featured articles. they state "there are 3,458 featured articles out of 3,857,122...thus, about one in 1,110 articles is listed here." So, this means it is less than a 1 percent shot to get the status.HotHat (talk) 06:08, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
Hey hey hey, if nobody wants to take the plunge at the moment, I will. --Sp33dyphil ©hatontributions 22:31, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
Hothat nowhere near good enough. People should be easily poping out GA's but we have too much sillyness of I LIKE — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.100.238.120 (talk) 23:33, 29 January 2012 (UTC)
The Rambling Man was talking about FA not GA, which their is a gigantic disparity in the two classes or statuses.HotHat (talk) 01:13, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

Since the last proposal got hijacked somewhere midst in the convo, my suggestion will be to transform our template into something that looks similar to this:Template:Stagioni di tennis maschile. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 16:33, 28 January 2012 (UTC)

It did sorry hence why we continued further down new section--Navops47 (talk) 17:39, 28 January 2012 (UTC)
I see what you mean, that Italian template continues throughout the various eras and tours that have been, and that's quite nice. By we have a little difference here. Our "years in tennis" articles contain both the men and the women, and they exist alongside "year ATP Tour" and "Year WTA tour" articles. That's not so easy to merge into one template.
But I think this idea is useful to improve the existing Template:ATP seasons and Template:WTA seasons. They could start from 1877 and reflect the various eras in one navigation box, like we see in the Italian template. I also note that a lot of earlier year in tennis articles exist already in Italian, but not in English. E.g. [13] So they could be created and translated from the Italian wp. English WP lacks a lot of coverage of the amateur era in tennis. Unfortunately the Italian pages do not cite much sources for the info. MakeSense64 (talk) 06:48, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
Yeah It was the second purpose for which I linked that template here because it would be wonderful to have all those "years in tennis" transferred to English wiki. Luckily the Italian wiki use the same wikitable-formats in coding that means it uses English parameters, so it's just a copy-paste job to do. On the other hand they seriously lack sources and were all created by one editor...I tried to check those tournaments I have source for (mainly 1925-35 Hungarian tournies), and they were all correct, but despite all the places/names are contemporary when I tried to find refs for those others simply by their name it was impossible to confirm . So I will transform the template soon to this "new one" and keep on tracking the early 20th c. years but as for now they seem untrackable via internet. Maybe I'll send a PM to the editor, maybe he owns a book, upon which he built those yearly articles. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 09:25, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
One editor Totalinarian has a series of books called "World of Tennis" which contain that kind of tournament information year by year for the Open Era, maybe there are also books covering the amateur era. We could ask him. If you can contact the editor who made the Italian articles, that may also help. Translation from the Italian articles can be done quite easily, but we will need the sources. As for changing the template, I wouldn't hurry it. First we need concensus which template to change. The current "years in tennis" template serves its own purpose, listing the years articles we have (which are for men and women). Template:ATP seasons and Template:WTA seasons can be expanded according to the idea we see in this Italian example, but then we will probably need to rename them. So we have to consider carefully. MakeSense64 (talk) 09:53, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
That's fine for me. Also expanding the years in tennis by adding pre-open-era years is allowed since neither the name of the template nor its header don't imply that this is solely reserved for Open era. Concerning the women tournaments: in the early years they were held the same time and place as the Men's so e.g. "1929 in tennis" with those italianwiki tournaments probably cover the women's roster as well. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 10:05, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
The Italian editor's answer was this website. He based his articles on this. Any ideas on its trustworthiness status? Lajbi Holla @ meCP 12:28, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
A free google site is not likely to be considered a reliable source. You could try to email the owner of that site to ask what sources he has used to create his database. MakeSense64 (talk) 13:46, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
There is a list of books at the bottom of its home page. Also in the database there is a coloumn dedicated to source(s). Anyway I try to create the 1931 in tennis solely based on newspaper articles until reliability is established. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 09:40, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
OK, this is getting us somewhere. Important sources for these earliest years seems to be the annual "Ayres' Lawn Tennis Almanack" (1908-1938) and "Dunlop Lawn Tennis Almanack" (1939-1958). But they are collectors items, so not easy to find. See: [14] MakeSense64 (talk) 10:03, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
No chance someone scans them ...Lajbi Holla @ meCP 20:07, 2 February 2012 (UTC)
I can order this one for $6 in Hungary. Worth it? Lajbi Holla @ meCP 20:21, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

I've started 1931 in my sandbox (referenced by newspapers). Take a look at it and feel free to contribute. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 14:51, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

