Talk:Gustavo Kuerten

Re: Title Details subsection

I think recording the score of every single match in a tournament is excessive, unless it is used to show something important about Kuerten. Need to find a way to summarize the main point conveyed through these "individual tournament tables" yet not overdo it like they are done right now.

(1)First of all, it is hardly the case of listing "every single match in a tournament", the only matches that have been listed on this article were those involving Kuerten, and only those in the tournaments listed as important in his career, such as those he won.

(2)A Davis Cup performance list does not seem too much, since this is usually regarded as an important part of a player's career, and I'm listing only Kuerten's matches (not the entire confronts of Brazil), which are, as with any player, only between 1 and 3 matches per confront, and that's when they actually play (Kuerten has not played for Brazil in the last 3 or 4 confronts in which Brazil was a part, besides having missed a few other events in past years due to injuries).

(3)About Muster:

Now, about my most recent revert of your edits: You asked how the Muster story relates to Kuerten, well, it happened in a Kuerten match, and it was written to illustrate how it was that the match was interrupted, as shown on the board (otherwise people just assume that an injury was responsible). So that passage serves three purposes:

First, it explains what actually happened in that match; Second, it tells the tale of an incident that happened in a Kuerten match that's quite unusual in modern tennis (players throw fits of anger all the time, but they don't walk off court); Third, it elucidates why there were no matches on the third day of that confront (in the article, it explains why Kuerten didn't play a second singles match, which, incidentelly, would have been against Muster himself).

And also to the point, as a matter of policy, we do not erase information from articles without discussing first (unless it is a clear case of vandalism), regardless of what the personal opinion of one individual user may be.

I can't help it if you don't think the information is interesting/important, but at the very least it does no harm to the article, and others shouldn't be deprived of learning about that event (again, in Kuerten's career, even if the more direct protagonist was Muster). If they have no interest, they can just skip the passage and not read it.

(4) Furthermore, some users tend to want to rewrite entire passages of an article because they believe it could be better written, but that usually proves complicated (I'm talking about massive rewrites for no other reason than the editor's belief that the text "could be better", not specific edits in some passages, to correct grammar, style or typos or adapt the text to new info that may have been added), because the text may loose consistency, spawning several follow-up rewrites/reversals to solve it. Pardon me if that is not the case here (I don't know if you are new to Wikipedia, although your status as an anon contributor would suggest so, plus I did think that your rewrite of the "personal and early career" passage was quite good – I had wipped it out late at night, and it wasn't all that well written –

(5) I reverted the rewrite in the "2004 to present" subsection because it was giving information about Kuerten's 2002 meeting with Federer, which should go in the 2002 subsection, and the text on the 2004 Roland Garros meeting was well-written enough – again, no need to rewrite passages that are already clear, although I know you did it because you were adding new information). Regards, Redux 12:14, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I am sorry, but the reasons you give behind your actions are tenuous at best. Let me elucidate.

About (1), I know it "is hardly the case of listing "every single match in a tournament", the only matches that have been listed on this article were those involving Kuerten". I can read very well. But that is not the point I was raising. I see very little point in describing the scoreline of Kuerten vs for example, Marcio Carlsson (Brazil), ranked 131 with a scoreline 6-1 6-3 in the first round of Monte Carlo Masters. This match (and all other matches like thiso ne that are mentioned) holds no major significance in Kuerten's career, unless you think EVERY WIN in Kuerten's career is equally important, in which case I think hardly anyone will agree with you to use that unwarranted assumption in Wikipedia. In short, I find this arbitrary and excessive.

(2) First off, "confront" is not used to describe what you want to describe. It seems odd that you throw out remarks about what is "well-written" quite frequently when you yourself seem to know little about English diction. But let us ignore that for a while here. I didn't mentiuon anything about Davis Cup matches. So I don't why you are jumping on this one. Although I do plan to take a closer look later at the subsection.

(3) Fair enough. But I still think it can be written much more concisely. I will try to do that in this talk section first.

(4) Sure. Although I am not sure what you mean by wiped out some portions. I don't see them.

(5) I think your explanation here is lacking. The "new information" I added was not from the perspective of Kuerten's chronological career, but from the perspective of Keurten-Federer rivalry on clay, which is totally relevant to the match description at hand (Federer v Kuerten in 2004). I think it is justified. If you can add an entire paragraph on Muster's tantrum for a small asterisk beside a match scireline, I can't see why a relevant one-sentence mentioning of a rivalry between Federer and Kuerten should get the chop.

Some more thoughts regarding the article in general:

I think you have done a wonderful job in gathering all the info about Kuerten, something probably only a Brazilian fan can do with his access to local media. I am touched not only by the stories, but also the contexts behind the stories. But I also think there is a need to revise this article to maintain proper diction, brevity and a lack of redundance. I have read some sections of this page intently and tried to edit what was necessary. Other sections I have read only cursorily but found a lot of redundaccies, superfluity and not mention, not so good English. I think we should work together to make this one of the best tennis pages on Wiki, if only because Guga is a one of a kind tennis player (and one of my absolute favorites).

