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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was not promoted 04:22, 5 May 2007.

Endgame tablebase

[edit]

This article discusses a chess database program that lies at the intersection of computer science and game theory. I've taken great effort to write and rewrite the text, to cite more than thirty references going back to the 1970s, and to upload two images, and to develop related articles, namely EG (magazine), ICGA Journal, and GBR code. The references need a little more formatting, but other than that, I think it's ready to be featured. YechielMan 18:23, 22 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment. Nicely written, but some technical things need better explanation. The Background section suddently refers to GBR classes 1000, etc., without even a wikilink to look up. A few other issues:
  • The lead should be longer (2-3 paragraphs) in order to summarize the article
  • The image of Guy Haworth has a licensing problem (fair use, possibly replaceable).
  • I find it odd to see Harvard references footnoted.
  • Somewhat of a personal pref, but is there a way to avoid linking to other sections of the article?
Gimmetrow 07:03, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good points. I'll respond one by one:

  • Lead needs to be longer. Agreed. I'll work on it.
  • Guy Haworth.jpg has a licensing problem. Maybe. Depends how you define "replaceable"; I don't have access to a free image of him. I may be able to email him and just ask; would that work? Of course, if it's a problem, I'd rather lose the image and get the FA status than the other way around.
  • Footnotes on Harvard references. If you click the references, you'll see that what I did was to add "see also" journal articles alongside Harvard references for the two books I was using. If you see a better way of doing this, be bold and fix it, or suggest it here.
  • Linking to other sections of the article. Of course there's a way - just remove the link. I'll do that. YechielMan 09:51, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • I've now modified the article to address every point in your comment above to the best of my ability. YechielMan 16:44, 23 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • The image still has a licensing problem. A "no derivatives" and wikipedia-only license doesn't help downstream re-users of WP. Refs 16, 18 and 29 need author/title/date info. Also "ibid" is discouraged as a later editor may add text in between without copying citation info. Gimmetrow 03:22, 24 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • I suppose I could ask Mr. Haworth if he's aware of the GFDL and that other sites might use the photo also. My initial impression is that he's okay with that. That being said, since the image is marginal to the main subject of the article, I'll make the following compromise: I'm not going to delete it, but if anyone else wants to delete it, I won't stand in the way. Obviously, the other image (the screenshot at the top) meets the FUC, and there also I can email the guy and ask permission, which I'm almost certain will be forthcoming. YechielMan 01:36, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support. I addressed the problem of refs lacking author/title/date info. The image licencing is still less of a problem than before, right? If the image was removed or the problem otherwise solved, would you support the nomination then, Gimmetrow?--ZeroOne (talk | @) 00:58, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • More comments: In the "a priori" section, wikilinking in section headings should be avoided. In this section - I'm confused what "sticking" the pawns means. They are blocked, they can't move, and captures are handled by the 5-piece table. Later, saying that a quoted statement "presumabaly" refers to something is a minor form of original research. Could the last section, "footnote on nomenclature" be merged into the "background" section or would that give the issue too much weight? I generally like the article, but I need some time to sit down and read the whole thing again for overall prose before supporting. Gimmetrow 01:52, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • All good points; most of the problems were from lazy copying or editing. Thanks for pointing them out. Regarding the nomenclature issue, originally I had it near the top of the article (see history versions from before this month), but when I did the rewrite I decided it wasn't important enough to place near the top. This might be the kind of question where another pair of eyes could find a creative solution. YechielMan 01:55, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Fixed everything except the nomenclature issue. I just had an idea: in the lead, we could put a sentence like "Other names have been used," and then cut-and-paste the footnote as an inline citation, with the footnote's internal references given in parentheses. Tell us what you think about that. YechielMan 02:07, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • I prefer not cluttering the lead section. I think the Footnote about nomenclature -chapter should just be named Nomenclature and made a sub-heading of the Background-chapter at the end of it. