Admin: Created a practical research guide for reconstructing missing paintball tournament results through team and player social media, trophy photographs, archived records and cross-referenced participant accounts. Includes evidence verification standards, search methods, research status classifications and documented New Zealand examples.

2026-10-31T19:17:22Z

Created a practical research guide for reconstructing missing paintball tournament results through team and player social media, trophy photographs, archived records and cross-referenced participant accounts. Includes evidence verification standards, search methods, research status classifications and documented New Zealand examples.

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'''Reconstructing tournament results''' is a research method for recovering missing or incomplete [[paintball]] tournament records using contemporary team announcements, social media, photographs, archived websites and participant accounts.

Official tournament results are not always preserved. A league may have published a schedule and team draw without retaining its final standings, while individual teams may have independently documented their performances through Facebook posts, Instagram photographs, trophy presentations and match reports.

By comparing these surviving records, contributors can recover tournament participation, Cup and Plate placings, individual awards and sometimes complete event results.

This guide explains how to investigate missing results systematically while distinguishing documented evidence from assumptions.

For general research resources, see [[Help:Finding research sources]]. For evidence and citation requirements, see [[WikiPaintball:Sources and references]].

== 1. Start with the tournament ==

Before investigating individual teams, establish the event being researched.

Record:

* Official tournament or series name.
* Year, round number and event name.
* Scheduled and confirmed event dates.
* Venue and location.
* Organiser or league.
* Competition format and divisions.
* Known team entries.
* Existing results and unresolved information.
* Original source URLs.

Search WikiPaintball for existing articles before creating new ones. A tournament series may already have an overview article, while individual rounds may be documented separately.

Pay particular attention to the distinction between a season, an individual event and a competition division. A result from one round must not be attributed to another simply because both used the same venue or series name.

=== Establish the event date ===

The date an event was advertised, the date it occurred and the date a result was announced may all differ.

A team might publish a victory announcement several days after a tournament. Historical photographs might be uploaded months or years later.

Always distinguish:

* Advertised event date.
* Confirmed competition date.
* Publication date of the supporting source.
* Date an archived copy was captured.

Do not assign a tournament date solely from the publication date of a social media post.

== 2. Build a list of participating teams ==

A surviving entry list or tournament draw is often the most useful starting point.

Potential sources include:

* Official tournament draws and pool assignments.
* Registration databases such as [[PBLeagues]].
* Preliminary and final score sheets.
* Event posters and announcements.
* Team registration and travel announcements.
* Photographs identifying participating teams.
* Live-stream schedules and recorded matches.
* Contemporary tournament reports.

An entry list confirms that a team was scheduled or registered to participate. It does not necessarily establish that the team played.

Cancelled entries, withdrawals, replacement teams and byes must be distinguished from actual competitors.

=== Use previous and subsequent events ===

Teams often participate in multiple rounds of the same series.

If a team is confirmed at one event, investigate its participation in other events from that season. Check the team's social media history, published rosters and tournament reports.

This is a research lead, not evidence of attendance.

A team competing in Round 1 cannot automatically be included in Round 2 or Round 3.

Likewise, a team that appears in season standings may have earned points in only some of the events.

=== Account for team name changes ===

Teams may compete under different names, abbreviations or squad designations.

Examples include:

* A full team name versus an abbreviated name.
* Numbered squads such as Team 1 and Team 2.
* A renamed team.
* A combined or temporary tournament entry.
* A team competing with guest players.

Do not merge teams solely because they share players, sponsors, home fields or similar names.

Follow [[Help:Naming conventions]] when identifying teams and creating internal links.

== 3. Search team and player social media ==

Once a preliminary team list exists, investigate each team's historical social media activity.

Team accounts may contain information omitted from official tournament records, including victories, eliminations, individual awards and match results.

Useful sources include:

* Facebook team pages and public groups.
* Instagram team and player accounts.
* Posts by team captains, coaches and managers.
* Tournament organisers' social media pages.
* Posts by sponsors and equipment manufacturers.
* Photographers' event galleries.
* Local paintball clubs and playing fields.
* Recorded matches and video descriptions.

A photograph shared by one team may document the result of another team.

=== Search around the event dates ===

Search during the event and the following days or weeks.

Useful search terms include:

* Tournament name and year.
* Team name and event name.
* Venue name and round number.
* First place, second place or third place.
* Winner, champion, podium, trophy or medal.
* Cup, Plate, MVP or Most Improved Player.
* Finals, semi-finals or elimination.
* Team name combined with the event month.

Also search for variations such as ''1st'', ''1st place'', ''champions'' and ''runner-up''.

For an event held in October, inspect posts from October and November rather than limiting searches to the exact competition weekend.

