Jump to content

Talk:Pool (cue sports)/Archive 1

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Archive 1

Slang

Resolved
 – No one cares, and the slang term is actually "pocket pool" anyway.

Pocket billiards is also a slang term. I don't know if that's noteworthy... JustIgnoreMe 22:08, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

Huh? "Bling" and "kind buds" and "dirty Sanchez" are slang terms. "Pocket billiards" is a jargon term. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 22:21, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
Not quite what I meant. It's a slang term for masturbation. JustIgnoreMe 00:02, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
Ah. You may be thinking of "pocket pool", which is a slang term for masturbating in public with one's hand in one's pocket playing with one's genitals. >;-) Anyway, doesn't have any effect on this article either way. If at some point someone writes a sourced article on "pocket billiards" being a slang term for masturbation, the most that will need to be done is a disambiguation link. — SMcCandlish [talk] [contrib] ツ 14:06, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
I'm embarassed to state that I didn't know it was a genuine sport. In any event, I've now found wikisaurus, which is the place for slang terms. Cheers. JustIgnoreMe 01:17, 22 December 2006 (UTC)
A note about the slang has been added, with references to the BBC and a newspaper, thus trebling the number of citations on this article.... Is the slang confined to British English, or is it more widespread than that, with the US cue sport in fact the minority usage? ;-/ FlagSteward 13:47, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
It's used by governing/industry bodies internationally (though by no means consistently), and has been for something like a century. I recall from Shamos's Encyclopedia that the term gained a lot of currency in the 1930s, because "pool" (formerly a gentleman's game) had gotten a bad rep during the Great Depression as a hustler's game that people fought over, as out-of-work men who were good at pool turned to professional hustling just to get by; cf. the old saying about silly hobbies "Well, at least it'll keep him outta the pool halls!" Anyway, my rede is that the term's origin is British, its ascent American, and its decline general. As per below, even if we want to eventually have nine-ball, etc., covered at pool, pocket billiards would still exist as a general class (including snooker and English billiards as well as pool. The article is serving both purposes for the time being because of the lack of sourced material so far. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:38, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

Title

Stale
 – Topic re-raised in later threads.

Pocket billiards has become synonymous with "pool" and is almost exclusively referred to as "pool" today says the article. Shouldn't it therefore be moved to something like "Pool (pocket billiards)"? -- Picapica

Not really.
  • The article's text is actually wrong, as it superlatively overgeneralizes; the industry does in fact use the longer term regularly.
  • The terms are generally used as interchangeable by the industry today; some bodies prefer the one, some the other.
  • The article is doing double duty, covering both pocket billiards as a class of games that contrast with pocketless carom billiards, and about the sub-class of pool games. I envision them being separate articles after about another year or two of editing, but there's not enough material on hand to sanely split them yet.
  • Pool redirects to Pocket billiards, so no one will get lost.
It's not as messy a situation as "billiards" was, where there were at least three entirely different meanings in play. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:38, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
PS: While the salamander articles were still under basic development, I'm sure they had the same problem with the mole salamander (the animal) and mole salamanders (the class of animals, including the former). These days, they've solved this with Ambystoma talpoideum for the specific animal (pool) and Mole salamander for the genus (pocket billiards), and have enough material to support both articles. For now, the "species" of pocket billiards, pool, is covered by the parent "genus" article until there's enough material for a split. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:43, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
Stale
 – Topic never turned into a discussion.

Surely the game is part of popular culture in its own right? [unsigned]

Equipment section

Resolved
 – No objections to edit.

Amusing as it may be, the note about the typo in the reference about ball sizes detracts from the article, and on top of that, it has a typo itself. I'm removing it, for now. [unsigned]

Need info on wall clearance from the edge of the table

Resolved
 – If even encyclopedic, this is the wrong venue.