Godspeed to you !
Just a thought ! The Men's & Women's tournaments can be bifurcated into two separate articles so that footnote templates can be added later.
- 👍 Like Ninney (talk) 15:14, 3 February 2012 (UTC)
"xxx in tennis" articles compile both ATP/WTA as of now. Almost all of the contemporary tournaments were held together (not counting the status of mixed doubles), no men and women tours existed, so I thought with a minor revamp of the wikitable the article could serve for both genders. I try to add some prose to it though not many detailed reports exist (only for one tournament/month) the rest are pure results. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 17:18, 3 February 2012 (UTC)

2012 in tennis‎

I had recently been active in creating/updating pages for 2012 AO & is planning to contribute to the project Tennis by making minor edits/corrections to articles (e.g., typos, fixing links, adding references to new secondary sources). Please go through the article 2012 in tennis‎ meticulously and suggest few guidelines that need to be followed. I am a bit confused about exactly what amount of information is to be displayed. For Example, I had updated the January part of the article. Since its a Monthly sports news update, each news has following parameters -

  • Tournament Category - {Only Grand Slam events, Davis Cup, Fed Cup, 2012 London Olympics, all ATP World Tour and all WTA Tours. ATP Challenger Tour not needed else resulting unnecessarily voluminous data and lack of ease of reading the article}
  • Tournaments Name - {Avoided 2012; Is it Ok ?}
  • Tournament Dates - {For Eg : ... on January 7 against ... - Needed sometimes}
  • Tennis Scores - {Personally, I think not needed. See WP:TENSCR}
  • Players Nationality - {Needed - Feels good to read as 'Estonian tennis player Kaia Kanepi won ... ' or 'The unseeded Russian pair ... defeated the all Italian pair of ...'}
  • Players Career Statistics - {For Eg : It was Azarenka's 2nd title of the year and 10th of her career - Needed sometimes}
  • Players Image - {Atleast for Grand Slam events, Davis Cup, Fed Cup and 2012 London Olympics. I have added Victoria's & Novak's old 2011 photo's. Will update once someone adds a new image file in Wikimedia Commons (Category:2012 Australian Open)}

Please Suggest. Eagerly waiting to update the article as per discussion.

Ninney (talk) 02:35, 30 January 2012 (UTC)

I agree on these standards, also I would like to remind you that every criteria must be compatible with the early years as well. So "1924 in tennis" should fit the same guidelines as 2012. So in the "tournament category" ATP World Tour, WTA Tours and Challengers are modern terms that needs to be rethought. As I linked above there is a template in the Italian wiki that lists every year in the 20th century with their respective tournaments. So guidelines must apply for those years too.

And as for the scores they'd better be omitted. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 16:10, 31 January 2012 (UTC)

Would avoid the player nationality in prose. It is enough that country flags are added next to the name in the tables with results. And if somebody desperately needs to know the nationality of Gilles Simon, they can click on the player's name.
Years in the tournament name need not be mentioned, because it is understood that it is about the given year. Of course the wikilinks to each tournament should go to the proper year article.
No scores in the prose, but in the tables it is OK.
Player career statistics do not belong in this article, it is already in the player's individual article. It is about the year in tennis, not about Djokovic or Azarenka's x-th titel of the year and y-th of their career. If there are unusual win streaks or large number of tournaments won by certain players, then that can be briefly mentioned in a section at the end of the article, but it should not become a repeat of the myriad of tennis statistics articles we already have. MakeSense64 (talk) 10:20, 1 February 2012 (UTC)
Lets Sum up -
  • Tournament Category - Only major tournaments (Tournaments above ATP Challenger's only).
  • Tournament Name - Years in the tournament name to be strictly avoided but with appropriate wikilinks.
  • Tournament Dates - To be used sometimes unless needed.
  • Tennis Scores - To be strictly avoided.
  • Players Nationality - To be avoided.
  • Players Career Statistics - To be avoided unless unusual win streaks.
  • Players Image - Only for major tournaments, if needed.
Any other guidelines that need to be followed, please suggest. Meanwhile, I will start updating 2012 in tennis with above conclusions. - Ninney (talk) 14:11, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

WikiWomen's History Month

Hi everyone. March is Women's History Month and I'm hoping a few folks here at WP:Tennis will have interest in putting on events (on and off wiki) related to women's roles in tennis. We've created an event page on English Wikipedia (please translate!) and I hope you'll find the inspiration to participate. These events can take place off wiki, like edit-a-thons, or on wiki, such as themes and translations. Please visit the page here: WikiWomen's History Month. Thanks for your consideration and I look forward to seeing events take place! SarahStierch (talk) 21:12, 1 February 2012 (UTC)

