Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cricket

The current discussion of CCOTM is ?.

User:David Gerard

He's back again adding that ridiculous 'no free image' thing on cricketers pages eg Jimmy Adams. I thought he agreed to stop? Crickettragic 04:42, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

I've reverted Jimmy Adams and Neil Adcock. I suggest we should feel free to revert any others that have been done. This is a user who is convinced he knows better, despite previous discussions on the subject. Other people are also objecting now on his talk page. Johnlp 07:13, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

As far as I know, there was no contact between himself and the project, but simply one or two users: despite their request for him to come here and comment. I would recommend taking this to WP:AN, see what they say on the matter. He's systematically going through thousands of bio articles and adding this image as it stands. There is no official policy on the inclusion of the image, so I would say it's down to the preference of a WikiProject (ie bio + cricket combined in this case) as to whether it should be included, and this WP's stance is pretty clear on it, yet he's ignored our request. The admin's noticeboard is the only place to go now, I feel. AllynJ (talk | contribs) 07:26, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

Cricinfo

Hi, I have reverted an edit dumping a large amount of copied and pasted text from the Cricinfo article. It was copied from this this site. As the site seems to be licenced under this licence, I am not sure if it is a copyright violation but at the least, it does not appear that the original authors have been credited for their work. Those with more experience with copyleft licencing may be able to make more sense of that than me.

Also, even if this meets Wikipedia's licencing requirements, in its existing form the material is unencyclopaedic, not written in an appropriate tone or adequately referenced. The history of Cricinfo would be fascinating and well worth including in the article but not in this form. -- Mattinbgn\ ^talk 22:53, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

160 kB. Wow. You did the right thing. Though I'm sure there is scope to condense it into something interesting, if anyone can be bothered to wade through it... Stephen Turner (Talk) 09:13, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

I just realised that Cricket quiz regular User talk:Travisbasevi is presumably the Cricinfo staffer of the same moniker. —Moondyne 00:52, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

English cricket team in Australia in 1932-33 and Bodyline

At the moment, the tour article redirects to Bodyline, which is a FA. If the Bodyline article is supposed to describe the tour, rather than just the tactical theory and politics, then I think it would clearly fail FARC, since the article doesn't discuss the actual results and thus would fail the comprehensiveness criteria. So, should the series be un-redirected into a cricket results type article? Blnguyen (bananabucket) 05:19, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I Would say yes. JH (talk page) 09:00, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree as well. It's not as if the Bodyline controversy was the only thing that happened on that tour, even if it was the one that made the most impact. Loganberry (Talk) 18:38, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I agree too, to the extent that I've been bold enough to make a start, though only a start. It can easily be reverted if someone really objects. Johnlp 21:47, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Move "Twenty20" to "Twenty20 cricket"

I'd like to move "Twenty20" to "Twenty20 cricket". Because the latter page already exists this would require an administrator and would be awkward to change back if i've made an error. So i thought i would canvass views to assert this is the correct thing to do.Operating 18:08, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any reason for changing it. There isn't any other sort of Twenty20, so adding "cricket" in the title isn't needed. Stephen Turner (Talk) 20:24, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

If i were to say to someone "let's go watch some Twenty20". There's a good chance they'd say "What's Twenty20 then?". It looks colloquial to me. Operating 21:38, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

In that hypothetical conversation, you could just as easily replace Twenty20 with "cricket" or with "rugby" or whatever else you like. Andrew nixon 22:11, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, the move isn't worth the effort. Operating 14:39, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

1970-71 West Indian cricket season

Hello cricket folks

I've just declined a speedy delete request for 1970-71 West Indian cricket season. It does qualify under db-blank, but I'd rather bring it here in the hope that someone on this project could expand it just a tad to bring it out of the danger zone. Thanks. ➔ This is REDVEЯS 08:32, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm the author responsible for this and many more like it, but I think it was a bad idea to create these things (it seemed a good idea at the time) because they are impractical. I've decided to merge them into collective articles by country and time period, so I will be proposing that these individual stubs all get deleted in due course. --BlackJack | ^{talk page} 09:35, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Weird...

It seems that someone thinks that I'm Cayman Islands player Ryan Ebanks. See the talk page of his article. Andrew nixon 08:54, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Well maybe you are Ryan Ebanks, but fortunately the anonymity of the WP system will protect your secret! Johnlp 16:53, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Citizendium

I see that several of you have been discussing my work on Citizendium (CZ). Thanks for the kind wishes that were expressed and I'm sure Dweller will be delighted to see that his Fighting Elf is back!

CZ is an interesting concept and certainly a huge challenge as a cricket project there must start from scratch. I created an introduction to cricket, began a glossary and did a very high-level history. All of this was useful in getting to grips with the site and comparing it with WP.