=== Search engines and social media ===

Search engines can sometimes locate posts that are difficult to find using Facebook or Instagram's own search functions.

Examples of search queries include:

* <code>"Arena Paintball" "2024" "Cup"</code>
* <code>"Expendables" "2023" "1st place"</code>
* <code>site:facebook.com "paintball" "Plate" "final"</code>
* <code>site:instagram.com "paintball" "tournament" "podium"</code>
* <code>"team name" "venue name" "winner"</code>

Try different spellings, abbreviations and historical team names.

Search results may combine information from unrelated posts or display outdated descriptions. A search-result excerpt is a discovery aid, not sufficient evidence by itself.

Open the original post and confirm its author, date and context before using the information.

When an original post cannot be accessed, seek another verifiable source rather than treating its search-result summary as conclusive.

== 4. Follow players, photographers and sponsors ==

A team's official account may not contain every historical result.

Individual players may publish their own tournament photographs or announcements, particularly after receiving medals or winning a division.

Photographers may preserve presentation ceremonies, team photographs and scoreboards long after the organiser's original results have disappeared.

Sponsors may congratulate teams on specific results, sometimes identifying placements omitted from team announcements.

For each known team, consider searching for:

* Team captains and publicly identified players.
* Event photographers.
* Field owners and tournament organisers.
* Team sponsors.
* Local paintball shops and clubs.
* Visiting international players.
* Players who competed as guests for other teams.

=== Track players separately from teams ===

A player may represent different teams at different tournaments.

Their participation in an event does not establish that their usual team was entered.

For example, a player whose social media profile identifies one team may have competed as a guest for another.

Record the player's documented event-specific team separately from their wider team history.

Do not reconstruct an entire roster from photographs or social media connections alone.

== 5. Examine trophies, medals and photographs ==

Photographs can provide valuable evidence of tournament results, particularly when accompanying written records are missing.

Potential evidence includes:

* Trophies engraved with event names and placings.
* Medals identifying competitions or divisions.
* Presentation photographs.
* Award certificates.
* Podium photographs with visible placings.
* Team photographs accompanied by result announcements.
* Photographs of final scoreboards.

=== Verify what the award represents ===

A photograph of a player holding a first-place trophy does not automatically establish that the player's team won the overall tournament.

The award might relate to:

* The main Cup competition.
* A Plate or consolation competition.
* A particular division.
* A series championship.
* An individual award.
* A separate event held at the same venue.

Check the trophy inscription, accompanying caption and event context.

Where the award cannot be identified confidently, do not assign it to a particular competition.

=== Identify the correct event ===

Tournament photographs may be published long after the event occurred or reused in retrospective posts.

Check for:

* The event name or year on the trophy.
* A matching team jersey or event backdrop.
* The original publication date.
* References to the specific tournament.
* Other photographs from the same presentation.
* An independent result announcement.

Visual similarities alone are not sufficient to establish a team's participation or placement.

=== Copyright and photographs ===

A photograph may be used as evidence during research without automatically being suitable for publication.

Do not copy photographs from Facebook, Instagram or other websites into WikiPaintball without appropriate rights.

WikiPaintball prefers suitably licensed material hosted on [[Wikimedia Commons]], including CC BY, CC BY-SA, CC0 and verified public-domain photographs.

Copyright ownership, attribution and licensing requirements must be established before reuse.

A source can be cited without reproducing its photographs.

== 6. Reconstruct Cup and Plate results separately ==

Many paintball tournaments use multiple finals or classification competitions.

A Cup winner and a Plate winner are not equivalent results.

For each event, record the competitions separately.

{| class="wikitable"
! Competition
! Information to establish
|-
| Cup
| Winner, runner-up, remaining placings and final scores
|-
| Plate
| Winner, runner-up, remaining placings and final scores
|-
| Other divisions
| Division name and documented placings
|-
| Individual awards
| Award name, recipient and associated team
|-
| Season championship
| Cumulative series standings and championship winner
|}

Do not describe a Plate victory as an overall tournament victory.

=== Distinguish championship points from placings ===

A tournament may award series points according to finishing position, participation or another published scoring formula.

These points are not necessarily match scores.

Likewise, teams receiving equal championship points cannot automatically be assigned identical tournament positions.

Do not calculate missing placements from championship points unless the documented scoring rules and relevant results permit an unambiguous conclusion.

An event victory, a series championship and an individual match victory must be recorded separately.

== 7. Cross-check evidence between teams ==

The strongest reconstructions compare multiple sources describing the same event.

For example:

* A winning team announces first place.
* The losing finalist confirms reaching the final.
* A third team identifies its semi-final opponent.
* The organiser publishes a presentation photograph.
* A contemporary publication reports the final score.

