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Chess position pictures

Now that Template:Chess position works well and is already widely used, should all old chess position images be replaced by it? --ZeroOne 15:31, 25 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I vote yes.
  • Consistent appearance is a plus.
  • Improvements to the template improve all diagrams automatically.
  • It makes it possible to find every article that includes a chess diagram by using "What links here" on Template:Chess position.
  • On the negative side, right now we can't mark individual squares or put arrows on the boards.
Other things to consider:
  • How large do we want the diagrams to be? Following the lead established by others I have been using size 30 for the main diagram and 25 for smaller diagrams. Bishop's Opening is an example. It may be that there are better sizes to use.
  • Should the chess boards have a border around them? Currently they don't, but all printed chess books I've seen do have a thin solid border around the board diagrams. I put something on Template talk:Chess position#Border around board asking for opinions on this.
--Quale 06:11, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Agreed with Quale, I have replaced a few of the diagrams with the standard template and I use it for all new articles containing diagrams. Still, it is not a top priority to eliminate the old ChessBase diagrams. The matter became a lot less urgent after the individual openings were split off from the chess opening article. Sjakkalle 08:17, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think the size of chess diagrams should be at least 30 and probably at least 32. The reason is that if you have larger than normal text selected in the browser (IE and Firefox on my computer at least), it puts white space between the ranks, unless the size is 32. At 30, there is only a small amount of white space between the ranks, but at 25 it is pretty bad. --Bubba73 03:53, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

My guess is that this shows up because the text for the a-h, 1-8, grid coordinates uses the default font size and thus is scaled, but the board squares are not. If you use a large font size the grid coords will be larger than the normal table cell size and there are gaps. I think another way to fix this would be to explicitly set the size of the font for the coordinates to 10 or 12 points. The font family is already set to monospace so all that should be required is to set the font size. I'm not actually sure that the diagrams look better with the coordinates in monospace. Maybe the font family should be left to the default, but I haven't tested this to see how it would look. Quale 04:36, 24 May 2005 (UTC)


Is this all OBE now that "Chess diagram" is here? The corresponding article talks about LaTex, but I don't see the need; the template seems to work well enough. See Standard chess diagram for more information. Dwheeler 16:59, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

Notation

There seems to be a consensus that algebraic notation is used in all the chess articles. However, there are some details that in my opinion should be sorted out. Whether or not to use a space after the period, how many periods to use, whether to bold the moves or not and when to start a new row. Consider these examples:

  • 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 (Scotch Game) Nc6 3.d4
  • 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 (Scotch Game) 2..Nc6 3.d4
  • 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 (Scotch Game) 2... Nc6 3. d4
  • 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 (Scotch Game) 2... Nc6 3.d4
  • 1. e4 e5
2. Nf3
(Scotch Game)
2... Nc6
3. d4

Opinions? --ZeroOne 15:07, 26 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Attention: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 is not Scotch Game!

Correct is: 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 (Scotch Game) --Mibelz 22:53, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

Responses

  1. On the subject of space or no space after periods I support no space after periods, simply because that has been the most common in the articles.
  2. On the subject of Bold/not Bold I think we should use bold sparingly, preferrably only to give main lines of important chess games or very major openings.
Sjakkalle 06:30, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)
I have been trying to use no spaces consistently now to match the majority usage on wikipedia. In printed books, spaces are used, but periods aren't. This is different than what PGN specifies for its exchange format, but PGN does allow it.
I think the moves look better without the periods and using an en-space between Black's move and the following move number:
  • 1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 d4 (Scotch Game) 3 … exd4 4 Nxd4
Also, the space between the move number and White's move should be a nonbreaking space so that lines break correctly. Unfortunately this is too much of a pain to actually write:
1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 d4 (Scotch Game) 3 … exd4 4 Nxd4
so I'm not recommending it.
I don't like the look of bold at all. I've seen it in printed books, but I never thought it looked good there either. --Quale 06:38, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)
Well, I guess someone has to be different. I prefer number + period + non-breaking-space, e.g., 1. e4 e5. I think it looks really good, and it's not that hard. If you're near the beginning of a line you can just use an ordinary space (that's pretty usual for commentary). Dwheeler 17:21, August 27, 2005 (UTC)
I prefer using spaces and no periods myself, but almost all the articles use periods, and that's all right with me too. I prefer no space after the period, just because it's simpler. Walter Chan 23:51, 2 September 2005 (UTC)
I prefer to use periods. The sample that Quale put up just seems kind of strange. If I could have my way, I'd have two guidelines - one for the main line:
1. e4 e5
2. Nf3
(Scotch Game)
2. ... Nc6
3. d4
and one for the text and variations:
If the opening were 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 (Scotch Game) Nc6 3.d4, that would be different. One continuation might be 3... exd4 4. Nxd4 (this is a long comment) 4... Nxd4.
Does anyone like the idea of having two guidelines?
To answer the actual questions:
periods: definitely yes
space: no opinion, but we should have a guideline
bold: leave to author
one move per line: leave to author

Sim man 19:55, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

My opinion: 1. Have have a period after the move number. I think that is most common in books, but I'm not sure. 2. As far as I can tell, there is at least a half-space after the period and before the move in printed material. Perhaps a full space. So I favor using a space. 3. Bold in main line only 4. elipsis - i used to use 1. ... e5 but I've switched to 1... e5. Bubba73 (talk), 04:34, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Defense vs. Defence

How should the openings like Modern defense be named? In some talk-page someone stated that the last word (Opening/Defence/Attack) should be capitalized and no one argued. I'm only concerned about the word "defense" - defense or defence? The naming scheme should be consistent. My vote goes to Defense. Many are named as Defences but Defense easily wins the Googlefight and List of chess openings lists way more defenses than defences. --ZeroOne 01:26, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Good question. This is really the issue of American vs British English spelling. It's important that the usage be consistent within an article, but I don't think that we need to standardize across the board. Anyone who reads chess texts in English will encounter both spellings anyway. What I've tried to do so far is keep the spelling consistent with the spelling used by the creator of the article.

Wikipedia encourages consistency within an article but discourages edits simply to change from American English to British or the other way around. When I write a new article, I spell it "defense" and put in a redirect from "defence" if appropriate. I think many people using the standard British spelling are doing the same in reverse. Quale 02:27, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I think that's right (just in case it's not clear to non-native English speakers: "defence" is British English, while "defense" is American English). It's important to be consistent within each article, but attempting to use only "defence" or "defense" in all articles may lead to fights (people can get surprisingly worked up about this sort of thing). Incidentally, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English for more on this. --Camembert 18:58, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

White and Black vs. white and black

This is something I've been wondering in the chess articles. Sometimes the players' colors are capitalized, like this: A00 is the Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings designator for unconventional chess openings with an unusual first move from White. Where does this style originate from? I've never seen it in literature but on the other hand I've only read Finnish chess literature. --ZeroOne 08:22, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

White and Black are used to stand in for the players' names, so the convention in English is to capitalize them just like any proper name. If you can substitute Kasparov or another player's name for White or Black, then White or Black should be capitalized.