I wrote to Larry Sanger earlier today to give him my feedback, FWIW, of CZ and this is what I have concluded:

Although there is merit in allowing "experts only" it will exclude the majority of useful contributors. Those WP contributors who have registered a username (i.e., not the hit and run IP address types) may not actually be experts but they do generally make useful contributions and in considerable volumes. I believe that by effectively excluding these people, CZ is going to stunt its own growth.

WP is at one extreme with its "anyone can edit" philosophy and CZ has gone to the other. What is needed is a middle ground whereby "anyone using a registered username that has been obtained via e-mail confirmation can edit". This gets rid of the IP address vandal and allows the casual contributor to take part.

I think the CZ category system is a mess that needs to be sorted out and I don't think the subpage idea will work. These comments are made from a reader perspective.

The golden rule of publishing is to put the reader first and make sure that everything he sees on the page is useful to him. The CZ categories are based on article status or on a particular workgroup when they should be subject-based and relational (I don't agree with hierarchical category systems).

The subpage menu bar is unsightly and unnecessary. I do not understand why the reader should see a button that links him to an incomprehensible metapage. The "related articles", "bibliography" and "external sources" information should be in the body of the article and placed at the end with the citation references. Okay, an article might use a massive bibliography and so that should be in a subpage but with a link from a bibliography heading in the main article. The menubar includes a talk tab and that duplicates the discussion tab at the top of the page.

I certainly think the issues I've raised need to be addressed and especially those that concern the benefit of the site to the reader.

Larry's reply was:

You're not the only one who has the dismayingly mistaken impression that only experts are allowed on CZ. I wonder if there is a simple way we can prevent this impression in the future. But, FYI, consider the ~2000 accounts at Category:CZ Authors. We are in fact precisely as you describe the middle way. I'm sorry we don't yet have a way of making this clear--although we can't be held responsible for irresponsible misrepresentations in the press.

I also think that you probably fail to understand what subpages are for, and we also need to build some tools to ease the user into this innovation. In short it is much more than just the bibliography, external links, and related articles; those are only the default selections.

I doubt anyone would disagree with you about the substandard appearance of the subpage menu bar. The hope, as yet unfulfilled, is that one of our members will create a MediaWiki "skin" that will actually rearrange the position of various sets of links.

He may well be right about subpages once they have got the design right but I think their approach to categories is misguided and they should base categories on subject as WP does. I take his point that it is not "experts only" but I suppose using your real name must be offputting for some people, though to me it doesn't matter at all.

I think WP can learn one thing and that is to restrict edits to people with registered usernames that have been confirmed via e-mail. That would solve vandalism overnight.

So that's that. I will look in on CZ occasionally and keep the pot boiling but I have decided to come back to WP too and see what can be done with all these wearisome season and tour articles. I see another one nearly got deleted only today. Groan! --BlackJack | ^{talk page} 16:16, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

I was interested to see what you've been doing on Citzendium. I think the main problem they have is that Wikipedia now has something like two years start. The enormous amount of work needed to get anywhere near Wikipedia's breadth of coverage is I suspect going to deter people, especially as there will be far fewer people to do the work, due to the requirement of some degree of expertise.

I considered signing up myself, but was discouraged by the need to present acceptable credentials. It seemed like too much trouble.

With the honourable exception of yourself, at present Citizendium seems very American-dominated. For example, until the last couple of days the top-level list of sports excluded cricket and rugby. JH (talk page) 16:58, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

There are some surprising omissions in other subjects too, John. Loads of missing countries, for example, and the history coverage barely scratches the surface. I get the impression that there are a lot of American science degrees about the place. Someone had made a start on soccer, however. That's saw-ker, of course! --BlackJack | ^{talk page} 20:03, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Forget about writing articles on Sri Lankan cricket, they don't even have an article on the country itself! And I noticed that the last sentence of the Bangladesh reads, About a third of this extremely poor country floods annually during the monsoon rainy season, hampering economic development. I understand that Bangladesh isn't first world, but calling it "extremely poor" without supporting it with any references would violate Wiki's WP:NPOV policy. I suspect Bangladeshis considering to join would almost instantly be deterred by such a comment, many of which are excellent contributors to Wikipedia, including eight members of WikiProject Cricket.

I have noticed an American-centric bias over there for quite some time now. They hugely oversimplify Asian culture. If you leave BlackJack, I think in one year from now, the cricket article may become a "Introduction to cricket for those familiar with baseball" article. :) Gizza^{Discuss ©} 01:08, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

Category nominated for rename

Please see this discussion for details.

I've decided to merge the "bare stub" season and tour articles into period histories by country but leaving as individual articles any that have been developed to a reasonable extent. I've started with Pakistan and you can see what I'm up to if you look at History of cricket in Pakistan to 1970. I'll follow this with Pakistan cricket from 1971 and then move onto the other countries.

