User talk:Letcord
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[edit]Hi Letcord! I noticed your contributions and wanted to welcome you to the Wikipedia community. I hope you like it here and decide to stay.
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Happy editing! I dream of horses (Contribs) (Talk) 20:38, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
Inquiry about Doubles → doubles
[edit]Hey, there, @Letcord. I couldn't help but notice, that you have been going around changing Singles → singles and Doubles → doubles on various tennis articles. I was wondering what software you were using for this mass change. I, too, would like to learn this quick, multiple-page editing. Sincerely, Qwerty284651 (talk) 16:02, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
- Hi @Qwerty284651, it's a little python script I wrote that finds all redirects in a chunk of wikitext and replaces them with the direct article links. I'm only using it on a select few statistics articles that I've been working on - in general, redirects don't need to be "fixed" like this (see WP:NOTBROKEN). I could give it to you if you have a python environment set up, but a better tool you could use to do a similar thing is WP:AWB (or WP:JWB), where you can make a list of replace rules, e.g. "Men's Singles" → "Men's singles", and then feed it a list of articles for it to make those replacements on. Letcord (talk) 17:07, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
- Well, you see, here is the thing, @Letcord. The redirects you and Dicklyon have been making using either JWB or AWB, for that matter, have caused many redlinks, in the process, because not all tournament's draws have redirects to OR from upper- to lowercase. For example the 2008 Rome Masters men's doubles draw redirects from 2008 Internazionali BNL d'Italia – Men's Doubles. By changing the Doubles → to doubles, you break that redirect...Which would then have to be double redirected, which increases loading time for individual wiki pages. You get the drift. I have access to AWB, but don't know how to convert the doubles back to Doubles, or make quick redirects, without going through page creation for 100's of articles. Qwerty284651 (talk) 18:41, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
- @Qwerty284651: See User talk:Tol/Archives/2022/03#Another job for TolBot 13. He can probably get approval for making the missing redirects by bot. Dicklyon (talk) 16:33, 16 March 2022 (UTC)
- Well, you see, here is the thing, @Letcord. The redirects you and Dicklyon have been making using either JWB or AWB, for that matter, have caused many redlinks, in the process, because not all tournament's draws have redirects to OR from upper- to lowercase. For example the 2008 Rome Masters men's doubles draw redirects from 2008 Internazionali BNL d'Italia – Men's Doubles. By changing the Doubles → to doubles, you break that redirect...Which would then have to be double redirected, which increases loading time for individual wiki pages. You get the drift. I have access to AWB, but don't know how to convert the doubles back to Doubles, or make quick redirects, without going through page creation for 100's of articles. Qwerty284651 (talk) 18:41, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
Doubles not needed and its far from status quo
[edit]I guess I'm at a loss to understand. I brought up the fact that there is no status quo on a bot about to change all the "mixed" to " Mixed doubles" (when there is no other mixed event other than doubles. It is something that needs discussing at Tennis Project. Yet you went and changed them all anyway knowing all this? Why would you do that? Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:28, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
- @Fyunck(click), I was very clear that I would. And I will revert every single one of your reverts, to restore back to the status quo ante, per the WP:BRD process. Letcord (talk) 20:32, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
- You do realize that BRD allows you to do it once and only once. If it is reverted you must bring it to talk to discuss the changes you want. That's how wikipedia works. If consensus at Tennis Project is to change all these articles to Mixed doubles, I have no issue with that at all. I don't feel it's needed at all, but maybe most will want it your way as long as it runs through the process. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:38, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
- The uniform change to "Mixed" was made by myself/Dicklyon on my behalf. This was the Bold. I reverted these changes after Wolbo's revert. This was the Revert. You then reverted back to the changes by myself/Dicklyon, thereby undermining the BRD process. I've then reverted your revert to get back to the status quo ante, and will continue doing so at a pace faster than yours. Any discussion about changing to "Mixed" alone will start with two opposes, but feel free to start one. Strange how you seem willing to waste so much energy on something which is in your own words "not a big deal". Letcord (talk) 21:05, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