There should be info telling how much clearance you need between the edge of the table and any nearby walls. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.107.196.117 (talk) 05:00, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

Wouldn't hurt anything, but low-priority, as Wikipedia is not an advice column. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 13:48, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
Actually, if there's consensus that this is encyclopedic at all, it should be at the Billiard table article, not here. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 21:25, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Current Image is unencycopedic I think

Resolved
 – Image was removed and replaced.

I don't know that we have any better images of players playing than the one currently at the top of the article, but it hurts my eyes as a player to see any image in an article related to billiards showing a player who is an obvious beginner. If you don't know what I mean, let me assure you that any player seeing that picture—seeing the stance, body alignment, cue bridge, etc.—knows immediately that that person is a rank beginner. More importantly, we convey information through such pictures. While non-players might not know that the picture is of an amateur, they may assume, while reading an encyclopedia article the opposite and try to emulate that (shudder). Furthermore, even if they don't know what they are seeing exactly, anyone can see the awkwardness. We don't have to know ballet well to intuitively recognize when we are seeing grace and fluidity. A great player in their stance stroking correctly looks like a well oiled machine. I think we would do better to have a random billiards-related image than this. To me it's like having a picture of some three year old's fingerpainting in an article on fine art.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 21:30, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

Concur strongly; I hadn't even noticed that the pic was there until you posted this, and I looked and my first thought was "wow, they've taught chimps how to play pool?!?" — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 04:31, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

POV issue?

Resolved
 – Word removed.

Objectivity questionable: I don´t think calling the association with gambling "unfortunate" (or even fortunate for that matter) is appropriate. That is not a neutral POV. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.147.188.148 (talk) 01:38, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

It was very, very unfortunate for the sport, as pool suffered a massive slump until The Color of Money, which showed the organized, professional tournament aspect of the game as well as hustling and gambling. That said, the word isn't important to the article. — SMcCandlish Talk⇒ ʕ(Õلō)ˀ Contribs. 21:38, 8 January 2011 (UTC)

Removed paragraph on "subtle masse"

Resolved
 – No objections to cleanpu after over 2 years.

I removed the paragraph on "subtle masse", some sort of name of a way of shooting in billiards. Not only are technique tips out of place in a general article on pocket billiards, in googling the phrase it only shows up in wikipedia, wikipedia mirrors, and forums. 66.27.114.214 (talk) 21:04, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

The edit definitely did not belong and thanks for the removal. Just so you know, the term the editor garbled is semi-massé, not subtle masse; see its entry in our billiards glossary. See also Cue sports techniques#The semi-massé ("curve" or "swerve") shot. Cheers.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 07:31, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

National varieties of English

Resolved
 – Dead topic for a year; remaining issues raised in separate rename discussion.

Is this a WP:MOS#National varieties of English? AFAIK in Britain billiards is played on a snooker table with three balls. (hence pocket billiards rather than with no pockets (carom billiards). I have never heard the term "Pocket Billiards" used for Pool, although the game is far more common game in pubs. If you were to say to the typical pub pool player in the UK to anyone in a pub "Lets have a game of Pocket Billiards" they would look very confused as billiards and pool are two different games. (As would the typical American if you suggested a game of football and turned up with a soccer ball).

To avoid the confusion I have added a hatnote. "For billiards played on a snooker table see English billiards"

The article has an American bias, for example these phrases:

  • "pool" became synonymous with billiards, — Not outside America (and Canada?).
  • There are also hybrid games combining aspects of both pocket and carom billiards, such as English billiards, American four-ball billiards. — This makes the assumption that once upon a time there was a French game called carom billiards and another game called Pocket Billiards and that these other games are somehow hybrids of the two. The history of the game as described on these websites [7][8][9] which suggests that both games existed before pool (which according to the thirds source did not emerge until after 1870).