There is one point that can be slightly confusing. When writing about the color of the pieces or the squares on the board the lower case white and black are used. For the squares usually it's better to write light and dark instead, as in light-square bishop or dark-square bishop. For the pieces, you don't have to do it often because "the player of the black pieces" is just a long winded way to say "Black".

A trickier point is whether the names of pieces should be capitalized under certain circumstances. It's always "each side begins with eight pawns", but I often read "trapping White's Queen". Mostly kings and queens seem to be honored with capitalization, but I don't know of a general rule. So far I've been using lower case for the piece names. If this is wrong, someone will fix it up at some point. Quale 18:01, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Grabbing some books near my computer, I see the Oxford Companion to Chess does not capitalise "bishop", "king", "pawn" and so on; neither does Botvinnik's Best Games 1947-1970; nor does John Nunn's Best Games. On the other hand, my 1954 printing of Fine's Ideas Behind the Chess Opening does capitalise "Pawn", "Bishop" and so on. Obviously, it's hard to draw any great conclusions from a quick flick through four books, but my impression is that this kind of capitalisation isn't very common now, even if it once was. I personally give piece names lower-case initials.
I agree with you about the capitalisation of "White" and "Black"; I think I made the same point on a talk page once with a couple of examples from the literature, but I can't find it right now. --Camembert 18:51, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Pronouns, should we use male, female or neutral?

On the article on the Queen's Gambit Accepted, there have been some edits and some reverts regarding the use of the male pronoun "he". The first one was made by an anon 64.230.179.10 which systematically replaced "he" with "it" [1]. That looked so wrong that I changed it back. Later, User:Iansk made another edit taking off the "he"s in order to make the article gender neutral, [2]. This one looks good so I at least will let it stay.

My use of the male pronoun is of course not to imply that only men and boys can play chess. Although Bobby Fischer probably would disagree, girls and women are most certainly capable of playing chess, and are quite capable of defeating the likes of myself (I lost two consecutive games against girls, aged 13 and 11, last November) and even Kasparov (him at the hands of Judit Polgar). The use is because I want to imply that the players are people and not machines, and because nearly all chess books I have read use "he" when referring to the players. I feel that "he" has almost become a gender-neutral pronoun for use when the gender is undetermined.

Question: Should we use the male pronoun "he", the female pronoun "she", or avoid pronouns altogether to keep the chess articles gender neutral? The use of "it" is the only pronoun I will oppose. Sjakkalle 06:23, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

The question of gender neutrality is not an issue here because, he and she are just grammatical masculine and feminine pronouns and do not refer to biological gender. It is conventional to use the masculine form in places where a general pronoun is requires. One can, if need arises, use the Singular They, but personally I feel it might sound odd. Kartheeque 06:28, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Good question. I try to be gender neutral when possible. Often this is awkward in English. In those cases I have used either he or she fairly randomly as the mood struck me. Singular they doesn't seem right in the context of a chess player, and I agree that "it" is definitely no good. Quale 06:40, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Several years ago, I (iansk) worked for the chess publisher Batsford as Technical Editor. I still work in publishing. In publishing in general, editors are asked to use 'inclusive' language, avoiding gender-specific pronouns, wherever possible. Ideally, this should be done so that the text reads naturally – too many instances of 'he or she', for instance, make the text clumsy. In chess, one is usually discussing two unidentified players, conventionally personified as White and Black. One can use these 'names' in order to avoid male or female pronouns. Sentences like 'White needs to protect his king' can then be written as 'White's king requires protection', which is clear and unobtrusive. I found, during my time at Batsford, that this was the most effective approach. Iansk 11:01, 25 Apr 2005 (UTC)

PGN files

I am wanting to add links to PGN files to a number of articles in Category:Chess_games and possibly Category:Chess_openings. I noticed that Immortal game has one Media:Immortal game.pgn which was according to the history added by User: Camembert. I left a note for him asking for help on how to do this just now but though I woudl ask here as well. From reading through the documentation on uploading files it looks like only a very limited number of file types are supported. Mostly sounds and images. Is there a trick to this or can I just upload PGN and it will work? Also how do you get to the file info page for one of these once its uploaded? Dalf | Talk 01:57, 22 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I've answered Dalf's question on my user page, but this is probably of wider interest, so I'll respond here too.
Sadly, it is no longer possible, to the best of my knowledge, to upload PGN files. It was some time last year (I think) that they, together with uploads of all files not in certain image or sound formats, were stopped, apparently for security reasons (I'm not clever enough to understand exactly what the security reasons were; anybody interested should probably ask at the Wikipedia:help desk, since the help pages on the subject seem rather lacking). Files in other formats which had already been uploaded were not deleted, which is why you still see PGN files around the place.
As for getting to the description page of these files: as far as I know, there's no way other than manually editing the address in your browser's location bar. So, for instance, to get to the PGN file Dalf mentions, one browses to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Immortal%20game.pgn
If I'm wrong about this, and there really is a way to still upload PGN files, I'd be very happy if somebody could let me know, since I have quite a few floating about my hard drive that would find happy homes in articles. --Camembert 14:08, 23 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Cross-wiki coordination

Maybe someone can convince steve pribut to make his chesswiki gfdl... I wonder if he ever contributes here. +sj + 00:28, 29 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup needed on World Chess Federation and American Chess Association

These articles need some help. If anyone is familiar with these organizations and wants to fix them up, that would be great. American Chess Association should be in category:Chess Organizations rather than just Category:Chess. That name was used by an organization back in the 19th century, but is currently used by a small group associated with the World Chess Federation. The history of the old group is probably more interesting than the current group, but WP doesn't have anything about the original group yet.

World Chess Federation is usually used to mean F.I.D.E., but this article talks about an obscure organization out of Las Vegas headed by Steven Vaughan. Apparently it is a real organization, but its fringe standing in the world of chess should be made clear. After the article is fixed it too should be added to Category:Chess Organizations. Quale 19:36, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

  • Forgot to ask something somewhat related: I have read the Germany has the largest and most active chess clubs in the world. Do we have any German contributers who would like to write something about German chess organizations? Category:Chess Organizations could use some more articles. Quale 19:46, 5 May 2005 (UTC)

I've accidentally stumbled upon this and done the basic fixing of these articles, someone who knows actual details should expand them or move them to more appropriate titles if necessary. --Joy [shallot] 17:56, 31 May 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia chess championship

I'm not part of the project, and I apologise for taking up your talk-page space, but i thought you'd like to know that the first ever wikipedia chess championship is looking for participants! Sign-up at Wikipedia:Chess championship! Come and play, you'd probably kick all our respective asses! Gkhan 21:05, May 10, 2005 (UTC)