- Are you saying that most were Mixed Draw, and they were changed to something else (like Mixed), before being changed to Mixed doubles? I'm trying to understand the exact situation here. Fyunck(click) (talk) 21:30, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
- Most were "Mixed Doubles", with a few "Mixed Draw". These were then changed to "Mixed draw" by Dicklyon on my behalf. Wolbo opposed "draw" so I changed to "Mixed". I then reverted back to "Mixed doubles" after Wolbo's opposition to "Mixed" in isolation. It's not clear cut as there was some variation between articles, but in most cases your revert was to my/Dicklyon's changed version. Really not worth 100 reverts over in any case. Letcord (talk) 21:43, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
- If that's the case then I am in the wrong and I apologize. I thought I saw they were originally at Mixed, then moved to Mixed Draw, then Mixed, then Mixed doubles. That is the only reason I reverted and opposed the bot. Do I feel Mixed is much better... I do since it would be shorter and tighter with Singles-Doubles-Mixed, but that is for me to do the convincing not you. Sorry. Fyunck(click) (talk) 21:49, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
- Most were "Mixed Doubles", with a few "Mixed Draw". These were then changed to "Mixed draw" by Dicklyon on my behalf. Wolbo opposed "draw" so I changed to "Mixed". I then reverted back to "Mixed doubles" after Wolbo's opposition to "Mixed" in isolation. It's not clear cut as there was some variation between articles, but in most cases your revert was to my/Dicklyon's changed version. Really not worth 100 reverts over in any case. Letcord (talk) 21:43, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
- Are you saying that most were Mixed Draw, and they were changed to something else (like Mixed), before being changed to Mixed doubles? I'm trying to understand the exact situation here. Fyunck(click) (talk) 21:30, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
- The uniform change to "Mixed" was made by myself/Dicklyon on my behalf. This was the Bold. I reverted these changes after Wolbo's revert. This was the Revert. You then reverted back to the changes by myself/Dicklyon, thereby undermining the BRD process. I've then reverted your revert to get back to the status quo ante, and will continue doing so at a pace faster than yours. Any discussion about changing to "Mixed" alone will start with two opposes, but feel free to start one. Strange how you seem willing to waste so much energy on something which is in your own words "not a big deal". Letcord (talk) 21:05, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
- You do realize that BRD allows you to do it once and only once. If it is reverted you must bring it to talk to discuss the changes you want. That's how wikipedia works. If consensus at Tennis Project is to change all these articles to Mixed doubles, I have no issue with that at all. I don't feel it's needed at all, but maybe most will want it your way as long as it runs through the process. Fyunck(click) (talk) 20:38, 14 March 2022 (UTC)
Good work on tennis articles
[edit]Hi Letcord. You haven't been here for long but you're really doing great work, I appreciate your constructive contributions to Wikipedia. I'm also impressed how fast you do some of your mass edits/big changes, I assume you're using scripts or tools for automation? If so, I have one request but I'm not sure if it's possible. Check out the List of French Open singles finalists during the Open Era, you can see there are two columns in the main tables for the players. One for their names and the other one for their nationalities. I'm thinking of merging them so it becomes (
Rafael Nadal) instead of (Player: Rafael Nadal – Nationality: Spain) in two columns. That of course would take me a bit of time to implement manually across the four related articles. Maybe with some tools/scripts you can implement such changes faster?
BTW, I'm going to update Serena navbox we discussed in the other place and see how it goes. ForzaUV (talk) 21:37, 22 March 2022 (UTC)
- Hi @ForzaUV, thanks for your comment. The only hesitation I would have about merging the columns in List of French Open singles finalists during the Open Era is that the featured article List of French Open men's singles champions and the equivalent articles for the other slams (all also featured class) have separated columns for the players and countries. This does bring some benefit in allowing for sorting to see all the champions from each country in the order that they won in. I would lean towards shortening the country names in the "Nationality" columns of the main tables in the finalists articles to their abbreviated forms, like in the champions articles, and merging the columns in the "Most consecutive finals in the Open Era" tables. What would you think of that? If you have any more ideas for improvements for articles let me know; I've been working through Lists of tennis records and statistics trying to bring them all up to scratch.