There is also another meaning in Britain for the term "pocket billiards" which is used to describe a man standing with his hands deep in his front trouser pockets. --PBS (talk) 14:21, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes we all know about the hands joke. Anyway, the point you were trying to get at with the hatnote was already addressed (and is even better addressed now) by the article prose. There are probably bias issue to resolve, but this effectively mostly a WP:ENGVAR matter. See also the archives of Talk:Cue sports for a lot more material on this matter. The short version is that "billiards" by itself means different things to different people depending upon where they are from, and the term has to be used carefully when it meaning is intended to be generic. In the case of this article, the term "pocket billiards" is a well-established phrase, with over a century of usage, both in the US and more broadly (i.e. everywhere that "billiards" doesn't automatically mean "the game everyone else calls English billiards"). The phrase "pocket billiards" means "pool", specifically, not "all forms of billiards-family games involving pockets" (or snooker would be included as well). The article cannot practicably be moved to "pool" because that word has other meanings, e.g. joint betting, a small body of water, a group of employees selected on rotation, etc., etc. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 17:21, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Requested move

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was Consensus was to move the page, page moved. ~~ GB fan ~~ talk 12:43, 28 September 2009 (UTC)

Pocket billiards → Pool (cue sports) — I can see why this article isn't simply at Pool, by far the most common name, since there are multiple competing meanings for the term, including Swimming pool and Pool (poker). However, the sport is only very rarely known today as "Pocket billiards", and a google search shows that the top hits, exluding Wikipedia itself, refer to a punk band from Belfast and the term's slang meanings. Cue sports is the most common name for the general form of sports that include pool (Billiards being too ambiguous), and using "pool sports" as the disambiguation is the best option here. YeshuaDavid • Talk • 17:21, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

SupporT with a capital T that rhymes with P which stands for Pool. (Unless this is another Anglo-American dispute; I doubt it, but I could be wrong.) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:23, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
I'm fairly sure that Americans use pool as well, we English certainly do. YeshuaDavid • Talk • 18:48, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
Then it isn't; The Music Man, from which I quote, is an American musical. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 18:51, 20 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Support. for the reason given by the nominator, but perhaps the closing admin should consider Pool (cue sport) without the "s". However I think that Pool (cue game) is better still, and as Pool (game) already redirects here, I think that would be a better than either of the other names as pool (poker) exists for the card game and an unqualified "game of pool" would usually mean the cue game unless it was spoken in the context of the card game. -- PBS (talk) 11:49, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
The reason for the plural "cue sports" is because there isn't one variety of Pool, but lots of different related games. When people say they're going to play pool in Britain and the USA, they actually mean completely different games, a bit like people using football to mean more than one sport depending on where people live. See Blackball (pool), Eight-ball, Straight pool, Nine-ball and others. Cue sports is the most common collective name for sports using a cue, while Pool (this article) is the collective name for a specific kind of game. It's quite confusing. YeshuaDavid • Talk • 20:43, 23 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Move to Pool (game). 199.125.109.138 (talk) 17:22, 24 September 2009 (UTC)
  • Support move to Pool (cue sports) (and regardless of what disambiguator we use, it must be plural). To clear up some matters in this very confusing area (I'm one of Wikipedia's majority writers of pool and billiards articles), the English speaking billiards world is basically divided up into three broad divisions related to the type of table used: 1) tables with pockets (pocket billiards/pool, of which there are a hundreds and hundreds of recognized games other than drab old 8 ball, and I'll plug one I recently wrote about just because: kelly pool) 2) snooker and its antecedent and descendant games played on snooker tables which, despite having pockets, for historical reasons, are in their own class, have there own language, and their own associated accoutrements and 3) the carom billiards games played on pocketless tables (such as straight rail, balkline, three cushion billiards, cushion caroms and so on).