Chess position template

I've written a sort of how-to at template talk:chess position. Hopefully this covers the basics. What do others think? Also, I've been trying to figure out how to make chess diagrams with captions look similar to image thumbnails with captions. You can see my attempt at The Game of the Century. I think this looks better than the captions at Kasparov versus The World (not to pick on whoever made those). If someone could help figure this out I think it would be useful. --jacobolus (t) 02:17, 21 May 2005 (UTC)

Thanks Jacobolus for your work. I must admit that I'm not very good at using the chess position template, usually I just copy and paste a template from another article and then move the pieces around to get the diagram I want. Your how-to is very helpful. Sjakkalle 07:36, 21 May 2005 (UTC)
I just found out about it, so I haven't had time to read it yet. However, I need this information very much. I couldn't find any documentation on the template, so I just copied, pasted, and altered from other diagrams. --Bubba73 05:14, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
Jacobolus, I just want to also thank you for the clear, easy to understand explanation. I will start using your suggestions for handling the floats. Your captions at The Game of the Century look very nice. Quale 16:27, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
There was a big effort to unify the different language's templates; they took the English "chess position" template, made various improvements, and created "chess diagram". I think it's really good, so I used in a few cases, and noted it in the WikiProject Chess page as what appears to be the new standard. Have I gone off my rocker?!? Please correct if what's stated on the WikiProject Chess page is inaccurate. On the other hand, if LaTex isn't going to be used (it produces uglier black and white images, and requires code changes), then maybe that should get dropped entirely. -- Dwheeler 18:53, August 31, 2005 (UTC)

Wikiportal

I just stumbled upon Wikiportal Star Wars. I didn't know such portals existed but I think they are a great idea. So, how about creating a Wikiportal Chess? Unfortunately I don't have the time to do it myself. --ZeroOne 14:09, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

I (with help from Cjpuffin) started the chess portal. Check it out, post comments, and improve it as you see fit. — Bcat (talk | email) 03:31, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
Yes, great job! The portal looks very professional already. :) --ZeroOne 12:50, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

Page for "chess set" ?

Should we have a page for chess set? (could link to chess piece) --Bubba73 19:15, 29 May 2005 (UTC)

Categories for chess player biographies

Right now WP doesn't consistently use categories in the biography articles we have on chess players. The master category is Category:Chess players, with subcategories Category:Chess grandmasters and Category:Chess players by nationality. Naturally the Chess players by nationality category is broken down further, but we're missing a lot of nationalities that we should have. (Category:Jewish chess players is also a subcat. Strictly speaking "Jewish" is not a nationality, but there have been so many important Jewish players including many world champions, so I think this deserves a category and belongs as a subcat to Chess players by nationality.)

Here are my questions/suggestions.

  1. Currently many chess grandmasters are in both the Category:Chess players and Category: Chess grandmasters cats. My suggestion is to put the GMs only in the GM subcat. Then the master category can include notable chess players who played before the FIDE GM title was instituted in 1950 (remembering that the Czar named the original 5 GMs in 1914) and other notable chess players like Stanley Kubrick who were not professionals. Would that be OK?
  2. We need more categories in Category:Chess players by nationality. Unfortunately as an American I'm ignorant of some of the subtleties. Category:British chess players probably can include the English and the Scotts, but I'm not sure what to do about the Irish and the Welsh. There don't seem to be too many notable Irish players, though.
  3. What should we do with the former USSR? Should the category be USSR chess players? Soviet chess players? Something else? Just categorize them in their home republic?
  4. How many cats by nationality do we want to put on a single player? Boris Spassky can be categorized as a Russian and a French chess player. Many strong U.S. players are from former Soviet republics. I think it's OK to categorize these players in both (or sometimes 3) cats that would apply.

Any thoughts? Quale 21:33, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • I'm quite okay with all those suggestions. My opinions on the questions you asked are: Ireland is a sovereign nation, and if there are enough players from there, it needs its own category, Wales is not sovereign and can be classified under "British" however. Regarding the CIS countries, I think we should just classify them under the current republics (Russia, Ukraine, Estonia, etc.). About players who could belong in two or more national categories, I see no real reason not to do so, even though I have some reservations about placing Bobby Fischer in Category:Icelandic chess players. Some months ago we had the Category:Female chess players, but it was deleted and replaced with List of female chess players. IMO, that was a pity because it's quite tough to navigate using that list, but I was outvoted. Sjakkalle (Check!) 06:57, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Thanks, good points. I think we're safe with Fischer because he will never be an Icelandic chess player (a cat we don't have yet, but there are some notables there) unless he plays serious chess again. I thought about this a little bit with Irina Krush. Although she was born in the Ukraine, I think she moved to the U.S. while quite young. I think perhaps she didn't play enough (or maybe any) significant chess in the Ukraine, so putting her in Category:Ukrainian chess players probably wouldn't be right. I wasn't around when WP removed Category:Female chess players and I don't watch the cat deletions anyway, but I probably would have voted to keep. We could consider a Category:Chess women's grandmasters since the WGM is a different title than GM. I think there are about 6-10 women with both titles and they would go in both cats. Clearly any woman with the GM title is a very special chess player. Quale 07:32, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Use of {chessplayer-stubs}

I just moved A. A. Troitzky from Chess-stubs to Chessplayer-stubs. I think since the article is about a person, it is better in the new place, but he's not known as a chess player. Are there any objections to moving all articles about people related to chess to chessplayer-stubs? Sim man 01:27, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Racism shadows?

Note: I copy this post from the talk of the Checkmate article, I think it is important to the whole project and should be disccuss.

I am traslating a part of this page to spanish, I get a question. Why every checkmate are from whites to blacks?

This fact is not trivial I think.

It has two points:

  1. NPV.-Novice readers are going to think the blacks always loose, or often they loose. In chess white starts and they have a few advantage at the beginning, but every chess player knows this is not trascendental to the game result.
  2. Metaphor.-Why in an encyclopedia are we going to reflect to humanity white are best than dark?

I invite you to be more accurate to the wikipedia philosophy.

Thanks

--GengisKanhg (my talk) 20:03, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

  • Convention is to give exercises and examples with "White to move and win" or "White to move and draw", and most of the contributors here are following that convention. For readers this is easier because boards are displayed from White's "point of view". The point that White moving first is racist has been raised before, but one should look at the history of chess. Historically, Black moved first half of the time. For some reason unknown to me, Black was considered to be a "lucky" color and it was suggested that White be given the first move as compensation for this. Having one color move first in all games makes it easier to compare different games of chess, it may as well have been black who always got the first move but we would be having the same question. In Checkers and Go Black moves first (a disadvantage in Checkers I've heard, but a clear advantage in Go). Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:52, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Thank you for your answer. I only can add is good for readers to learn to analyse the chess board from both player`s view, so they can analysed his or her own position and enemy`s one. --GengisKanhg (my talk) 23:38, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I think this kind of concern is the obnoxious extreme of the politically correct movement, and has no place affecting chess conventions. Period. Themindset 10:55, 11 November 2005 (UTC)

International announce about chess board template

I would like to tell you about a message I had put in every talk of chess article in all wikipedias (all languages).