I think England is the only country for which we should keep individual articles about every season and tour because it has had a lot of work done while the rest simply haven't taken off. When all this merging and rewriting is done, I'll propose that all the bare stubs encompassed by the new articles are speedy deleted as db-blank and db-author.

If anyone has any suggestions or if you can help with the mergers, please let me know. --BlackJack | ^{talk page} 14:40, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Blackjack, where you are merging articles I think you will need to redirect the old ones to the new to comply with GFDL. Will probably help anyone looking for a particular tour to find the right page anyway. →Ollie (talk • contribs) 17:01, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

Hi, Ollie. I had thought about that but I was put off because of the sheer volume involved, not just redirecting articles but altering the talk pages too. Having said that, I think I would rather go through the tedious task of redirecting than deal with those deletion pages. Has anyone else noticed in recent months that there is a distinct lack of participation in AfD and CfD nowadays? --BlackJack | ^{talk page} 05:55, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Derek Shackleton

The article on this recently deceased cricketer has {{POV}} and {{refimprove}} templates. I have added some good sources (obituaries; Cricinfo profile), expanded it significantly, and removed some of the more value-laden statements. I'd be grateful iif someone could let me know if these templates can now be removed, or what further needs to be done. Thanks. -- !! ?? 09:05, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, I put them there, so I guess I should comment! The article is a lot better now, thank you. I've removed {{refimprove}} because you have included a lot more references (although inline references — linking each statement to a reference — are preferable and are now very easy to add). The only remaining change I would like to see is a removal of all the "Citation needed" statements. These sound to me like the judgement of the original editor, which is not permissible on Wikipedia even if the editor was familiar with the subject. You've correctly identified the problematic sentences, but they should be removed altogether, or justified from the references (if there is something in the obituaries, for example) before the {{POV}} tag goes.

Thank you again for your work on this article.

Stephen Turner (Talk) 09:30, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Thank you. I hoped the new references would have hit the spot.

I have some sympathy for the {{cn}} statements, and I had been leaving them in case the orginal editor (User:203.221.28.94 in March 2005) can support/cite them. There is a hint in the obituaries, but nothing quite as opinionated. -- !! ?? 10:47, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I've added sections to the article, it was one long lead section and not properly wikified. I removed the statements requesting cites, its very difficult to verify sweeping statements like they were and possibly just someones personnal opinion. Operating 13:23, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your input. I can see why you have lumped like-with-like, but I am not particularly enamoured of the current arrangement, with the article discussing his post-cricket doings before his Test career, with that coming before his county debut. I think a chronological order usually looks the most logical, unless there are pressing reasons why another way works better, but I am prepared to be persuaded otherwise. -- !! ?? 15:47, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

The article was one large WP:Lead section which is discouraged, i kept the chronological order within sections as far as i can tell. I dont do a lot of bio's so i can't say exactly which section order the MOS encourages (sometimes its chronological, sometimes its in order of importance). If it feels more logical to you then by all means put England career ahead of personal life etc. I've actually got no idea who he is other than what i read, so i'll be editing another page or perhaps doing some Afd's next. Operating 16:19, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Sorting of names

I've hit a little problem here. Cricket Archive implies we should sort the names of Atif Malik, Iqbal Siddiqi, Naveed Abdul in forename surname order, but a user who reversed this name order disagrees.

What order should we put them in? Bobo. 18:41, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

Most Western publications, including Wisden, sort Pakistani names on the first name. (But not I think those of Indian Moslems, which seems illogical.) However I recall reading messages to the newsgroup rec.sport.cricket some years ago from at least one Pakistani poster claiming that this was the wrong thing to do. I bet that somewhere on Wikipedia itself there's an authoritative article on the correct way of ordering Pakistani names. JH (talk page) 20:27, 2 October 2007 (UTC)

I've wondered about this several times, and don't have an easy answer. Mention of CricketArchive reminds me that that site lists Sajid Mahmood the England Test player under M, calling him "SI Mahmood", but (for example) this Pakistani Sajid Mahmood under S, as "Sajid Mahmood". Loganberry (Talk) 00:01, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

My memory is: one editor is adamant that we should sort them by their second names like all proper freedom-loving countries do. He changed them all; we objected; after some argument we agreed that he could change them in birth and death categories but we would sort them by first names in cricket-specific categories; he agreed to that; a few weeks later he came back and started changing them all again. Isn't there some Wikipedia-wide guidance, or at least somewhere we could ask? Stephen Turner (Talk) 09:41, 3 October 2007 (UTC)

I think it is up to the Wikiproject to decide on name-ordering conventions. Gizza^{Discuss ©} 11:07, 3 October 2007 (UTC)