    "Cue sports" is not the most commonly used overarching term for all of these games on all table types; rather "billiards" is historically and still today the inclusive term, but it is a word that leads to much direct ambiguity for many people. The reason our article on "billiards" is located at "cue sports" (which is something of a neologism) is because the meaning of billiards has been balkanized. Though, as I said, still used far more than "cue sports" to cover all games, in some places it means only one specific game, and ignorance plays a large part of this because many know of no other game but what they play locally (many mean by it 8 ball exclusively; the only game they know; the same thing is true of "pool" [I cannot tell you how sad this is to me]). In the UK, "billiards" is often used exclusively to mean what the rest of the world calls "English Billiards". In the U.S. it is used broadly sometimes, but others use billiards to mean the carom games to, to differentiate them from pocket billiards games. So "billiards" was too confusing and ambiguous to use as the overarching word, which is why we settled on "cue sports" here, since it has some presence outside Wikipedia and is rather intuitive but that it is nevertheless not a very common term.

    Pool is the word used throughout the English speaking world for most games other than carom and snooker, though again, many people, ignorant of the rich variety of pool games, just mean 8 ball and maybe 9 ball by it. Pool was coined in the US and has been in use since at least 1850, owing to the practice of placing billiards tables in horse betting betting establishments know as "pool rooms" (where people "pooled" their money on bets). The disreputable reputation of the word was railed against by the billiard table industry, who lobbied to only use pocket billiards (actually getting a New York State law passed in the early 1900 making it illegal to use the word pool in any name or sign of a billiard establishment). Anyway, they lost and it is by far the more common term today and for quite a long time. Of course most of you will never read this last line as you will have glazed over a few thousands word ago but what the hell, it's my area.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:59, 24 September 2009 (UTC)

Nah, I managed to get to the last line :-) Quite interesting really, I play snooker mostly, and I didn't much of the history of the game, or its terminology. YeshuaDavid • Talk • 17:42, 25 September 2009 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

.

I was away doing other stuff, so I didn't notice this. I'm one of the other most-active cue sports editors here, and probably should have chimed in. No objections to the move, as long as pocket billiards continues to redirect here. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:05, 20 November 2009 (UTC) Partially redacted by me, — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:21, 30 November 2009 (UTC)

Clean up after the move, or undo it

Whoever champions and performs a highly significant move like this needs to clean up after themselves. There are not only hundreds of links in the form [[Pocket billiards|pool]], there are about as many more in the form [[Pocket billiards|pool]] (pocket billiards), as well as sentence-starting capitalized versions, and other variants like pool ([[pocket billiards]]). All of them need to be cleaned up, presumably via a carefully executed AWB run. If no one is willing to do this cleanup, then the move should be reversed. It is unfair to other editors to demand a change of this magnitude and then leave everyone else to clean up the resulting chaos. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:35, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Are you saying that all the articles that link here through the redirect, pocket billiards, should be changed so they come to the page here directly? I am not sure why the concern, there are no double redirects and everything seems to work, is there a reason we need to make hundreds of changes just to avoid a redirect? ~~ GB fan ~~ talk 22:04, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
What's the issue? "Pool (cue sports)" is the correct location for this topic, and as all the links which are still formated as Pocket billiards redirect here anyway, I don't see how there's a problem. 84.92.117.93 (talk) 22:44, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
Likewise, if the redirects point to this page I do not see the problem. However in the long term pocket billiards probably needs to be a dab page, between this page and English billiards. -- PBS (talk) 23:42, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
Why? No one calls English billiards "pocket billiards", on either side of the Atlantic, and the prose of the article and its hatnote already explain and disambiguate. Cf. WP:BROKE. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:22, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
Uh, "correct" according to whom, 84-dot-whatever? That's simply an opinion. "Pocket billiards" was sourceably "correct" without any need for parenthetical disambiguators. The phrase "pool (cue sports)" cannot be shown to have any currency at all, unlike "pocket billiards", which was just fine as an article title here, and "pool" by itself, which was too ambiguous. The "issue" is that the text of hundreds of articles are now laden with user-confusing redirects, and the redirects frequently not only do not match at all the text being linked from, but appear in now-redundant constructions. E.g. if you clean up "pocket billiards (pool)" to simply stop using the redirect, it will be "pocket billiards (pool)", which is ass-backwards and confusing even for editors. Just one example. Basically, this was a lazy, sloppy rename that has not been cleaned up after. It is a far more complex case that simply moving "Foo of bar" to "Foo of Bar" to fix a capitalization problem, or whatever. The actual in-code usage of the original name of this article is quite complicated. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 00:22, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
I still do not understand why anyone needs to go through and change every place that links to pocket billiards. These are not broken links. When someone clicks on the link it brings them to this page. If it shouldn't bring them to this page then that would be a reason to change the link, but that is not a problem created by the page move. ~~ GB fan ~~ talk 01:59, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
If you "still don't understand" then just don't worry about it and move on. Very short version: Redirects are bypassed in the main prose of articles unless there is a very good reason to keep one on a case-by-case basis (we even have bots that do this bypassing en masse), because they are confusing to many readers, and they make editing more difficult and less consistent, as well. Simply bypassing the redirs automatically in this case is going to result in really screwy link code, as I've already demonstrated, in forms like [[x|y]] (x), etc. If this still isn't clear, then, well, I am rather disinclined to re-re-explain it any further. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 05:10, 27 November 2009 (UTC)