Title: IN ENGLISH: International wiki chess aid

Text: Hi everybody in the World interesting in chess and wikipedia.

This is an international chess aid new for making chess boards.

  1. English speakers wikipedist had been made a template for displaying chess boards easily at [3]. This template uses images from english wikipedia. They are using it in a lot of articles.
  2. The images used by this template had been copied to wikimedia.COMMONS and put it in an appropiated category: [4]
  3. Then, now the template can be used in a local new template without any change (only you meaby change the template`s name and obviosly you should change the template invocation) .
  4. Spanish speakers wikipedist already start to used it at [5] an others articles.
  5. The template explanation is in its talk page.
  6. If you want to change the image(s) is not very difficult, you only should add them to commons and change their names in the template (with out changing the already existance images, of course).
  7. A large disccuss about the template, like flexibility, special applications (like board with arrows), choose board appearence, and much others questions are in the english talk (discussion) of the template.

We hope you enjoy this colaborative work an make more and more chess articles in every wikipedia(s) you work.

Thanks.

(If there are mistakes, I am sorry, my english is not my natural language)

14th June 2005 aprox. 22:00 hrs GMT User gengiskanhg from english and spanish wikipedias.

--GengisKanhg (my talk) 21:21, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Improved template

I have made some changes to the above solution, including a change of colour, since the green colour looks rather poisonous to me. The facilities include: frame, resizing of board, change of colour, thumb, control of surrounding text, letters/numbers on all sides etc.

You may find my template on commons here and a full explanation of its facilities and use on the talk-page of the template here.

The solution also works together with the present English template:Chess position. If the image names in that template are changed from chess_xxxx to chs2_xxxx, all green diagrams will show up in brown (but without border etc. of the new template). For diagrams with an "X" to show a movement, a small correction must be made.

If you want to have a look at the appearence obtained, please visit da:Opposition (skak) -Sir48-DK, profile in English

Mein System improvement drive candidate

I've nominated the chess book Mein System (also known as My System) for this week's improvement drive. Please consider voting to support it. The nomination is here. — Bcat (talk | email) 30 June 2005 20:54 (UTC)

Meta project

I just wanted to inform everyone that I started a meta chess wikiproject to create uniform chess coverage across all wikipedias. I hope everyone goes and contributes. This link is Broken 1 July 2005 02:17 (UTC)

Chess COTW

Anyone interested in founding a Chess COTW, to fill in the gaps? Falphin 23:54, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Kasparov

Please note that Garry Kasparov is currently a candidate to be removed from the featured articles list. The article needs significant work and will probably be removed. However, the subject is deserving of a featured article and I thought participants in this Wikiproject might be interested in working on it, and getting it back to FA status. Chick Bowen 18:47, 6 January 2006 (UTC)

Images

Hi there, I'll be adding some animated images of my own on the chess articles, and I've already added 2 images on the pawn (chess) and Bishop (chess) articles Jfreyre

Info and more info

Some of the chess opening pages have very little detail or its variations. Less popular openings don't see much length and even some popular openings like Reti's (Nf3), are being ignored. I'd like to see some more work on the individual pages over the very expansive Opening Theory book. Though the book is a great idea, Chess is Exp-time complete, and thus would take quite a long time to get down all the variations down from the millions upon millions of variations even right from the start. So I say we do baby steps and start with the Mainline openings first with a good amount of detail and then expand from there once we have a good base of operations. Some sites to consider for imformation are: chessgames.com and chessbase.com. I'll be helping when I can. 70.111.207.230 14:24, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project

Hi, I'm a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-class, B-class, and Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Can you recommend any suitable articles? I know Chess is a featured article, any others? Please post your suggestions here. Thanks a lot! Gflores Talk 17:40, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I think you should check out Portal:Chess and its archives of Selected articles, players and games. :) --ZeroOne 22:29, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

ChessGames.com template

I created Template:Chessgames player for linking to players' stats at ChessGames.com in a uniform way. Please comment or just begin using the template. Also remember that we also have Template:Fide. :) --ZeroOne 22:16, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

I thought you deserved a comment for your work—thanks. I've been using your template. 165.189.91.148 21:49, 14 September 2006 (UTC)

FYI regarding WP:CVG-type AfDs

  1. Disclaimers: I am relatively new to WP. I have played both chess and computer video games such as StarCraft.
  2. WP has a diverse group of editors, so I don't mean to be an alarmist, and apologize if this is not the correct forum, or has come up before.
  3. Recently, there have been several computer video game AfDs, (see AfD SU units, WP:DRV of AfD SC units, and AfD Deadmines to name a few), which have referenced chess, both to support and to reject the proposals. Paraphrased short versions include "chess has X many articles, why can't Foo?", and "chess is thousands of years old, it is allowed to; Foo is new and therefore cruft." One could imagine that AfDs, merges, etc, may begin appearing on chess articles; some may be seen as potentially retaliatory, others may be perfectly legitimate.
-- MrDolomite | Talk 20:59, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Troitzky line

I'm wondering if Troitzky line might need to be renamed to something like "Two knights versus pawn endgame". If so, then some material from checkmate and perhaps endgame can be moved to that article. What do you people think? Bubba73 (talk), 04:46, 31 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, I did it - moved to the new article Two knights endgame and added some general info. Bubba73 (talk), 23:55, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

Does chess move punctuation count as sentence punctuation?

In Stalemate, there is a sentence 

In the position shown on the left, Keres played 72. Qe5!!

Should there be a period at the end of the sentence, or does the "!!" commenting on the move count as terminating the sentence? Bubba73 (talk), 00:11, 12 August 2006 (UTC)

No, it doesn't. The answer is in the question really; they are two different things - just check any chess book with annotated games for confirmation - User:Brittle heaven
Well, on page 132 of BCE (Fine and Benko), a !! ends a sentence. On page 136, it doesn't (i.e. it is followed by a period). Bubba73 (talk), 04:15, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
I think !! or ? (as punctuation attached to a chess move) is a proper way to end a sentence, and that you don't need to tack on a period as well. But then as I recall, I was the one who removed the period from that very sentence, so you know my view. :-) Krakatoa 10:04, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
Might have been. I have much of a preference. I just think we should be consistent. I don't know which is more grammatically correct. But here BCE uses one style on one page and the other 4 pages later. To me, though, without a period it is harder to tell if it is the end of the sentence. Bubba73 (talk), 20:11, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
If it is one of the others such as = or +/-, then what? Bubba73 (talk), 20:20, 24 September 2006 (UTC)
Maybe some would say you can end a sentence with those. But if it's a sentence with text in it (for example -- In the position shown on the left, Keres played 72. Qe5!!=), I, at least, would tack on a period at the end. Krakatoa 21:24, 24 September 2006 (UTC)

Template update

I have a request for a modification to the Chess diagram templates to allow resignation to be depicted. The image could simply be the current King, rotated through 90o. --GW_SimulationsUser Page | Talk 19:35, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Hmm. How would you use that? I have never seen such a notation elsewhere. Isn't the description below the image enough? You can write "The position at which black resigned" or something similar. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 00:13, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

What would really be nice

Something that would really be nice is if we could have a position in a diagram and then the user could click to step through moves and see the result in the diagram. Is anything like that available? Bubba73 (talk), 23:11, 23 September 2006 (UTC)

Yes, that would be nice. However, that would require some very clever javascript, a Java applet or some server-side support. Maybe the WikiTeX Chess support will some day be implemented to Wikipedia, too. However, I'm not too confident in seeing it here anytime soon. It has already been available for years. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 00:11, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

copyright?