- The Serena template looks much better to me now - I think a discussion should be started at the tennis project talk page to see if others agree and the same culling can be done to all other players' start boxes. Letcord (talk) 03:55, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
- That would be good enough for me but we also need to move the nationality column before the players column. I'm so used to see a flag before players' names in wikipedia that it just looks weird to see the names before the flags in that chart. As for the templates, I doubt that you'd find many who really care about them, I'd say go bold, do whatever you like with them and see if someone questions your edits then discuss. I'd side with you since I agree that those don't need be "skyscrapers" as you've described them. One more thing, you re-added the the "WTA player of the year" to Serena's template but you shouldn't have because Year-end world No. 1 is the same thing. All the best. ForzaUV (talk) 16:59, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
- @ForzaUV, I've applied those formatting changes to the finalists articles of the four slams now, which I think has made them look better. I'll also make the same changes to ITF World Champions, which has similar country columns for the players. In the case of the preceded/succeeded boxes, I won't go bold because I'd be boldly undoing work which would have taken other editors quite a few hours to put together. I think starting a discussion is the better option, but this is not an issue I feel that passionate about, so you or someone else can start one if you do. You're correct about the Player of the Year being the same as year-end No. 1, which I forgot. I've now re-removed it, thanks. Letcord (talk) 01:54, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
- Looks better indeed. Thanks a bunch! ForzaUV (talk) 02:06, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
- @ForzaUV: No problem. Please comment at Talk:List of Australian Open singles finalists during the Open Era#Moving columns around, Fyunck(click) has reverted one of my edits. Letcord (talk) 02:23, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
- Looks better indeed. Thanks a bunch! ForzaUV (talk) 02:06, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
- @ForzaUV, I've applied those formatting changes to the finalists articles of the four slams now, which I think has made them look better. I'll also make the same changes to ITF World Champions, which has similar country columns for the players. In the case of the preceded/succeeded boxes, I won't go bold because I'd be boldly undoing work which would have taken other editors quite a few hours to put together. I think starting a discussion is the better option, but this is not an issue I feel that passionate about, so you or someone else can start one if you do. You're correct about the Player of the Year being the same as year-end No. 1, which I forgot. I've now re-removed it, thanks. Letcord (talk) 01:54, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
- That would be good enough for me but we also need to move the nationality column before the players column. I'm so used to see a flag before players' names in wikipedia that it just looks weird to see the names before the flags in that chart. As for the templates, I doubt that you'd find many who really care about them, I'd say go bold, do whatever you like with them and see if someone questions your edits then discuss. I'd side with you since I agree that those don't need be "skyscrapers" as you've described them. One more thing, you re-added the the "WTA player of the year" to Serena's template but you shouldn't have because Year-end world No. 1 is the same thing. All the best. ForzaUV (talk) 16:59, 23 March 2022 (UTC)
I just see this on a personal page. Moving the country column should be discussed on the article before changing things as no one may notice a discussion here. I opened up a discussion at Talk:List of Australian Open singles finalists during the Open Era. It should be discussed "before" moving things around as is Wiki protocol. Different styles get used depending on the circumstance. Fyunck(click) (talk) 02:27, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
- Please don't wave the banner of "Wiki protocol" when within the span of a month and just with me you've shown repeated ignorance of the very basics of it. The well-established WP:BRD process, which you've got the sequencing wrong for multiple times now, starts with a B for bold, which means that any edit can be made without starting a discussion first. There is no 'should be discussed "before" moving things around' rule. It can be done as a courtesy before making a change to many articles at once (doesn't apply here), or for potentially controversial changes (which I didn't expect this to be), but it is certainly not required. Letcord (talk) 02:45, 24 March 2022 (UTC)
Personal attacks
[edit]Hey, just a brief note: Please keep commentary related to the topic / bot / whatever. Please don't voice your personal opinions of specific editors. Cheers! Reaper Eternal (talk) 20:33, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
- @Reaper Eternal, my comment suggesting the editor overestimated their understanding of the problem is no different to the editor's comment that they "honestly feel like this is evidence that <user> is not a competent enough bot editor to carry out this task properly", except only mine has any basis. Left unrebuked, the editor's dismissive, unfounded comments about said user's competence and the ease of the task at hand have a chilling effect on those who might want to get involved with bots, but don't want to be belittled in the process. If one comment should be removed, both should be. Letcord (talk) 21:20, 30 March 2022 (UTC)
- You went to a month-old thread that you were not involved with and called Scottywong an idiot. Scottywong was voicing his concerns about whether the bot operator was qualified to be running bots, which he is allowed to do if someone is going to be editing millions of pages with an automated tool. He was also raising points regarding bot policy, namely, that bots should not be flooding watchlists with minor, cosmetic changes. Reaper Eternal (talk) 00:51, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
- I never called anyone an idiot, I only suggested that the editor overestimated their understanding of the problem, which is evident. There is a wide void between those two actions. Raising points about bot policy is fine, but belittling the bot editor over the supposed ease of the task and their supposed incompetence when one has obviously not bothered to take the time to grasp the difficulty of the problem, is not and should be called out. The discussion is young enough to be at the bottom of the noticeboard, so fair game for new comments. Letcord (talk) 06:15, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