Undo move?

The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was no move. Consensus at this time does not support this page move. PeterSymonds (talk) 09:41, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

Pool (cue sports) → Pocket billiards —

  • This move, which has already been performed (with the support of a grand total of 4 editors, 3 with virtually no connection to the topic nor experience editing articles on the topic), should be reversed (i.e. the article should be at Pocket billiards), unless the seekers of the move and/or the moving admin perform the massive cleanup necessary to undo the resulting mess created by this move. "Hit and run" moves like this are not very appropriate, and other editors should not be burdened with changing hundreds and hundreds of links to sweep up after someone's pet-peeve RM. See Talk:Pool (cue sports)#Cleanup after the move, or undo it for discussion.   — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 20:47, 26 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Comment The reason given above is not a very compelling reason to undo the move. The guideline on redirects says that there is nothing inherently wrong with linking to redirects. There is nothing wrong with [[pocket billiards]], to me it is preferable to [[Pool (cue sports)|pocket billiards]]. The other examples above are not very convincing to me either. With the new name every link would need to be piped . I do not see any compelling reason to change all of the these links. The wording of the each article should be up to the editors of the individual articles. This should be discussing what the name of the article should be. Is "Pocket billiards" a preferable name to "Pool (cue sports)"? ~~ GB fan ~~ talk 14:44, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Comment: Article currently reads in part Outside the cue sports industry, the sport is almost exclusively referred to as "pool"..., which has been my experience too and which indicates to me that the article name should be pool, suitably disambiguated, see the existing DAB at pool. I'd suggest pool (sport), currently a redir, as a strong candidate. Interested in other suggestions. Andrewa (talk) 22:25, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
  • Oppose Per WP:COMMONNAME, and poor rational for moving. Pocket billiards is a very uncommon name for the group of sports commonly known as pool, and it redirects here anyway there's no difficulty in finding this article. 84.92.117.93 (talk) 23:39, 27 November 2009 (UTC)
    • Comment: I agree, pocket billiards appears to be some sort of official name and a poor one at that, see below. But I see that billiards redirects to cue sports. I've played pool and also snooker in many pubs, clubs and private homes, and what I have always called billiards, a three-ball game which seems to be called English billiards here, in clubs and private homes. I see billiards redirects to cue sports and seems to be regarded a synonym for it; I think billiards should be a disambiguation page at least. The names pocket billiards and cue sports are both new to me, and while the latter seems clear enough the former seems strange indeed, as aren't all cue sports played using pockets? I'm not convinced (cue sports) is the best disambiguator, what's wrong with the simpler one (sport)? Is there some other sport named pool? Andrewa (talk) 09:12, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
      • Correction: While the big three of current cue sports are snooker, billiards and pool (in Austrlalian terminology), there seem to be older cue sports such as carrom billiards which do not use pockets. This explains the term pocket billiards but doesn't justify its use as the article name in terms of WP:NC. Andrewa (talk) 19:33, 28 November 2009 (UTC)
      • Wikipedia:Official names is not of any relevance here, since there is no "official" anything at play here, and nobody who can make anything "official". What is going on here is that we've run into a conflict between two Wikipedian preferences of about equal weight: 1) We prefer common names, but 2) we prefer to avoid disambiguation if possible. The entire point of using common names is to make linking to them second nature. But this is, of course, totally thwarted if the common name must be disambiguated in order to link to it, as is the case with Pool (cue sports) and other proposed "Pool (whatever)" alternatives. That is, by the very act of disambiguating the common name, one destroys all rationale to use the most common name, which is what required the disambiguation in the first place (it's completely circular). Meanwhile, the second most common name, and one that is readily sourceable, has no such issues. It's only downside is that it isn't as common, but so what? If a user just went to Pool they got a DAB page (just as they still do now), and it provided them a link to the proper article. All we've gained in the process of making this change to Pool (cue sports) is the necessity to disambiguate. We've added complexity and difficulty without any gain of any kind - not typing length ("Pocket billiards" is one character shorter), not ease of locating the article (no change), not ease of linking (the opposite is true - a boatload of links will have to be completely rewritten to make any sense), not anything. I don't care all that much, I'm just miffed that the article was renamed with little consideration generally, and no consideration at all with regard to the link and redirect mess that would eventually result (see previous topic above, for concrete examples). — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:18, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
  • If the article doesn't move back to where it was (Pocket billiards), I'd be okay with Pool (sports). It needs the -s because this article is about multiple games/sports. Pool / pocket billiards is a family/class of games, not a game (except in very informal, ignorant, slangy usage, i.e. by people unaware of any other game but eight-ball). This was a major part of the original rename discussion, above. Pool (sport) should be a redirect to it, though. However this proposed simpler name than Pool (cue sports), while in better agreement with the guidance at WP:DAB and WP:NC, does not address the concern I've raised above, that no cleanup has been done, post-move, with the result that completely bollixed redirects that confuse readers and editors are going to result. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 09:18, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