These records may collectively establish results that were missing from the original tournament database.

However, multiple accounts repeating one original announcement are not necessarily independent confirmation.

=== Example: 2024 Arena Paintball Labour Day Tournament ===

The organiser's announcement following the [[2024 Arena Paintball Labour Day Tournament]] documented both Cup and Plate podiums.[1]

{| class="wikitable"
! Competition
! Position
! Team
|-
| Cup
| 1st
| Phoenix Tahiti
|-
| Cup
| 2nd
| Ballistics Unit
|-
| Cup
| 3rd
| Manawatu Titans
|-
| Plate
| 1st
| Expendables Paintball
|-
| Plate
| 2nd
| East Coast Defiance
|-
| Plate
| 3rd
| Sharks
|}

This example demonstrates why separate competitions must be identified before results are published.

A researcher examining only Expendables' first-place Plate award could otherwise incorrectly identify the team as the overall Cup winner.

=== Example: 2025 Arena Paintball Labour Weekend Race ===

A post published by Ballistics Unit on 30 October 2025 described the team's performance at Arena Paintball and a final against Manawatu Titans.[2]

The team reported that Titans had won the final.

This provides evidence from the losing finalist, even though the post was not an official organiser results table.

It can support further investigation into the event's final standings. Other placings and the precise competition classification should be verified separately.

=== Example: Publication date versus event date ===

On 12 September 2023, player Ralph Tsing published an Instagram post identifying Expendables as the first-place team at Round 2 of the 2023 New Zealand Race Series.[3]

The post establishes a reported victory at the named round. Its September publication date must not automatically be treated as the tournament date.

The original event calendar and any subsequent schedule changes should be checked before assigning a specific competition date.

== 8. Record evidence systematically ==

Research should be organised so that claims can be traced back to their original sources.

For each tournament, maintain a working record containing:

* Event name and date.
* Series and round number.
* Team name as published.
* Evidence of registration or participation.
* Claimed result or award.
* Cup, Plate or other classification.
* Source URL and publisher.
* Publication date.
* Whether the evidence is contemporary or retrospective.
* Any uncertainty or contradiction.
* Research status.

=== Suggested research statuses ===

The following distinctions are useful for organising unpublished research.

{| class="wikitable"
! Status
! Meaning
|-
| Officially documented
| The organiser or official results record explicitly supports the claim
|-
| Corroborated
| Multiple credible records independently support the claim
|-
| Participant-reported
| An identifiable participant or team reports a result that has not been independently confirmed
|-
| Research lead
| A possible result or entry requiring further investigation
|-
| Disputed
| Available sources conflict or the evidence is insufficient to resolve the claim
|}

These are research classifications, not automatic permission to publish a claim.

An appropriately attributed participant report may sometimes be useful in an article. Unsupported leads must not be presented as facts.

=== Record the original source ===

For every useful post or document, preserve:

* The direct link to the relevant post or page.
* Name of the author or publishing organisation.
* The date the material was published.
* A brief description of the evidence.
* The specific claim supported by that evidence.
* An archived URL if available.

Where practical, retain a research copy or screenshot for comparison, respecting privacy and copyright requirements.

Link directly to the supporting material in the published article, not merely to the account's homepage.

== 9. Resolve conflicting records ==

Historical records may disagree about dates, results, team names or divisions.

Before choosing between conflicting sources:

# Confirm that both records describe the same event and year.
# Establish whether one source is preliminary and the other final.
# Check whether a reported first-place finish refers to the Cup or Plate.
# Examine whether a result was later corrected.
# Determine whether teams changed names or entered multiple squads.
# Compare the original publication dates.
# Look for official corrections or additional contemporary evidence.

Do not silently choose the more convenient account.

Where a conflict cannot be resolved, omit the disputed result or describe the uncertainty with suitable attribution.

Do not invent missing results to complete a standings table.

== 10. Use archives to recover lost records ==

Tournament websites and registration pages may disappear even when some of their information survives elsewhere.

The [https://web.archive.org/ Wayback Machine] can help locate historical:

* Tournament calendars.
* Registration forms.
* Rules and competition formats.
* Published team lists.
* Results and rankings pages.
* News announcements.
* Links to photographs and documents.

For example, a preserved Paintball Direct registration page documents the advertised dates and format of the 2024 Arena Paintball Race Events.[4]

It does not independently establish the winners of those tournaments.

Use archived sources only for the facts they actually contain.

When a specific archived page is used, cite its permanent archived URL and distinguish the original publication date from the archive capture date.

== 11. Work through a complete tournament series ==

Researching several events in one series can be more efficient than investigating each event in isolation.