- As long as a thread is not closed or archived, it is open for comment by anyone. I agree with Letcord and don't think it was a personal attack. I had written something similar in the same thread that Scottywong wouldn't be dissmising it as a simple problem if they had properly understood the issues. There is nothing wrong with not understanding a complex problem and asking questions about it. But if someone is going to act like they know everything and say things like
User:ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ is not a competent enough bot editor to carry out this task properly
,we should find a different bot operator. I'll volunteer to take over the tasks if no one else wants to
andThis is not more complicated than it looks, in fact, it's not complicated at all
based on their faulty understanding, they should expect to be called out for their comments. As for the WP:BOTPOL related points raised in the thread, 7 memebers of WP:BAG have commented in the thread and none of them have said their is a policy violation in the bot edits. A couple of improvements have been suggested and I have incorporarted them. ಮಲ್ನಾಡಾಚ್ ಕೊಂಕ್ಣೊ (talk) 07:14, 31 March 2022 (UTC)- I stand by the statements I made at WP:BOTN, and still believe they are true. I also realize I'm in the minority, and that's fine. I'm confident that I could develop regex that could fix these problems in a single edit (because I've done it in the past), but I'm not about to waste 4-8 hours of my life just to prove it to random people on the internet. I don't mind if people think I'm an idiot, or that I suffer from Dunning-Krueger effect; I realize that my comments were somewhat inflammatory, and I can take the heat as well. Although it's curious how a 1-month old account has already found the bot noticeboard. Who were you in a past life? —ScottyWong— 14:59, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
- It's possible to express confidence in one's own ability without also being dismissive of others'. Even assuming a one-size-fits-all regex substitution for this problem exists (remains to be seen, I've not investigated it), a single pattern requiring 4-8 hours to develop would not qualify as "simple" or "not complicated at all" in any standard definition of those words. But I'm not here to lecture; my only intention was to defend an editor who I see to be doing underappreciated work future-proofing Wikipedia with their bot. I found the bot noticeboard discussion via this discussion on the bot operator's talk page, not that it matters. Letcord (talk) 16:59, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
- I stand by the statements I made at WP:BOTN, and still believe they are true. I also realize I'm in the minority, and that's fine. I'm confident that I could develop regex that could fix these problems in a single edit (because I've done it in the past), but I'm not about to waste 4-8 hours of my life just to prove it to random people on the internet. I don't mind if people think I'm an idiot, or that I suffer from Dunning-Krueger effect; I realize that my comments were somewhat inflammatory, and I can take the heat as well. Although it's curious how a 1-month old account has already found the bot noticeboard. Who were you in a past life? —ScottyWong— 14:59, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
- You went to a month-old thread that you were not involved with and called Scottywong an idiot. Scottywong was voicing his concerns about whether the bot operator was qualified to be running bots, which he is allowed to do if someone is going to be editing millions of pages with an automated tool. He was also raising points regarding bot policy, namely, that bots should not be flooding watchlists with minor, cosmetic changes. Reaper Eternal (talk) 00:51, 31 March 2022 (UTC)
Discussion copied from Fyunck(click)'s talk page
[edit]
Hello. This message is being sent to inform you that there is currently a discussion involving you at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring regarding a possible violation of Wikipedia's policy on edit warring. Thank you. Letcord (talk) 07:26, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
- Sorry, but you being a new user I can't take this very seriously. It's why I didn't report you for changing tennis guidelines with no discussion. Too trivial even though your next revert of me seemed like retribution. I guess you also hadn't noticed I had started a discussion on the proper talk page. Slow down and smell the coffee as sometimes there is a large actual consensus that changes things and sometimes, as in this case, there isn't. It might still go your way, but if not you move on and work on something different. [redacted] 08:34, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
- I didn't change the tennis guideline with no discussion, Wolbo changed it in October following the RFC [1], which you reverted [2], and then RandomCanadian changed it a few days ago [3], which you again reverted [4]. Only then did I join and revert until you reached your limit, so "It's why I didn't report you for changing tennis guidelines with no discussion" is absurd on its face. A full RFC overrides any local project consensus, per WP:CONLEVEL. As for this dispute, we'll see what the admins say, but given you parroted my edit summary from a different dispute like a child [5][6], and already had to apologize for blindly reverting my edits less than a month ago [7], I would suggest that it is you who should "smell the coffee", learn to "move on" when things don't go your way, and consider whether such behavior makes you a net-positive to the project. Letcord (talk) 09:17, 13 April 2022 (UTC)
Sources for Other pro tours
[edit]Hi. I notice you updated the Tennis pro tours and tournament ranking series page and I suspect you used my book as a guide and then found online sources for these tours. I should point out that there are a small number of tours listed in my book that are not mentioned in any online source or just one or two results are online and they do not mention the results were part of a larger tour. These tours required very detailed offline research for me to find the results for them. I do not want these listed at all on the page. If my book were to be listed as the source, then fine, but these have come to light solely because of my research and I do not want them mentioned unless I am credited as the source of them. So far you have been very good with ensuring that information on that page is sourced, but just thought I should mention it. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 17:44, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