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 12:29, 25 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Tentative support. Made a few edits. Removed a few abbreviations not used later, a self-reference to the article, and a few seemingly unnecessary "thus" and "also". Felt the lead needed to say something about how a "computerized database" was somehow able to see mates "far beyond the horizon of ... computers." The text has instances of both "6 pieces" and "six pieces" - unless there is some reason, it might be better to write out all numbers below ten. Can anything be done about the two images in "Step 2" squeezing the text in between? Does Kasparov's Advanced Chess merit a mention somewhere? Gimmetrow 19:15, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • I changed the diagram layout in Step 2, how do you like it now? --ZeroOne (talk | @) 23:23, 27 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • The third image was off the edge on 800 width, so tried something else which looks a little odd on 1600 width but seems a fair compromise. Hope this works. Use of the word "also" is often unnecessary; removal tends to improve the prose. Gimmetrow 02:30, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
        • Luckily we have the {{chess diagram small}} so I changed the layout again. As three diagrams next to each other is still too wide for a 800-pixel horizontal resolution I applied a little CSS hack which allows the diagrams be next to each other if there is space but go on top of each other on a narrow screen. How's that for a compromise? --ZeroOne (talk | @) 08:10, 28 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
          • By the way, thanks for fixing the layout of those three diagrams in the middle of the article. Many months ago, when I was editing anonymously, I had all sorts of trouble with them, and I think the current layout is much better than what I came up with. YechielMan 06:34, 30 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I added the access dates now. I made them 2007-04-01 because I accessed them all and found them available. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 00:37, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose until several things in the prose are fixed. However, I do think this is a very good article overall that deserves to be considered for promotion.
    • "First sentence: "An endgame tablebase, or simply a tablebase, is a computerized database of all possible endgame positions in chess with small groups of material." Unsure about what the last five words mean (and I'm a chess player).
    • Hate the use of "men" for pieces. One of the pieces is overtly female, as well.
    • Please eradicate "in order to", except for the one percent of cases where disambiguation or polarity are at issue. Just "to".
    • A hyphen should not be used as punctuation; an em dash (—) without spaces is prescribed by the major style guides in the US and the UK.
    • "because they were already solved beforehand"—Either "already" or "beforehand" is redundant.
    • "analysis on the following classes of the endgame"—better: "analysis of the following classes of endgame".
    • Inconsistent spelling out of numbers ("six-piece", yet "2 moves"). It's usual to spell out sentence-initial and single-digit numbers, and to use numerals elsewhere.
    • Why is "As of 2006" linked? It's a totally irrelevant page. Why are the inline references blued out? They mostly have no effect when you click on them. Better not to spatter blue all over the page. And while dealing with this, why "140-3" but "102-108"? Many people insist on en dashes (= "to") and suggest the use of two final digits, e.g., "140–43" and "102–08". Much better.
    • "3-5 man endgames"—yuck. "three-to-five-piece", I'm afraid, is the standard way. Tony 03:20, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Linking "As of 2006" seems in accord with Wikipedia:As of. Gimmetrow 04:09, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • I don't know how you'd like the first sentence formed so I left that alone, I'm sure you know what the sentence means anyway and can reform it if you think it's bad. However I did address most of the other issues you pointed out. I'm just afraid I'm not so well-informed on the US and UK style guides you mentioned so I only changed a few of the most obvious hyphens to em dashes. Please note too that a great part of the sources use "men" where "pieces" could be used, I left the reference titles untouched. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 12:24, 1 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Response Tony's points are all valid. I rewrote the first sentence to maximize clarity and economy - it should be comprehensible, on a basic level, even to chess outsiders. I'm going to let others handle the formatting and style issues. I will celebrate Passover for the next week, and will not necessarily be able to return to this discussion. I'll end as I began: I appreciate Tony's comments; they are a definitional example of constructive criticism. YechielMan 06:02, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks for your responses; IMO, WP should not be lagging with sexist language, but should be setting an example by avoiding the generic male. Many female readers will not like it, so why not be inclusive and use "pieces"? It's a most important issue. Tony 23:15, 2 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    Could you please point to the specific WP guideline or policy that states this purpose? Is it Wikipedia's stated goal to use prescriptive grammar instead of descriptive grammar? What is the common usage? JHMM13 01:40, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    What are you referring to, Tony? I already changed all instances of men or man to pieces or piece — read above. The only instances left are those that are part of titles of references, I really don't think those can be changed. I apologize if I missed any other instances. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 03:50, 3 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • There is technically a distinction between "chessmen" and "chess pieces": the former includes the king, while the latter does not, but it's become more common for the terms to be interchanged.youngvalter 19:55, 28 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Practical play" (in the lead and later) sounds like it's used in some technical sense. If so, it needs defining, and if not, this should perhaps be rephrased. This hasn't been edited in a while, which may allow the prose to be viewed with fresh eyes. Should there be redirects from Endgame table and or Endgame database? Gimmetrow 16:44, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • It might be used to refer the traditional over the board tournament games as in opposite to advanced chess or chess puzzles or something. I'll look into it later. Meanwhile, the redirects were a good idea, created them. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 22:47, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • OK, I rephrased the sentence. Clearly it was meant as in opposite to studies and puzzles. Practical endgames, when used later, is already defined as opposite to composed problems and studies. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 17:42, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd like to comment that the image, Image:Tablebase.JPG currently does not have a fair use rationale, does not specify the copyright holder of the image and does not indicate the terms of use of the software. --Iamunknown 08:14, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Object - Non-free image lacks article-specific fair use rationale, per Wikipedia:Non-free content criteria#10. I'm not convinced that the fair use claim is valid, either. Pagrashtak 22:00, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'll also comment on the other points. Men vs. pieces: for the historical reason that most chessplayers have been men, the pieces collectively have been called "men." If you look through the "Notes" section, you will find the word "man" or "men" five or six times in article titles. Again, this is a trivial point, so I endorse the change.
    • See youngvalter's message above: "There is technically a distinction between "chessmen" and "chess pieces": the former includes the king, while the latter does not, but it's become more common for the terms to be interchanged." I don't know about this, but if it is so, then men would in fact be the correct term. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 08:09, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • I stand corrected: according to "Chess for Dummies" by James Eade (where else are you gonna find this kind of stuff?), "pieces" includes the king but not the pawns, while "chessman" refers to both pieces and pawns. Hence they're usually referred to as "5-man" or "6-man" tablebases. youngvalter 21:49, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'll look at the "practical play" question. It should be easy to fix if it's unclear. YechielMan 03:41, 1 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Oppose. Wiki is not a reliable source (can't source statements to the German wiki), and references need to be formatted per WP:CITE/ES. Unencyclopedic, off-topic editorializing (even if it's true :-) — The metaphor draws on the omniscience of God, who is presumed to know all information, even when humans can know only limited information. Informal prose and uncited text; example — Some studies have been cooked, i.e. proven unsound, by the tablebases. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:27, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Hey, and thanks for your input. This must be one of the longest running FACs... I changed the wiki-source to two other sources now. I see there is a little work to do with the references but WP:CITE/ES is not an official policy and it does say "please use the citation style of your choice". Would you rather have the sentence commenting the metaphor removed? God's omniscience attribute is referenced in the God article. Unfortunately I don't have a reference for cooked studies but I trust that YechielMan or someone else has. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 09:53, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • I now edited all applicable references to use the {{cite book}}, {{cite journal}} or {{cite web}} templates. I also removed the one unencyclopedic, off-topic sentence completely. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 13:37, 4 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm still not thrilled with the prose: "cited in multiple other articles"—yuck. Ungainly repetition: "because their game complexity is too vast for computers to evaluate all possible positions. To reduce the game complexity, researchers have modified these complex games". Why do "Depth to Conversion and Depth to Mate" have title case; just because they're abbreviated with upper-case letters is no reason to give us alphabet soup. WHy "75" and then "fifty"? (More than one digit, use numerals unless sentence-initial or another good reason: I'd pipe the link.) However, I'll withdraw my objection if these are fixed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tony1 (talk • contribs) 5 May 2007
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.
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