A useful process is:

# Create a list of all documented events in the season.
# Record the teams confirmed or registered for each event.
# Identify teams appearing in multiple rounds.
# Search each team's social media history across the season.
# Record announcements referring to particular rounds.
# Compare results with reports from opposing teams.
# Search participant, sponsor and photographer accounts for additional evidence.
# Check season standings for inconsistencies or missing records.
# Resolve conflicts before publishing.
# Update the individual event articles and series overview.

Previous attendance should be used to prioritise searches, never to fill gaps in the entry lists without evidence.

=== Check the remaining gaps ===

After researching the known teams, identify which information is still missing.

For example:

* Cup winner verified, runner-up unknown.
* Plate winner verified, remaining placings unknown.
* Nine teams confirmed, complete entry list unavailable.
* Final score reported by one participant.
* Event scheduled, but completion not yet confirmed.
* Championship points published, but placings unclear.

This prevents later researchers from repeating unsuccessful searches and helps identify the most useful new evidence.

== 12. Publishing reconstructed results ==

Once the available evidence has been evaluated, update the relevant WikiPaintball article.

The article should clearly distinguish:

* Published tournament details.
* Confirmed participating teams.
* Documented final results.
* Individual awards.
* Season standings.
* Unresolved historical information.

Only include sections supported by the available evidence.

For a specific event, use the established article naming format:

* YEAR Event Name

Retain existing articles rather than creating duplicates.

Use [[Internal links]] to connect the tournament, participating teams, series and venue where appropriate.

=== Citation requirements ===

WikiPaintball uses manually numbered references.

Each factual claim should be supported by the appropriate source, with citations in the form [1], [2] and so on.

The matching reference list belongs under == References ==.

Reuse the same number when citing the same source again.

Do not use citation templates, automatically generated references or unsupported source descriptions.

For editing instructions, see [[Help:Editing WikiPaintball]].

=== Publishing incomplete results ===

It is acceptable to publish a tournament article containing only a verified winner or partial podium.

Do not manufacture additional placements simply to complete the table.

If necessary, explain that the remaining finishing positions have not been established from the available sources.

A partial, accurately sourced record is preferable to a complete but speculative reconstruction.

== 13. Using artificial intelligence for research ==

Artificial intelligence tools may assist with identifying potential sources, organising research notes, comparing team names and identifying inconsistencies.

They can also help draft articles from verified source material.

However, contributors must independently check the original evidence.

AI-generated summaries, search excerpts and automated interpretations of photographs must not be treated as original records.

Particular care is needed when comparing social media posts from multiple years, where search results may combine unrelated material or show historical posts alongside newer content.

AI should assist the investigation, not replace source verification.

See [[WikiPaintball:Using AI to write articles]].

== 14. Contributing new evidence ==

Former players, referees, photographers, organisers and team managers may possess records that are no longer publicly available.

Useful contributions include:

* Original score sheets.
* Tournament programmes.
* Team rosters and entry confirmations.
* Trophy and medal photographs.
* Presentation ceremony photographs.
* Original event announcements.
* Archived social media links.
* Contemporary match reports.
* Recordings of tournament finals.

Contributors should identify the event, approximate date, source and provenance of any material they provide.

Information obtained privately should be handled with appropriate permission, particularly where personal data or unpublished photographs are involved.

Photographs do not need to be uploaded to WikiPaintball to help verify an historical record.

== See also ==

* [[Help:Finding research sources]]
* [[Help:Editing WikiPaintball]]
* [[Help:Naming conventions]]
* [[WikiPaintball:Sources and references]]
* [[WikiPaintball:Editorial standards]]
* [[WikiPaintball:Using AI to write articles]]
* [[Category:Paintball tournament results]]
* [[Category:Paintball tournaments in New Zealand]]

== References ==

# [https://www.facebook.com/ArenaPaintballNZ/posts/pfbid02WjR7JFkf81GewmCNzxnAV52W167tpvcdJ7d8UYggwvfS2uKLBXk9ioVG8FUB4miPl Arena Paintball - Labour Day Cup and Plate podium results, Facebook, 27 October 2024].
# [https://www.instagram.com/p/DQbPXYMj_mD/ Ballistics Unit - Arena Paintball final against Manawatu Titans, Instagram, 30 October 2025].
# [https://www.instagram.com/p/CxHSDmHL7FU/ Ralph Tsing - Expendables first-place announcement for Round 2 of the 2023 New Zealand Race Series, Instagram, 12 September 2023].
# [https://web.archive.org/web/20240814075618/https://paintballdirectnz.co.nz/2024-race-events-sold-out/ Paintball Direct - 2024 Race Events registration information, archived 14 August 2024].

[[Category:WikiPaintball help]]

Help:Reconstructing tournament results - Revision history