- @Tennishistory1877 Ah. Yes, I was working through your book cross-checking what was in the article (how I found the error), and added the tours not listed (up to 1946 in the "Other tours" chapters). I would personally be in favor of adding your book as a source and then adding all missing tours/correcting all dates and tallies, but seeing as the status quo is that that isn't permitted, please remove the tours I added that you are the sole secondary source for (no way for me to know). I don't have access to McCauley, or TennisBase (error message when I try to register), as otherwise I'd just work from them to add the tours they have info for. If you do know which ones they have that aren't currently listed I'll do the work adding them, as otherwise if I continue from your book we'll run into this same issue again. Letcord (talk) 18:05, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
- There are two tours listed on there (1931 O' Hara Wood Gemmell and 1940 Budge Nogrady) which are not on Tennis Base or in McCauley. Neither of these matter to me too much because the results are in online newspapers. I have added the tours from 1946 onwards which can be sourced from McCauley and/or Tennis Base. Only one editor objected to me using my book as a source. I disagreed with him then and still do. As I said before, I believe my book qualifies because it has been reviewed in a respected publication. However, I am not re-hashing this again personally. I don't like when editors continually hoist the same issues up the same flagpoles when decisions go against them. However, if you want to raise the issue that is up to you. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 22:11, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
- @Tennishistory1877: Thanks for adding the rest. Better for you to do it anyway but I assumed that if you'd wanted to you would've done so years ago. 1931 O'Hara Wood–Gemmell and 1940 Budge–Nogrady are now removed from the article as all tours should have secondary sourcing. I've added your book to the bibliography because I've used it as a reference when cross-checking and making my additions, so it should be credited even if not (currently) used for citing individual dates/players/H2Hs. I noticed that the 1936 Sharp–Okada results (part of the Tilden–Vines Asia tour) and 1927 Lenglen UK tour (men's and women's) results mentioned by Bowers are not in the PTA. Are these intentional omissions? Also did you just exclude all WWII exhibitions because they were unpaid/too poorly documented? Letcord (talk) 05:09, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
- Sharp Okada and Lenglen 1927 UK are intentionally excluded. For tours, I have not included every single tour that there ever was, as some were so minor as to not warrant inclusion. Although Lenglen was a great player, her opponents on the European tour were not, which may explain why it was a disaster and folded early after just 6 matches. The opening lines from Dewhurst's wikipedia page "Evelyn Dewhurst (née Maud Evelyn Ray Marshall; 12 January 1902 – 1993) was a British Ceylonese tennis player. She competed at the 1926 Wimbledon Championships, reaching the second round in singles and the third round in doubles" just about sums up Evelyn Dewhurst! Sharp Okada is a very minor tour. There were a few minor tours I excluded in the men's too (I seem to recall from memory that Maskell and Jeffrey toured the UK and Nusslein versus minor German pros in Germany). Although I included some tours including only lesser pros, these were world series undercard matches (some of these World series undercard tours are only documented properly in my book, even though the headline world series matches are also on Tennis Base). There is little appetite among researchers for tours involving only minor pros. For tournaments I excluded closed national pro championships, such as the British professional championships, because these were only open to British players (an event won many times by Dan Maskell). The book could have been much longer with these included and added little relevant content. I also excluded several pro-amateur contests in the 1920s, though included those that were part of a major pro tour (such as 1933 Europe). Before 1935 pros could play amateurs. During the war, pro tennis effectively ceased to exist. There was much blurring of the lines. Budge played Elwood Cooke (then an amateur) in a series in America in the early part of WW2. The authorities said this was against the rules, but Budge claimed he took no payment. However, this was frowned on and was subsequently curtailed, yet amateurs could and did play pros if they were all in uniform. Basically I have decided the cut off point for pro tennis ending was after the world series concluded in 1942 and players went off to war. Only the US Pro and Pinehurst events are included from the start of 1943 until play resumed after the war in late 1945. Post war tennis is much easier, because the lines between pros and amateurs were clearer, but there were still anomalies. For instance, there were matches in Chantilly in 1966 involving amateur Pierre Darmon, because they managed to exploit a loophole in the rules. I notice you said you wanted URL links to Tennis Base. I can't do that, because, like you, I can not register an account on there at present (this has been the case for some time). However, I can assure you that citations I listed for Tennis Base are accurate from when I used it before. When I started updating the wikipedia pro tennis pages two years ago they were in a pretty sorry state and seemed to be stuck in a time warp, with McCauley being the prime reference (McCauley's was a great if flawed book that has been outdated for years). I have done my best to make the major pro player pages as good as I can using newspapers.com sourcing, but for a page such as the one we are working on at the moment "Tennis pro tours and tournament ranking series" it is impossible to make a good page without using my book as a source. I believe we have done the best we can using the permissible sources. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 09:55, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
- @Tennishistory1877: Thanks for the explanation. That all makes sense, though the completionist in me would be more satisfied to see all known tours in the one place. Either way I think you should explain your criteria for inclusion in the book so readers aren't left guessing, perhaps with a list of known tours/tournaments that you've excluded. Regardless it's a fantastic resource, and knowing that 1 result = 1 newspaper article (for the tours), impressive in the amount of work it would have taken to compile.