I'd love to see this article a bit expanded, because by its current look it's stub-ish. Maybe players' reactions, set-by-set description (usually avioded but in an article dedicated exclusively to the match I assume it could be added), photos, professional reviews could be included. So folks? Lajbi Holla @ meCP 08:49, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Interesting. Do we really need this stand alone page? There are so many records in tennis history why does this particular record need a page of its own? Fyunck(click) (talk) 09:24, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
I'd say this was a similar epic match than '08 Wimbledon final, so I think we need this article. --August90 (talk) 09:38, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
I really don't like the precedent it sets. The Wimbledon 2009 mens final match is the longest in history too. What about the 1966 Wimbledon doubles match that went 98 games? Or the 1959 Wimbledon mixed doubles match that went 48 games? How about the 1982 Davis Cup match that took 6 hours and 22 minutes? Sticking to Australia there's the longest match in history at 71 games that took place in 1927. My point is that in making a separate article for this year's Australian open mens final I just want editors to know the can of worms that springs out when we start making pages about all these others special finals and matches. Fyunck(click) (talk) 09:50, 9 February 2012 (UTC)
Yes, we need this article, primarily because the game was great and magnificent as '08 Wimbledon final and '80 Wimbledon final, I invite all who can to help this article to expand and improve in every way, also support to make more articles about the great matches which were played in the history of tennis, there's more that deserve a place on Wikipedia :-) . Soundwaweserb (talk) 07:12, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
I'm not saying it wasn't a great match...it was. I loved every second of it. But to have separate articles on all the great matches in history seems a bit above our scope. But that's why I'm asking for input. If everyone feels all these articles need to be made then that's what we'll do. Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:22, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
I think it is good to extend articles with great tennis matches, it's good for the entire project if you agree with me ... see how the pages with a lot of rivalries, especially well done is Fed-Rafa and Djoker-Rafa rivalry, please support this, I am sure that you will contribute much, as always ... Soundwaweserb (talk) 07:51, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
I already looked into this last week. Currently we have 7 standalone tennis match articles [15] . With three of them being exhibition matches it is hard to argue the case that we should not have articles about the finals of grand slam tennis events.
I also took a look at what is being done in other sports. In sports like football, rugby, cricket, hurling and ice-hockey there are plenty standalone articles for final matches, and not just world cups: 2007 Svenska Cupen Final, 2011 Heineken Cup Final, 1957 All-Ireland Senior Hurling Championship Final, 2011 Cricket World Cup Final, 1994 Stanley Cup Finals and 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup Final
In all these cases there is also a main article, so they deliberately created a standalone article for the final. This is not illogical since the final is of course the most notable match of the event, watched by the most people, and receiving most coverage in the media. It is usually easy to create a well-sourced article about the final.
This means we may want to reconsider our article guidelines about match articles. But definitely we should only consider them for the major finals. MakeSense64 (talk) 09:21, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Hmmm.... but we have 4 every year. And not just 4, men's and womens makes it eight. Plus 3 types of doubles. It seems like an awful lot for 130 years of tennis but if that's the way editors want it I will bow to consensus. I guess with every male/female Slam winner in history allowed multiple yearly stand-alone pages, another 1000–2000 Grand Slam tournament final pages isn't going to break the bank. Fyunck(click) (talk) 09:59, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Besides national teams tournaments' final articles, we have e.g. the following single-match artcilces for football finals. 2011 UEFA Champions League Final, 2011 UEFA Europa League Final, 2011 FA Cup Final, 2011 Football League Cup Final, 2011 DFB-Pokal Final, 2011 Copa del Rey Final, 2011 Coppa Italia Final, and 2011 Coupe de France Final. So, eight single-match articles for tennis isn't too much, after all. --August90 (talk) 11:30, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
I agree, having an article for each final is definitely not a bad idea at all. Football even has articles for notable friendlies (e.g. 2011 FA Community Shield) and league games (e.g. Manchester United F.C. 9–0 Ipswich Town F.C.)... if someone's prepared to do a good job on it, then I recommend they just do it. The Rambling Man (talk) 11:37, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
I changed the wording of match notability in our guidelines to work with what was discussed here. The case-by-case talk should leave the door open for particularly great "year end" battles or perhaps Davis Cup finales. We can always add more items if we see fit. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:52, 10 February 2012 (UTC)
Personally I am not so sure about the doubles finals (especially the mixed), and maybe we should also mention that the article needs to have properly sourced prose, so that these match articles are not just becoming another repository of match stats. How about adding the Olympics tennis finals?
I added the Olympic Finals as well per your request. It's not as important as the Majors in tennis but the Olympics themselves are huge. Fyunck(click) (talk) 09:19, 12 February 2012 (UTC)
Another question becomes our no scores in prose guideline WP:TENSCR. It will be hard to describe tennis matches without mentioning score, so we will need some exception for these match articles. We just try to keep it down so that the article is not too full with 1-4 or 15-40. We can see how a well developed finals article looks like here: 2011 UEFA Champions League Final. Score is mentioned but it doesn't overtake the article. Match summary can have sections by set, just like football matches make sections for each half (and extra times or penalty shoot-out). MakeSense64 (talk) 07:41, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
Maybe we should also work on some manual of style for the different types articles we have. This is what I see on the Football project pages: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Football/Matches. This leads to more standardized articles, and more quick to create a new article, just fill out the sections (according to the brief instruction). I will try to work on this when time permits. MakeSense64 (talk) 08:03, 11 February 2012 (UTC)
Once a gate gets opened it's hard to slam shut if someone wants to create Major doubles finals articles. There will be precedent so I'd just assume we say yes to it all now rather than go through good ones and bad ones. But sure, we might as well add the Olympic singles and doubles finals to the batch also. Prose should certainly be added but in looking at some of the examples above sometimes just a small amount is all that's needed or required depending on how much info we can find. As for "no scoring" that is the full match score that we use in the guideline. In explaining a pivotal point in a match the use of 15–40 is fine and it's done all the time. These are guidelines so if, in an entire article, the full score is given once it wouldn't be a sin. Like our photo limit of 10 per article doesn't mean you should make sure we have 10 if the article only warrants 4 pics. As for standardizing I would agree to it in a very limited sense. Cookie cutter articles are not what we want here at wikipedia. Yes we want charts to show some conformity and certain items should be in all the bios, but we want flair and distinctness too. I would hate to hamstring new editors to say this is the layout you MUST use. We can give an example of a good one in our guidelines while making sure the reader understands it doesn't have to be the same thing. Fyunck(click) (talk) 09:35, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