Are chess positions and moves copyrighted? Does it matter whether the position is a composition or from a game? Are moves from a game different from a checkmate with the queen? Bubba73 (talk), 02:17, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Chess positions, moves and games cannot be copyrighted. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 00:03, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Numbering squares in chess template

Thanks to the work of ZeroOne, you can now put x1, x2, ... x9 in the template to show digits 1 through 9. Bubba73 (talk), 00:19, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

Large articles needed?

It seems to me that we need some large articles on chess, but it would take a lot of work. Larger articles such as "positional play in the middlegame" or a comprehensive "rook and pawn endgames" (even though there is rook and pawn versus rook. I've worked on a lot of endgame articles, but they are biased in favor of small articles of a few screens because that is about all one person can write. Some of these small articles are practical (e.g. Lucena position) but others are mostly esoteric (e.g. the Troitsky line, which has been incorporated into Two knights endgame).

My point is that there are a lot of small articles and that the chess articles are (as a result) biased towards that, many of which are esoteric. Should we try to work on larger, more comprehensive articles, or would that be too large of a project (practically writing a book in some cases), and in which case we should just refer the reader to other sources (i.e. printed books)? Bubba73 (talk), 23:54, 20 October 2006 (UTC)

The larger discussions and articles should be put into Wikibooks:Chess. Wikipedia is, after all, just an encyclopedia. "Positional play in the chess middlegame" doesn't really sound like an encyclopedia topic to me. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 00:01, 21 October 2006 (UTC)

Project Directory

Hello. The WikiProject Council is currently in the process of developing a master directory of the existing WikiProjects to replace and update the existing Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory. These WikiProjects are of vital importance in helping wikipedia achieve its goal of becoming truly encyclopedic. Please review the following pages:

and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory. The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. It is my hope to have the existing directory replaced by the updated and corrected version of the directory above by November 1. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 21:11, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry if you tried to update it before, and the corrections were gone. I have now put the new draft in the old directory pages, so the links should work better. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused you. B2T2 23:57, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Files and similar articles

At present there is an article file (chess) that redirects to chess terminology. There are also one-paragraph stub articles Open file and Half-open file. How about fleshing out file (chess) a little and merging the other two short articles into it? Bubba73 (talk), 23:51, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

tie-break systems

I think we need an article on the different tie-breaking systems used, or a summary-style article linking to individual articles. Sonneborn-Berger system already exists (as a stub), but there is Median, Modified Median, Cumulative, etc, that need to be in an article (or articles). I'll probably eventually get around to doing them, but if someone is looking for something to do, this would be a good topic. Bubba73 (talk), 18:46, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

PS, there is also Buchholz system, a stub. Bubba73 (talk), 18:51, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Fischer delay and Bronstein delay

One thing I think should be added, probably to the Game clock article, is an explanation of the various delays - Fischer, Bronstein, etc (if there are others). Bubba73 (talk), 01:00, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

Well, i did it. Bubba73 (talk), 23:07, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi all,

I have a question regarding links to chessworld.net. In September, one-purpose accounts User:Juicy Plums and User:Son of Zeus started to add them in huge quantities. I tried to stop them, and had a long discussion with them and with User:Kingscrusher (Tryfon), who is the webmaster of chessworld.net and appeared to defend them (he looked like their puppetmaster, read the discussion on my talk page). The negotiations were hard and ended with an agreement in the sense that Tryfon will not add the links in the future and I will not remove them. Then after two months or so, a new one-purpose account User:No65560 appeared and started the link-bombing again, in the same style as the late Son of Zeus/Juicy Plums/Trifon. Later, two "normal" users started a conflict about this: User:Eagle 101 removed all the links as linkspam and User:LittleOldMe added them back because he thinks that they are legitimate.

Now, my stance is slightly against the links, at least in cases where there is already a link to Chessgames.com. But this is only a weak opinion. What I think is that we should discuss it now and decide: Either

  • Chessworld.net links are legitimate and should stay and we will defend them (and perhaps create a template similar to the Chessgames template), or
  • We will tolerate them but not support them, or
  • We will regard them as spam and combat them.

I should add that the ChessWorld.net article has been deleted (PRODed, not AfDed).

What is your opinion? --Ioannes Pragensis 16:51, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

My vote: regard links to chessworld.net as spam and combat them. Chessgames.com is much better resource. Just consider a random page which has links to both sites: Semyon Alapin. Information about him on chessgames.com is much better and rich in content then on chessworld.net. There is no reason at all to put links to chessworld.net if you can link to corresponding Chessgames.com page instead. Andreas Kaufmann 19:37, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
I don't know much about it, I haven't seen the links. I thought about removing this link from chess strategy and tactics yesterday, but I didn't. Bubba73 (talk), 00:06, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
I (weakly) lean towards deleting the links. However, I do have a problem with giving chessgames.com special treatment. It may be the best games resource today, but will it always be? p.s. Thanks Ioannes Pragensis for alerting me to the existence of this project page. Rocksong 10:17, 18 November 2006 (UTC)
Comparison of features using Vladimir Kramnik
Feature ChessGames ChessWorld
Openings W & B W & B
Games Yes, sorted Recent wins
Notable games Yes No
Annotated games Yes* Reg.
Forum Yes* Yes
Opponents No Yes
Game collections Yes No
Sacrifices Premium No
Biography Yes No†
Number of games 1685 ??
Own analysis No Yes
* In the actual games.
† Links back to Wikipedia

My conclusion is that there is too much overlapping, and the extra features of ChessWorld are not enough to have both links. In addition, ChessWorld is a game site, ChessGames is a database site; and the interface is much better. They're not spam, but have no place in Wikipedia. Therefore, treat as spam. └ VodkaJazz / talk ┐ 10:27, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

We need to think long and hard on whether or not we even want any of these links. Please stop in #wikipedia-spam on the irc.freenode.org network to talk to some of our spam fighters. Right now we are regarding that site as spam. —— Eagle (ask me for help) 17:19, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

I added back numerous links to ChessWorld.net that because they had been summarily removed as spam. The majority of these articles had no link to ChessGames.com. How a table of comparisons is relevant in these instances is beyond my comprehension.