- The Tennis Base's registration form's being broken is quite strange, as the site seems to be otherwise functional (though the "latest news" is from 2017). TB is quite widely referenced on Wikipedia [8], and that's a problem if none of those citations can be verified. I wonder if they've intentionally cut off registration, or know about the problem?
- Yes the page is in much better shape now, with everything verifiable at least, but still far from its potential as you say. It's one of the most important pages on tennis history on Wikipedia, so it deserved to have some work put into it. Letcord (talk) 05:35, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
- 550 pages is already too long in my view, but necessary in order to include the huge number of pages of research (there is no other tennis book I know of containing this amount of research). It wasn't a problem for McCauley, because his results section was far smaller. There is no firm rule regarding which tours to include and exclude, it is down to my judgment (Maskell and Jeffrey for instance is a tour of two teaching pros). The exclusions for tournaments are noted at the start of the tournaments section and I was right to exclude these. Closed national pro championships are the equivalent of the British National Championships held at Telford in the 1980s and 1990s and not worthy of inclusion. The reason anyone talks about pro tennis is because of the top players that played, not the teaching pros. There are already a fair number of tournaments containing teaching pros included, but these were international events. I didn't research every single match result in the book using newspapers, as some were already well known, but I do have newspaper match reports for a lot of results (I have more than 8,000 screenshots of online newspapers or jpegs sent from libraries of match reports). It was a huge amount of work and its only recently I have finally stopped working on it. Incidentally I just read on a forum a post saying Ray Bowers died aged 94. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 09:47, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
- @Tennishistory1877: I'm reading the digital version, so length doesn't matter, but I see why you would want to keep things shorter for the paper versions. Even if there's no firm rule, it would be nice for the book to have a list of the tours and tournaments you've excluded from it in it, just so every known tour and tournament is at least mentioned, and readers have leads to do their own research if they're interested in any of them. Also, in the "Other Tours" and "Women's Professional Tennis" sections, it would be useful if the tours that were undercards of another tour had that denoted in their headings, i.e. "1953 US Tour (Kramer–Sedgman undercard)" or "1953 US Tour (World Series undercard) rather than just "1953 US Tour" for the Segura–McGregor series.
- Sad to hear that about Bowers. It's a shame he never published the pro tour series of articles as a book, as the tennisserver website is dated and I wouldn't be surprised if it shuts down in a few years. Archived copies will still be available of course, but even they don't have the same permanence as books do. Letcord (talk) 06:15, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
- I do not think every pro tournament is even known when it comes to these minor events. If every country in Europe held national closed pro championships like Britain did there could be lots of them, but no one has ever researched any but the British (presumably because UK newspapers online are abundant). Such events are so obscure as to not be of any interest to anyone and what I have written at the start of the tournament section covers all eventualities. Even pre-open era pro tennis itself is pretty obscure now and the exploits of the great pros are being rapidly forgotten, which is very sad. You mention writing World Series undercard, but for some tours, the undercard only operated for part of the tour (for instance 1958). Tennishistory1877 (talk) 08:57, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
- @Tennishistory1877 Ok, but for the tours at least I would list the ones you excluded. Even if the undercards only operated for part of their respective World Series tours, it's still worth listing that info so readers don't have to correlate the dates and locations to figure it out themselves. Have the people at Tennis Base contacted you about adding your data to its site? Letcord (talk) 09:29, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
- Again with tours, the same principle applies. In theory there are many unknown tours involving teaching pros. I am not sure what Tennis Base is doing now with no new member registrations for several months now and the front page hasn't been updated for 5 years. Although it is a good website in some ways, I am not particularly interested in it, as I have my own pre-open era pro data and the open era data is on the ATP site. I have used Tennis Base in the past for citations on wikipedia and looked through their pro data, but it is not something I ever regularly used. I used to have a website The Grand Slam Tennis Archive which I started in 2007 (the first website that had all Grand Slam men's singles drawsheets, wikipedia linked from it extensively 10-15 years ago) but I closed it in 2019 because I had problems with the webspace and I felt it had served its purpose and was time consuming to update after ever Grand Slam event. Although my book took several years to complete, I do feel its done now, which is good, because doing the same thing for many years can be tiresome. I certainly found updating my website tiresome after a while. Obviously a website involving all tournaments (not just slams) needs much more updating than my website did. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 10:09, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
- @Tennishistory1877: Well you're of course free to take or leave my feedback. Implementing my suggestions would make the vast results section more digestible to non-expert readers and more complete as an archive, but if you're not looking to make any changes beyond minor corrections at this stage that's fair enough.