I proposed a move of Moorilla Hobart International to Hobart International. Please, comment on the article's talkpage. --August90 (talk) 09:38, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

No proposal is needed as it is a tennis project guideline that (if possible) we move to non-sponsored names. I made the request at the Hobart International page. Fyunck(click) (talk) 10:08, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Hello folks. I've created this season article based solely on newspaper articles. Some link formatting is still needed, despite that the references are all reliable. Note that almost all tennis guidelines had to be reconsidered (no scores/no statistics/no nationality mentioned in prose) because otherwise the article would have seriously lacked written material. It was also needed as many players don't - and probably never will - have their own articles, so some background info about them is useful in the intros. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 14:37, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Hello. I came across a problem while editing 1930s players' articles. There a parameter in the infobox called turned pro. Since these players mostly remained amateur (not to mention players before 1930 where professional tennis hadn't existed), and because the retired parameter - which fits all palyers - would need a "start year" counterpart, I was wondering if there's a possibility to change the pro parameter to "first year in senior tennis" or something like this. Or adding another parameter with that name dedicated to such players (but in that case a one-by-one recheck would be needed for of all the players of the era). Lajbi Holla @ meCP 09:39, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

I'd never really thought about it before. Why does the retired parameter need a "start year?" We've never used a start year for Maureen Connolly because she never turned pro, yet we have a retirement year for her. And players like Jack Kramer have start years that they actually turned pro (1947) even though he was playing in mens tournies and winning Majors from about 1937–1947. I guess it does make some sense if in Jack Kramers infobox it had the date he played his first senior event too. I just added an amateur start date of 1937 in parenths to see how it looks. If we did this we wouldn't have to monkey with the actual parameter since it only affects pre-1968 players. thoughts? Fyunck(click) (talk) 10:15, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
It looks fine for me. Bad thing is that it requires the same immense amount of work to look through all the possible affected players. Just an idea: what about renaming the "Turned pro" into a "Turned pro/senior amateur" and that's it? Okay I changed my mind
Jack Kramer's example shows we need pro and senior amateur dates to coexist...Anyway if you change your mind about messing with parameters, I'll be happy to add a new row for senior year. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 14:51, 17 February 2012 (UTC)
Actually, I'm open about this. It would be nice to have another parameter but naming it would be tricky. Senior, especially with today's mindset, might make readers think it's the senior tour. It's all we know these days. Maybe it should just be "First amateur event". Jack Kramer did play juniors so that would tell us when he left juniors wouldn't it? The benefit as you say would be that all we'd have to do from now on is add a date when appropriate. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:34, 17 February 2012 (UTC)