However, my main gripe is with the treatment that was meted out to the newcomer who added the links. If the administrator who reversed all the edits had, instead, been selective and only reversed those that already had a link to ChessGames, and substituted the others with a link to ChessGames, then I would have left well enough alone. In my opinion, reverting edits indiscriminately, in order to prove a point, is even worse than spamming.

I hope that once consensus is reached, if someone ignorant of the consensus adds an external link considered to be spam, that the dealings with that individual will be to encourage compliance rather than an immediate threat of a block. Please don't bite the newbies! LittleOldMe 13:36, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Allow me only a small comment, LittleOldMe - I very much appreciate your openess to newcomers and wholeheartedly agree with you that we should help them. But if you look at the list of No65560's contributions (here), you see that he 1) does nothing more than adding the links, and 2) he adds them in a quick tempo and sorted in the alphabetical order (Balinas, Banikas, Baracz,..., Miton, Mkrtchian). This is not how newcomers work - in my opinion, this is rather how a professional linkspammer operate, who has a prepared list of links which he wishes to add. Therefore the question is not a question of newbies, but a question whether we like these links or not, regardless of No65560's feelings. Greetings --Ioannes Pragensis 08:31, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

In those cases we need to link to games I go for chessgames.com, because it has a good interface and a reasonable databse with all games we are likely to ever want to link to. (It is not the best or largest database around however, the best I have found is www.chesslive.de, but the only way to access games there is by performing a search, so we cannot link to games found there). I don't think the links to the chessworld.net databases really qualify as "spam" however, the links are to valid chess information so I'm a bit on the fence here. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:59, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

Agree with Sjakkalle, which is to say I don't have a strong opinion. I can't say that chessworld.net links are spam, but I don't know if every chess player article should have an external link to that site. I think I will have to defer to other people's judgement on this. Maybe the discussion will sway me one way or the other. Quale 00:57, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

Results of the discussion

Since there were no new comments since 22nd, allow me to close the discussion. The results are:

  • Where there is a link to chessgames.com, we will treat the links to chessworld.net as SPAM and combat them.
  • Where there is no link to chessgames.com, the discussion has no clear conclusion. Therefore I think that we should TOLERATE links to chessworld.net in such cases.
  • As Rocksong pointed out, we should be open to change the decision in the future, because the quality of game servers can change with time.

Thank you all for your time and wish you happy editing.--Ioannes Pragensis 16:35, 24 November 2006 (UTC)


Forgive me for my late response to this contentious thread. I have been travelling extensively and have only just returned home.

I have to respond to these comments on two counts. As I made abundantly clear some time ago, I am not using multiple identities and my contributions were, and have been, made on my own initiative. I do not take 'orders' or 'advice' from others to form my own views and comments, and I find the implication that I am being manipulated as a mere puppet gratuitously offensive.

The whole tenor of these comments suggests to me, and to any independent observer, that there is considerable confusion among the respondents over the concept of spam and over the alleged differences between chessgames.com and chessworld.net. The general implications above are that chessgames.com is good and chessworld.net is bad. Clearly, this is arrant and immature nonsense. The two sites are different in nature and whilst both offer a database of quality games the chessworld.net site, as well as being primarily a playing site, actually offers significantly more games to the interested browser. There is also what can only be described as an arrogant presumption that chessgames.com is better '...because it has a good interface and a reasonable database with all games we are likely to ever want to link to.' The relative merits of various interfaces are matters of subjective rather than qualitative judgement and, in addition, the write clearly would have no concept whatsoever of which games any individual may or may not wish to link to. The whole concept of Wiki, in my, perhaps naive, opinion, is to allow a free and open access to a wide range of views and material unfettered by the selective views of a minority of users who, I would have to assume, have no more and no less authority to comment than any other user.

Finally, the view that No65560's contributions are the work of a 'professional linkspammer' shows a clear lack of understanding. A moments brief thought would have perhaps shown that the process of adding a series of links is, or can be, a relatively rapid process, not necessarily an indication of a 'professional' and the fact that the entries were in alphabetic order is more a reflection that the information was based upon a list of players in alphabetic order. Even the most naive newbie is more than capable of ordering thoughts and ideas in a logical basis.

Son of Zeus 14:27, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi all

Sorry for coming late into the discussion. I want to show the impact using an example of having a non-standard games database of very limited games like the chess games.com site, and I would like to use the player "Gavin Crawley" as an example. http://www.chessgames.com/player/gavin_crawley.html - 17 games in the database only as of 30th November 2006.

This was a player who didn't perhaps reach GM title but was exceptionally talented. He won the "Chess for peace" tournament among others in his team, with several victories against UK GMs. From the current Chessgames.com profile of him, he has:- +1 -8 +8 i.e. won 1, lost eight and drawn eight. This in my view shows this player in a really bad out-of-context light. It is because of the limited number of games available at chessgames.com. Do a search on Gavin Crawley on the Chessworld.net masters collection database:-

http://www.chessworld.net/chessclubs/statistics_pgn_tester.asp?whichpage=1&fr=1053&GameWhite=Crawley&ExactMatchWhite=0&OpeningAnalysisWhite=0&OpeningAnalysisBlack=0&ExactMatchBlack=0&GameResult=0&GameType=0&IgnoreColours=0&FENStringSearchEnabled=0&KeepFilters=1&showmovescore=0&showmovescorefirstline=0&suppressfilterheader=0&generatetournamentinfo=0

and you will see a very different statistical picture. The Chessworld.net masters collection also has a built in move-explorer, showing the Wins/Draws/Losses of this player - to the public free member. I can easily insert a new tab to get to this page for any player. When there are less than 1000 search results, the "move explorer" kicks in. The profile of Gavin Crawley is now very positive with 70 results found, and 31 wins found. This is in stark contrast to the Chessgames.com database.

So does Wiki want to mis-represent players abilities or not?! That is a key question which I am prepared to take the very highest levels of Wiki and message the entire Chessworld.net site about this injustice. If you wish to take a hand-tailored database of less than 500,000 games, and then use that to search for players games, I put it to you and any authority, there is a major risk of mis-representing the achievements of the chess player in question. This has also been put forward by the chessgame readers themselves as one of the biggest things they want - a bigger database of games.

Chessworld.net offers a bigger database of games, and therefore the opportunity to see the "rarer" games, or the games of famous players in their earlier years, etc. Who are you people to judge what games are not worthy of consideration to include or not?! If you want to filter out just the highest quality games on the Chessworld.net database, then by all means using the rating filter and just filter out players over 2600 Fide (another thing you cannot do with the Chessgames.com database as a free user or even paid user as far as I am aware). By all means use filter facilities to find high level games, but the importance of having a complete games database is the single biggest downfall of the Chessgames.com site in my view. It makes it absolutely prone to bias and judgement of the database compilers themselves and not the database users.