- I only asked about Tennis Base because I know that some of the contributors to your book have also contributed to it, so I thought the Tennis Base people would've reached out for your data as well. The benefit of having results in a proper database rather than in static book form is that you can calculate all sorts of statistics on the data (overall win-losses each season, elos, head-to-heads, etc.). Letcord (talk) 05:02, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
- McCauley's book doesn't have a list of exclusions (it would be a long list if he did!) To create such a complete list would take an enormous amount of research in itself. I have concentrated my research on the major pros. You are right, I am not looking to make major changes beyond corrections (of which there are very few indeed now, such is the level of accuracy of my book, the error you found was the first time I updated the book this year). The guy I know who has contributed a lot of pre-open era research to Tennis Base is not the owner of the site. I have never corresponded with the owner. Krosero also has contributed some of the pro data. There is a small amount of data of mine on Tennis Base that I shared with the Tennis Base major contributor guy at the time I was researching my book (I rarely contact him these days, we never fell out and are still on good terms, its just we came together when we were researching). I did hear him say last year he doesn't send Tennis Base his pro data anymore. Incidentally I don't recall seeing the names of data contributors listed on Tennis Base. I prefer us to be separate entities. And as I said, I don't know what is happening with Tennis Base at the moment. If new members can't register, then it must be operating like a closed group, but it's not my business how they operate their site. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 09:14, 20 April 2022 (UTC)
- Again with tours, the same principle applies. In theory there are many unknown tours involving teaching pros. I am not sure what Tennis Base is doing now with no new member registrations for several months now and the front page hasn't been updated for 5 years. Although it is a good website in some ways, I am not particularly interested in it, as I have my own pre-open era pro data and the open era data is on the ATP site. I have used Tennis Base in the past for citations on wikipedia and looked through their pro data, but it is not something I ever regularly used. I used to have a website The Grand Slam Tennis Archive which I started in 2007 (the first website that had all Grand Slam men's singles drawsheets, wikipedia linked from it extensively 10-15 years ago) but I closed it in 2019 because I had problems with the webspace and I felt it had served its purpose and was time consuming to update after ever Grand Slam event. Although my book took several years to complete, I do feel its done now, which is good, because doing the same thing for many years can be tiresome. I certainly found updating my website tiresome after a while. Obviously a website involving all tournaments (not just slams) needs much more updating than my website did. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 10:09, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
- @Tennishistory1877 Ok, but for the tours at least I would list the ones you excluded. Even if the undercards only operated for part of their respective World Series tours, it's still worth listing that info so readers don't have to correlate the dates and locations to figure it out themselves. Have the people at Tennis Base contacted you about adding your data to its site? Letcord (talk) 09:29, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
- I do not think every pro tournament is even known when it comes to these minor events. If every country in Europe held national closed pro championships like Britain did there could be lots of them, but no one has ever researched any but the British (presumably because UK newspapers online are abundant). Such events are so obscure as to not be of any interest to anyone and what I have written at the start of the tournament section covers all eventualities. Even pre-open era pro tennis itself is pretty obscure now and the exploits of the great pros are being rapidly forgotten, which is very sad. You mention writing World Series undercard, but for some tours, the undercard only operated for part of the tour (for instance 1958). Tennishistory1877 (talk) 08:57, 18 April 2022 (UTC)
- 550 pages is already too long in my view, but necessary in order to include the huge number of pages of research (there is no other tennis book I know of containing this amount of research). It wasn't a problem for McCauley, because his results section was far smaller. There is no firm rule regarding which tours to include and exclude, it is down to my judgment (Maskell and Jeffrey for instance is a tour of two teaching pros). The exclusions for tournaments are noted at the start of the tournaments section and I was right to exclude these. Closed national pro championships are the equivalent of the British National Championships held at Telford in the 1980s and 1990s and not worthy of inclusion. The reason anyone talks about pro tennis is because of the top players that played, not the teaching pros. There are already a fair number of tournaments containing teaching pros included, but these were international events. I didn't research every single match result in the book using newspapers, as some were already well known, but I do have newspaper match reports for a lot of results (I have more than 8,000 screenshots of online newspapers or jpegs sent from libraries of match reports). It was a huge amount of work and its only recently I have finally stopped working on it. Incidentally I just read on a forum a post saying Ray Bowers died aged 94. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 09:47, 17 April 2022 (UTC)