I also think that all the tennis player pages should maintain similarly structured subsections. Makes sense for an encyclopaedia. This doesn't mean that I am suggesting certain subsections here should go away, but that a little more conformity among similarly-themed pages (pages of tennis players in this case) should be maintained.

Editing the Professional Career Subsection

This is an attempt to rewrite the entire Prof Career section here. Hopefully a better version will come through.

Original: "After two years as a professional, Kuerten rose to the position of n. 2 player in Brazil, second only to Fernando Meligeni, and had his then highest point by helping the Brazilian Davis Cup team defeat Austria in 1996 and reach the competition's first division, the World Group."

Revision: Kuerten started his professional ATP career in 1995.

In 1996, he helped the Brazilian Davis Cup team defeat Austria and reach the competition's first division, the World Group. It is still considered by some one of his many high points in his career.

Kuerten continued to rise in the rankings and in 1997 became the second-ranked Brazilian player on the circuit (Fernando Meligeni was the top-ranked Brazilian at this point).

---

More revisions later.

---

All right, I wasn't sure if you were new here, but now I am. First off, please refrain from editing other people's comments on talk pages, that is breach of policy. Second, you might wanna remember that English is a language spoken worldwide (as a native language), and as such it presents differences, so what you consider to be "wrong" may just be different (or, in this particular case, plain tennis jargon). We have extended guidelines regarding that here. This article does contain poorly written passages though, and I can't take "credit" for them. I did not start this from scratch, and I haven't rewritten the entire thing, so there's a lot of stuff still lingering from the early version of the article (I eliminated the more blatant parts, but not everything). Third, I'm sorry but your explanation does not convince me: Your entry on the 2002 match against Federer should stay, I never said it shouldn't, only it should go in the appropriate portion of the article. I'll repeat again, please refrain from editing massive portions of the article only because you believe you can write "better", as you have done in some passages the miscellaneous section most recently. There was no real increase of quality, only simple change of style, especially since it was clear enough to begin with. That's called vanity editing, and it is discouraged. Finally, there is a clear distinction between listing the matches won by Kuerten on tournaments that marked his career (even if against Carlsson, since that was the first step towards one of the most important titles in Kuerten's career) and listing "every win in Kuerten's career", since it would be infinitely more important to win a 3rd match in a Masters Series event than to win a quarterfinal in a Challenger event that he didn't even win in the end (for instance). Incidentally, the sources for the article are the ATP official website, the Davis Cup official website and Kuerten's official website, I don't gather information in fan sites or local media, since those are usually biased and not always trustworthy. Some of the stuff (a small portion) does come from my memory though, since I've followed his career since before his 1997 Roland Garros win. Regards, Redux 02:11, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Reply:

Look, whether I am am new to Wikipedia or not should be irrelevant to the work at hand here. You can invoke as many "policies" and "guidelines" you want, and may be you have been around on Wikipedia, but that doesn't convincingly repudiate any of my justifications. Wikipedia is an open encyclopedia and you always have the ability to change/revert to a better vesion. There is no need for a "newbie" lecture or pretending to speak on behalf of a cabal as in "We have extended guidelines regarding that here".

English IS a language spoken worldwide, but that doesn't mean maintaining a certain standard of English is out of question, especially in the case of an encyclopedia.

When you say that "Your entry on the 2002 match against Federer should stay, I never said it shouldn't, only it should go in the appropriate portion of the article," then do it. I think it is perfectly appropriate as it is, but if you think there is a more appropriate way to to convey it (as in a 2002 subsection), by all means, go for it and let us see how it fits in.

About my editing in the Miscallaneous section, I reject wholeheartedly your misguided notion that it was "vanity editing". Every editing done so far in that subseciton (albeit VERY little) is done with a purpose (with certain structures in mind), it's just that an unmindful/non-native English reader, such as you, might not be aware of the underlying thought processes of the editor. BTW, can you please point me to the exact "policy" page where the so-called "vanity editing" is defined and discouraged?

About the match scorelines of Masters series again, the question is of encyclopediac brevity and conformity with other Tennis Player pages. You cannot invoke outlandish comparisons with Challenger tournaments to justify inclusions of a Masters Series first round match. No other established tennis player (former world #1s in particular) pages on wiki contains this kind of silly, non-important match scorelines, and it makes perfect sense. If Kuerten was a budding tennis player then inclusion of these match scorelines would have been interestingm if only for current interest purposes. But he is ALREADY an established player with around 20 ATP titles and 3 grand slams. It is common sensical to assume that in order of importance, challenger matches should be at an absolute bottom, first-second-third round matches in ATP/Masters somewhere in between, while his mroe famous grandslam matches and the finals he has participated in should be at the top and probably should be included in an encyclopedia entry about him. Unfortunately, that is not the case here.