Chessworld.net deserves to be linked to - we have a dedicated server machine to our master collection, and the wider chess community deserves to get a richer view of chess players - not just the odd hand-picked game.

Kingscrusher 18:17, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

Having heard of Gavin Crawley but not knowing much about him, I was interested to see if this was true as indeed ChessGames has a very limited selection of games for him. However, the ChessWorld database is impossible to access unless one is a fully paid-up private member and so for wikipedia purposes, chessgames.com is clearly preferable.

FCKosice, 15 Oct 2007

Chess

Chess is up for a featured article review. Detailed concerns may be found here. Please leave your comments and help us address and maintain this article's featured quality. Sandy (Talk) 14:54, 20 November 2006 (UTC)

Requesting Featured Article Review for Xiangqi.

I think Xiangqi does not deserve Featured Article status for the following reasons:

  • It has only 12 references - not good enough for an FA.
  • The sections on "Xiangqi tournaments and leagues", "Rankings" and "Xiangqi and computers" are too short.
  • In contrast, some sections, including "Rules", go into unnecessary detail.

Therefore, I suggest Xiangqi undergo a Featured Article Review. If it is delisted, consider nominating it for GA status - I think it meets the GA criteria.

--J.L.W.S. The Special One 03:12, 24 November 2006 (UTC)

Stablepedia

Beginning cross-post.

See Wikipedia talk:Version 1.0 Editorial Team#Stablepedia. If you wish to comment, please comment there. ★MESSEDROCKER★ 00:06, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

End cross-post. Please do not comment more in this section.

So many chess openings

I've recently been involved in some AfD's that have brought up game guides as a reason for deletion. Now me, I think a lot of the things that are considered game guides by people are a bit odd, and in my seeking for what articles are in Wikipedia, I came across Category:Chess openings and found it has over a hundred entries.

Many of them are unsourced, though I'm sure there are sources, so I don't object to that. But what arguments do you have for them being encyclopedic content? List of chess openings I get, but does Ruy Lopez's chess openings really deserve 18 individual entries?

Now I hope I'm not interpreted as trying to make a WP:POINT or being disruptive. That's why I'm not Proding or Afding anything, but I am seeking some information as to why people believe so many of these articles exist, or should exist. Anyway, hoping to see some thoughts here. FrozenPurpleCube 18:01, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

You make some good points. (Yes, there are sources for all of that.) Several small artiles were recently deleted or merged. It is a balancing act, I guess. Some people want an entry for each of the 500 ECO codes List of chess openings. The theory of the Ruy Lopez opening is far more extensive than when he played it, it is one of the most extensive in terms of theory. However, many of the subvariations have only one or two paragraphs in their articles. These could easily be merged into the main Ruy Lopez artice. On the other hand, there are other Ruy Lopez articles that are large enough to stand by themselves, and merging them into the main article would make the main article too long. Bubba73 (talk), 18:31, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
But is there even a good argument on the Ruy Lopez having as much content as it does? I'm sure it's all fine and valid, and would be great in an encyclopedia or other book on Chess, and seems to exist with enough notability to have an article on its own, but is it not perhaps a little too much technical detail? The history and basics are fine, but all of those variations? And over a dozen more articles with other variations? (Some of which may duplicate information, I must confess to not knowing, but I am concerned with the possibility). FrozenPurpleCube 18:41, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Well as I said, there is a lot of theory and practice for the Ruy Lopez. My guess that it is third behind the Sicilian defense and the Queen's Gambit. Bubba73 (talk), 21:53, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
That explains one article. Now you've got another 17 to explain. Plus the content of the main article, which IMHO, goes into far too much detai. FrozenPurpleCube 00:32, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I have two arguments for the openings in this case: 1) "Wikipedia is not a paper encyclopedia. This means that there is no practical limit to the number of topics we can cover (...)." (WP:NOT). 2) "A subject is notable if has been documented in multiple, non-trivial, independent, published sources" (WP:N) - which is true about all the main variations of chess openings. Amazon.com has currently about 20 books about Ruy Lopez and/or its sub-variations, and there are many more articles in chess journals, websites and books in languages other than English. --Ioannes Pragensis 19:38, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
OTOH, WP:NOT is also "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of information" and several of the articles on chess openings may well be taken as instruction manuals. Most of them are nothing more than a description of the moves, without even the content of the Ruy Lopez to even bring some historical interest. For example, Lopez Opening. It's sourced, and presumably fine for a book on Chess, but what does it offer the casual reader? Same with say Chigorin Defense. Then there are unsourced examples like Napoleon Opening, Hamppe-Muzio Gambit or Fred defence (which I'm hoping is somebody's hoax, but I don't know enough to say for sure). But now that I think of WP:NOT again, there's also "Wikipedia is not a directory" which could well be taken to include the ECO lists. The concept of the list itself is article-worthy, but how is the list itself anything but the equivalent to a phone directory? Shouldn't it be left as an external link? FrozenPurpleCube 20:39, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Many of these articles need to be expanded, but I don't think they are an "indiscriminate collection of information". I wouldn't delete any of them (assuming Fred Defense is for real), but I would merge some of them. Bubba73 (talk), 21:28, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
The articles are not written for a "casual reader" (nothing exceptional - the same is true for e.g. article about ω-consistent theory). But for a chess amateur with Elo somewhere between 1400 and 1900, such article can be quite useful, if properly written, sourced and enhanced by external links. The real problem is that many of the opening articles are poorly written or stubs. But again, this is not exceptional here - many articles about movies, cities or videogames are similar.--Ioannes Pragensis 21:51, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
BTW, thanks for the link to Fred defence. I've already PRODed it.--Ioannes Pragensis 21:57, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Being a stub is one thing, but my problem is the absence of even a hint of potential beyond the content already there. Being something only a person who already has a an expertise in the subject can understand is another problem, frankly, as someone who has a minimal understanding of Chess, I look at most of these openings and am simply befuddled. May be worth looking at WP:TPA. In some subjects, like in math, it may be unavoidable at some levels, but I'm not convinced that so many expert-level articles is appropriate for Chess. At least, not on Wikipedia. WikiChess, maybe. Anyway, happy to point out the Fred defence for you, and I hope maybe this gives you something to think about. Perhaps it might be worth establishing an essay or guideline to shape these articles. I really don't think 100+ articles is appropriate. FrozenPurpleCube 22:08, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
For your information, expert level in chess starts somewhere about Elo 2100. People between 1400 and 1900 are amateurs, and according to my raw estimation, there may be about 200,000 such club-level players in English speaking countries only. So the articles are not as esoteric as you think. Real expert level writing about openings takes books and not short WP articles.--Ioannes Pragensis 22:40, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, you may be right, as Elo ratings is not a subject I know anything more than what it is. I don't profess to understand it. Certainly reading the article didn't help increase my understanding. Anyway my comments are not based on your reasoning, but my own perspective. And in that perspective, I consider most of the chess openings to require a fair degree of expertise to understand. This may not be an Elo expert, but as far as I'm concerned, to a layman in chess, such as me, they really go right past my head. Now that may be unavoidable to a certain extent, but it should certainly be recognized, and if at all possible avoided. FrozenPurpleCube 23:35, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree with I.P. These articles are far below the expert level. In fact, I would say that they are below the level of most books aimed at amateurs. Bubba73 (talk), 23:55, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
To you, yes, they may seem simple, or even below the level of books aimed at amateurs, but as a person who is if not an expert in the subject, I find them highly complicated and technical, often with only the barest whiff of relatable content (or even less than that in some cases). Obviously, it's a question of perspective here. Mine is different from yours, and if you don't even see where I'm coming from, I'm not sure how to address that. Though come to think of it, frankly 200,000 people out of 350-odd million is a pretty small number. Yes, I'm sure you could come up with a book on this subject, but that doesn't mean a shorter article on the same subject can't be written at too expert a level. FrozenPurpleCube 00:30, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
There have been many times that I have read something in an encyclopedia that I didn't understand immediately. But usually I came to understand it. A person wanting to know more about chess could read these articles and learn from them. There are quite a few chess articles on WP, and if a person doesn't understand some of the technical stuff, that is probably covered in other chess articles. See list of chess topics for a nearly-complete list. Bubba73 (talk), 14:37, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