A quick survey of Australian and other terminology

Resolved
 – Impasse between two editors (only), better dealt with in user talk.
As I personally adopt a one-revert rule, I'm not going to remove this resolved tag a second time. Please note that Template:Resolved reads in part This template is to show an item on a talk page has been resolved and there is no dispute in anyone's mind about the outcome, and draw your own conclusions as to its meaning (if any) here. Andrewa (talk) 10:54, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

{{Resolved|See Talk:Cue sports and archives thereof.}} — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)›

This sweeping and unsigned comment (OK, it's not hard to track it down) seems unhelpful to me. Can you provide a more specific reference as to exactly what was resolved and where? Andrewa (talk) 11:10, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
In that there has been no attempt to provide the requested reference, I'm removing the resolved flag as unsubstantiated. Andrewa (talk) 10:04, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Eh, you say you tracked it down yourself. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:59, 4 December 2009 (UTC)

If this were just about the text, it might boil down to WP:ENGVAR, but about article titles the rules are a bit different. Anyway, as a start here's how it works in my dialect:

  • Pool: The game described by the current article at Eight-ball and promoted by the International Pool Tour. Played with a rack of fifteen balls plus a cue ball. The most common cue game in pubs, on various sized tables often coin operated, and by church and other youth groups, and the source of various slang expressions concerning the eight ball.
  • Billiards: The three-ball game described by the currect article at English billiards. Seen as a gentleman's game, often played in homes on various sized tables, most commonly 6'x4' which is commonly called 3/4 size but both larger and smaller variations exist. Also played in in some of the more traditional clubs.
  • Snooker: The game described at snooker, played with a rack of ten red balls plus spotted colours and a white cue ball. So we've got one right (maybe). Most famous as a professional game and popularised on TV by Pot Black. Many home billiards tables have a set of snooker balls as an alternative game.