WP:NTENNIS guidelines and high ITF junior ranking

José Pereira (tennis) is being considered for deletion for failing WP:NTENNIS. As the guidelines stand now he does fail, but I feel that as a former ITF No. 5 ranked junior, he should pass - at present a top 3 ranking allows the player to pass - I would like to see the top 5 juniors get a pass. What do others think? Mayumashu (talk) 00:56, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

I would say that top 3 is a reasonable cut-off for juniors. Right now a jr is notable if they win a jr Major or they are in the ITF jr top 3. That's plenty for me and obviously plenty for those who originally framed this notability guide way back when. But it's certainly not an unreasonable request to go from top 3 jr to top 5 jr if the tennis project editors want to change it. I'm against it but this issue is no big deal to me. Fyunck(click) (talk) 05:53, 22 February 2012 (UTC)
Agreed with Fyunck(click). Top 3 is already way enough. Let's wait until this guy wins a challenger. He'd fallen short of it twice so it won't be far away. But don't pre-create it. Lajbi Holla @ meCP 08:20, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

The tournament is no longer sponsored by Cellular South or C-Spire Wireless as it's known now, it should be corrected soon to Memphis International according to Memphis Commercial Appeal, Reuters and BBC Sport, I'm sure there are other sources but these seemed relevant and/or most prominent. Afro (Talk) 06:49, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

Also WTA has changed the name in its webpage. --August90 (talk) 07:14, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
That's funny... I was just looking at that a few hours ago. I knew the ladies needed to be changed to Memphis International but it's blended with the men's whose title really should be a non-sponsored one also. I was just out looking for sources and see both are quite often called the Memphis Championships. Right now the main page title is Regions Morgan Keegan Championships and the Cellular South Cup. We could either rename the article Memphis Championships or Memphis Championship... or since they are different levels of quality keep it dual and rename it Memphis Championships and Memphis International or maybe ATP Memphis Championships and WTA Memphis International. Thoughts? Fyunck(click) (talk) 07:25, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
I would personally stick with the Regions Morgan Keegan Championships name until more concrete evidence can be found. Afro (Talk) 08:16, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
This year's tournaments' article could maybe be renamed to 2012 Regions Morgan Keegan Championships and Memphis International, as we know their names. But, maybe we should wait a bit more time before renaming the main article, last year Reuters used a mixture of Memphis International and Memphis Championships.(link 1, link 2) Anyway, should we rename the article to something like Memphis International, I see no need for two separate names for men and women, as we're using a generic name of a tournament, and those tournaments are treated as one tournament. --August90 (talk) 15:36, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
Well each individual year usually keeps the sponsor name so I agree with your 2012 naming. That can be done lickity-split and is a no brainer. We could certainly just use Memphis International as the main page title as far as I'm concerned. Fyunck(click) (talk) 19:18, 21 February 2012 (UTC)
I moved and edited the 2012 articles to reflect the name change, yet kept the infobox intact so far, because I didn't want to create redirects that make main article's move more difficult. --August90 (talk) 09:38, 22 February 2012 (UTC)

ITF Women's Circuit

Hi, I was currently using the ITF Printable drawsheets until the ITF site changed and now the drawsheets are no longer in use. What should I do with the rest of the year and January-February drawsheets?

Keroks (talk) 05:30, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Are you sure? I knew they changed the pages to some beta thingy but I quickly found the drawsheets to the first tourney I clicked on Right Here. Is that what you mean? Fyunck(click) (talk) 06:06, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
There used to be some Printable Draw sheets which I would use as sources. But now they don't have them anymore.Keroks (talk) 09:31, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
Printable? Why can't you print them? It looks like they're all there. Fyunck(click) (talk) 10:09, 23 February 2012 (UTC)
Is your concern that there is apparently no longer a direct url to the drawsheets? Readers have to start at the main page for the tournament like http://beta.itftennis.com/procircuit/tournaments/women%27s-tournament/info.aspx?tournamentid=1100026011, click "Drawsheet" and then the event while the url remains the same. That's a design choice by ITF. Just give a single reference to the main page instead of two references directly to the singles and doubles draw like it was possible earlier. Interested readers should be able to figure it out quickly. PrimeHunter (talk) 14:20, 23 February 2012 (UTC)


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