(unindent) P.S. - about the 200,000 players - I think he is talking about players in the 1400-1900 range. These people play organized chess. There are many more than that who play chess, but not in any club, and are generally below that playing level. They could learn something from these articles too. Bubba73 (talk), 14:48, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

(responding to whole thing unindented)Yes, I know there are quite a few chess articles. That's part of my concern. A lot of them could well be redundant or excessively specific. (BTW, I think list of chess topics needs to be organized in something other than an alphabetical. I'll throw a tag on it). This isn't about immediate understanding, this is about complete befuddlement that would require extensive education on my part to understand. I don't mean I'd have to look at a few other things first. I mean hours of learning and study. When I look at many of those articles, they really do blow past my mind.
And for the numbers, you'd have to assume for each of those 200,000 players, that there was at least 5 people who could also understand/benefit from the article to reach a million. Not that I'm saying a million is a benchmark, I'm just trying to explain why your reasoning doesn't really convince me. This isn't to say there isn't a place for this information, just that I think it's at a bit too advanced a level. Yet there doesn't even seem to be a recognition on your part about that. This is like one of those scenes where the highly educated and advanced guy comes across a problem that is beyond everybody else in the room, say "Oh this is simple" and proceeds with a 20-step process that leaves everybody else still confused. FrozenPurpleCube 16:31, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I've seen your contention that you think that the material is too advanced. I recognize that you feel that way. I don't think any of the people who have made a significant contribution to the articles would agree with you. As far as the short articles about opening variations, many of them list the moves in algebraic chess notation, and that is about it. How can that be too advanced? As far as the alphabetical list, there is also list of chess openings and there are categories for endgames/endings, chess strategy and tactics, etc. Bubba73 (talk), 17:15, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
See Category:Chess for a list of chess categories. Bubba73 (talk), 17:24, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I'm sure you're right that most of the people who have made a significant contribution to the articles wouldn't agree to me. That doesn't say to me what you think it does, because to me, those people are more likely to be an expert in the situation, with a perspective that doesn't even come close to that of the man on the street. Just bringing that up as a defense tends to point to me that there's a slight disconnect in understanding the problem here. It's not those people I'm concerned about. It's the layman. And I think they would be overwhelmed. I know I am. Maybe you should look at WP:BETTER, particularly section 3. And if all an article does is list the moves in notational form, they aren't an article that even comes close to what should be on Wikipedia. In regards to list of chess topics I just think it would be more helpful if it were organized by sub-topics, or put the lists of subtopics in a clearer format. It's not a bad list, not at all. I just think it's a bit strangely structured. Take a look at WP:WIAFL. Citing the category doesn't help your case actually. An existing category is often used as a reason to delete a list. FrozenPurpleCube 17:32, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I haven't read your latest message yet, but I could say the same thing about biology. There are too many species. All of that stuff about Kingdom (biology), Phylum, Class (biology), Order (biology), Family (biology), Genus, Species, and Subspecies is too complicated and I don't understand it. So let's take it out. Bubba73 (talk), 17:55, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I agree, some of them are bit overly technical, and should be rewritten to be more easily understandable. They could certainly be improved. Would you like to tag them, or should I? FrozenPurpleCube 18:22, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I was being facetious. Bubba73 (talk), 18:27, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, I'm not. I am serious in that I find the various articles on chess openings to be of a highly technical and specialized nature. I am not sure that they are right for Wikipedia. I also agree that those articles you named could be improved, but if you're going to be dishonest with me, it'll be hard to keep up this discussion with you. You may wish to read WP:CIVIL and consider your comments in light of that. I'm going to tag some of those articles anyway, though, because I do think they could be improved, even if you don't. I thank you for bringing them to my attention. FrozenPurpleCube 18:51, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
If you don't understand them and don't want to try to, then you don't have to read them. Bubba73 (talk), 21:09, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
I have tried, and that's how I realized that most of them would require a long period of study to understand. Not a few mininutes, but a concerted effort of weeks or days. That is not a good thing. You may think of them as simple and easy, I don't, and I don't know how I can get across to you the idea of how complex I think they are. FrozenPurpleCube 00:38, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Guys, please stop this discussion. It becomes increasingly unfruitful. :-) If you have a while to spare, you can work on the main article Chess which is under review just now and needs your attention. Happy editing! --Ioannes Pragensis 21:31, 27 November 2006 (UTC)

OK, I stop. I'll sumarize my position. I agree with him that most of the Ruy Lopez articles are too short and need to be expanded or merged into the main article. I disagree that they are too technical. They are no more technical than they have to be, and are much less technical than what is in most chess books and magazines. I'm stopping now. Bubba73 (talk), 21:59, 27 November 2006 (UTC)
Well, I'm afraid I don't have much of anything to contribute to the Chess article, but I do hope I've brought the problems of a layman with some of those articles to your attention, and that you'll give it the due weight and consideration it deserves. Maybe you could seek some outside feedback on them, besides me? It might help to get some opinions, like is being done with the main article. FrozenPurpleCube 00:38, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I find the articles on chess openings in Wikipedia very nice. It is actually an unique resource on chess openings in Internet. The articles are not too technical at all, but explain idea behind the opening in detail, which is very usefull for people who want to learn about new opening. Andreas Kaufmann 20:02, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

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