These are the big three, and aside from variations of them such as suicide pool, many Aussies would have no idea that other cue sports even exist.

Other dialects? Andrewa (talk) 20:04, 28 November 2009 (UTC)

This has actually all already been covered before at great length, and shouldn't have any affect on the name of this article. "Billiards" means one (or more!) of at least four different things in English, depending upon dialect and context: English billiards, if you are British or part of the more British parts of the Commonwealth (e.g., Australia but not Canada); pool (cue sports) if you are a typical American casual player; carom billiards if you are a serious-player North American; cue sports in general (i.e. as a family/class of games, including carom, pool, snooker, etc.), in any dialect other than British/Commonwealth English. Billiards presently redirects to cue sports as the most inclusive and generic possible meaning, from which anyone can pretty easily find the more specific article they were looking for, if the general meaning doesn't resonate with them. I agree with comments above that it could also be moved to a DAB page and handled that way, but in my 4+ years here the present redirect has never seemed to be problematic for anyone, esp. given the DAB hatnote at the top of Cue sports. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 08:59, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Disagree with some of this, most importantly the claim that it has no bearing on the proposed move, and the consequent and uncalled-for IMO removal of the section from the move discussion. However the survey of dialects (if accurate, and I'm happy to assume it is for the moment) is helpful, if a little unclear. It seems to indicate that pool and pocket billiards are both synonyms for billiards among serious players in North America, is that the claim? Andrewa (talk) 11:10, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
That's not the idea, I don't think. Ignorant US players would equate "pool" and the unmodified term "billiards" - actually they frequently equate "billiards" and "eight-ball"; cf. "many Aussies would have no idea that other cue sports even exist" - same deal. To most US speakers "billiards" means "cue sports in general" (mostly because the average person has no idea that different games exist using similar equipment; to their eyes a snooker table is just a big ol' pool table), while to real players it usually means "carom billiards"; Canadian usage in my experience - 1.5 years in Toronto, which is arguably enough - appears to mirror this. The real point was that "billiards" by itself has at least four (often overlapping) meanings in English, as everyone who cared at the time figured out en masse at Talk:Cue sports, which back then was Talk:Billiards, as I recall. That has no bearing on what "pocket billiards" or "pool" mean, what validity those terms have (and according to what sources), the interplay of common names vs. disambiguation (the latter tends to cancel out the value of the former), and what this article should be called. A growing thread in which everyone in the English speaking world gives their version of what "billiards" means, e.g. in Belizean English and South African English and so on, is completely off-topic here, and will just confuse the issue. Might be on-topic at Talk:Billiard, but that DAB page already seems to have it covered. Aside from the introduction of an outright error, since reverted, the page has barely changed in years. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 17:17, 30 November 2009 (UTC)
Wikipedia naming conventions don't distinguish ignorant from other English speakers. Obviously this is a complex issue with a great deal of history. But IMO further progress is still possible. Hang in there! Andrewa (talk) 10:04, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Didn't suggest otherwise; what I'm saying is that the issue of what "billiards" means in English, and what effects that may have on en.wiki cue sports article names, really doesn't have anything to do with Talk:Pool (cue sports) in particular, much less the name discussion this topic has been made a subtopic of for some reason. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 22:26, 2 December 2009 (UTC)
Disagree. It explains why the suggested name of pocket billiards may be nonsensical to many English speakers. This is of course extremely relevant in terms of WP:NC. Andrewa (talk) 10:27, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
There's no evidence that is the case at all, though, because the phrase "pocket billiards" has nothing to do with English billiards (or simply "billiards" as that word is understood in Commonwealth English when used by itself). But, whatever. This is pointless and circular. You think one thing, I think the other, we aren't changing our minds and quite evidently no one else cares at all, since we're the only two talking on this sub-topic. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 21:58, 4 December 2009 (UTC)
Disagree with most of this. But let's move on. Andrewa (talk) 10:54, 6 December 2009 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Pool_(cue_sports)/Archive_1&oldid=1204838301"