Reeally? So your argument is: "I know more English than you so you don't understand why I'm right". Bring it down a peck dude, you're completely clueless. I'm sure you firmly believe that you are the quintessence of the English speaker, but wake up and smell the variety. And FYI, I suggest you think twice before dismissing other people's work as "silly". You're completely out of line. Enough is enough. How would you like if I were to dismiss your deletion of data as simple vandalism? Would you say it was misguided? Or maybe an unwarranted generalization? That was retorical btw, so please don't bother to answer it. And understand this: when we say "Wikipedia is open", it means "help as much as you want and can", not "do whatever you feel like, we can just revert it back later". That's a fundamental distinction.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with the list of matches in tournaments cited as important in Kuerten's career. It's irrelevant that other articles don't feature it, that's just because no one thought of it or didn't want to put in the research/work. The objective of the list is quite clear. Sorry if you have a problem with it, but it doesn't warrant deletion, the information is encyclopedic enough. Just move on, there's lots of work to be done on the encyclopedia, and here you are, obsessing over match scores (that are quite pertinent to the underlying objective of the article). Brevity is a relative term here. We care that the articles be as comprehensive as possible, not as brief as possible. As a matter of fact, on the instances when an article gets so long that some browsers have difficulty loading it, we break the article in two, but we do not sum it up or delete data (as it was done with our stuff on Roger Federer: There was so much stuff on his game style that the original article was broken in two, and the "Roger Federer playing style" – or something like that – article was created. Now we have an article that details how Federer holds his racket and moves his feet. No one here would vote for its deletion on grounds of "encyclopedic brevity"). There's no need to register only the very essential, as long as the information is on topic, accurate and free of copyright restrictions. Theoretically, it would even be possible to list every single official match Kuerten (or any other player) has ever played, maybe creating a series of articles for that. Since that would require a surreal amount of time and work, I chose to list only those matches played in the tournaments he won, which of course mark his career, which would also make it possible to keep everthing in a single article (but if someone would volunteer their time and effort, and a lot of it, I'd see no problems in having articles such as "Kuerten's 1997 season", or something like that, listing all matches he played in that year). The information can be found elsewhere? That's no obstacle to having it here, that consensus has been reached by the community. You don't think that that stuff matters? All you have to do is not read the article/section containing it, just as I haven't spent my time learning how Federer holds his racket. Redux 23:01, 12 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Flags

The chart of titles looks extremely sloppy with partially filled out flags. Also, putting in a flag of the tournament's location seems to add unnecessary clutter. I recommend just saying "Lisbon, Portugal" rather than putting a Portuguese flag which serves little purpose. On the other hand, the flags by finalists names are good-looking because the players play as a representative of their country.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by 74.237.125.244 (talk • contribs) .

I don't know why people decided to start adding flags to all of the titles boards, for all the bios. Seems needless to me, and it makes the page "heavier" to load (especially for those with slower internet connections). IMO, we could afford to do without those flags. Regards, Redux 23:03, 20 August 2006 (UTC)

Don't agree. The flags are good and don't take up that much space/time on connections. - Pernambuco 22:19, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Love interest

Would it be appropriate if I add something about Guga's personal life and loves? - Pernambuco 22:19, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Title details

Under the section of the 2000 French Open in "title details", it says that it was his third consecutive final against Magnus Norman. That statement is incorrect. They only played each other in the finals of an event twice, and those two matches were not even consecutive. Check the heads-up matches for Kuerten and Norman on the ATP website to see for yourself. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 68.14.84.110 (talk) 00:15, August 20, 2007 (UTC)

Indeed. When I added the details, some time ago, I somehow misread their Hamburg 2000 match as being a Final, when it was in fact a Quarterfinal match (had it been a final, the French Open final would have been a third straight final, since they had played in Rome's final before Hamburg). It's been corrected, thanks :). In cases like this, please feel free to correct the information, if you know what needs correcting. This is how we improve Wikipedia. Cheers, Redux 15:06, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Distinctions

I have added the cleanup-section tag to Distinctions. Most of the entries are not distinctions at all (while they may be worth mentioning in a differently named section). Example: Having the hardest serve is a distinction; having a 212 km/h serve is just an interesting (at least to the right reader) fact.

The claim

Guga is the only tennis player to reach and win his first top-level final in a Grand Slam.

is problematic on at least two counts: Firstly, it is not clear to me what it means. Secondly, if I go by the most plausible explanation ("He was the only player to win his first Grand Slam final."), it is definitely wrong. The second most likely alternativ ("He never won a big tournament before his first Grand Slam win.") is at least dubious, and highly subjective. (What is a big tournament, respectively top-level final?)

I suggest a complete re-write, preferably in combination with a renaming of the section. 94.220.249.64 (talk) 08:55, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

External links modified

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