- Sharp Okada and Lenglen 1927 UK are intentionally excluded. For tours, I have not included every single tour that there ever was, as some were so minor as to not warrant inclusion. Although Lenglen was a great player, her opponents on the European tour were not, which may explain why it was a disaster and folded early after just 6 matches. The opening lines from Dewhurst's wikipedia page "Evelyn Dewhurst (née Maud Evelyn Ray Marshall; 12 January 1902 – 1993) was a British Ceylonese tennis player. She competed at the 1926 Wimbledon Championships, reaching the second round in singles and the third round in doubles" just about sums up Evelyn Dewhurst! Sharp Okada is a very minor tour. There were a few minor tours I excluded in the men's too (I seem to recall from memory that Maskell and Jeffrey toured the UK and Nusslein versus minor German pros in Germany). Although I included some tours including only lesser pros, these were world series undercard matches (some of these World series undercard tours are only documented properly in my book, even though the headline world series matches are also on Tennis Base). There is little appetite among researchers for tours involving only minor pros. For tournaments I excluded closed national pro championships, such as the British professional championships, because these were only open to British players (an event won many times by Dan Maskell). The book could have been much longer with these included and added little relevant content. I also excluded several pro-amateur contests in the 1920s, though included those that were part of a major pro tour (such as 1933 Europe). Before 1935 pros could play amateurs. During the war, pro tennis effectively ceased to exist. There was much blurring of the lines. Budge played Elwood Cooke (then an amateur) in a series in America in the early part of WW2. The authorities said this was against the rules, but Budge claimed he took no payment. However, this was frowned on and was subsequently curtailed, yet amateurs could and did play pros if they were all in uniform. Basically I have decided the cut off point for pro tennis ending was after the world series concluded in 1942 and players went off to war. Only the US Pro and Pinehurst events are included from the start of 1943 until play resumed after the war in late 1945. Post war tennis is much easier, because the lines between pros and amateurs were clearer, but there were still anomalies. For instance, there were matches in Chantilly in 1966 involving amateur Pierre Darmon, because they managed to exploit a loophole in the rules. I notice you said you wanted URL links to Tennis Base. I can't do that, because, like you, I can not register an account on there at present (this has been the case for some time). However, I can assure you that citations I listed for Tennis Base are accurate from when I used it before. When I started updating the wikipedia pro tennis pages two years ago they were in a pretty sorry state and seemed to be stuck in a time warp, with McCauley being the prime reference (McCauley's was a great if flawed book that has been outdated for years). I have done my best to make the major pro player pages as good as I can using newspapers.com sourcing, but for a page such as the one we are working on at the moment "Tennis pro tours and tournament ranking series" it is impossible to make a good page without using my book as a source. I believe we have done the best we can using the permissible sources. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 09:55, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
- @Tennishistory1877: Thanks for adding the rest. Better for you to do it anyway but I assumed that if you'd wanted to you would've done so years ago. 1931 O'Hara Wood–Gemmell and 1940 Budge–Nogrady are now removed from the article as all tours should have secondary sourcing. I've added your book to the bibliography because I've used it as a reference when cross-checking and making my additions, so it should be credited even if not (currently) used for citing individual dates/players/H2Hs. I noticed that the 1936 Sharp–Okada results (part of the Tilden–Vines Asia tour) and 1927 Lenglen UK tour (men's and women's) results mentioned by Bowers are not in the PTA. Are these intentional omissions? Also did you just exclude all WWII exhibitions because they were unpaid/too poorly documented? Letcord (talk) 05:09, 16 April 2022 (UTC)
- There are two tours listed on there (1931 O' Hara Wood Gemmell and 1940 Budge Nogrady) which are not on Tennis Base or in McCauley. Neither of these matter to me too much because the results are in online newspapers. I have added the tours from 1946 onwards which can be sourced from McCauley and/or Tennis Base. Only one editor objected to me using my book as a source. I disagreed with him then and still do. As I said before, I believe my book qualifies because it has been reviewed in a respected publication. However, I am not re-hashing this again personally. I don't like when editors continually hoist the same issues up the same flagpoles when decisions go against them. However, if you want to raise the issue that is up to you. Tennishistory1877 (talk) 22:11, 15 April 2022 (UTC)
1930 Wimbledon Pro
[edit]Letcord, you claim that the 1930 British Pro was held at Wimbledon, but McCauley has it at Eastbourne. Was McCauley wrong again?Tennisedu (talk) 20:03, 22 April 2022 (UTC)
- Answered at Talk:Major professional tennis tournaments before the Open Era#British Pro Championships 1930. Letcord (talk) 13:49, 23 April 2022 (UTC)
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