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'Notable games' inclusion criteria

Am bringing this here for more input from project members.

Q from Alex Shih: "If such format is standard for chess articles, what makes them "notable" in the first place? Regards, Alex Shih (talk) 01:14, 5 April 2018 (UTC)"

My two cents:

My take is that The Rambling Man is leaching or conflating his interpretation of word "notable" in secname Notable games w/ that of WP:Notable, which it doesn't mean. I think there are multi qualities that bring games to that sec, for e.g. a game against a famous or significantly higher-rated opponent, or a key game re an important tournament & results, or a brilliantly played game that's perhaps been published in article at ChessBase.com which is an important WP:CHESS source, etc. That said I think the sechead Notable games has been traditionally used on WP as a result of least problematic word choice: Sample games suggests the bio subject is product-like, Example games begs "exemplification of what exactly?", ditto Illustrative games. All those secheads have been tried but less favored.)

Add'l backdrop:

[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] Thx. --IHTS (talk) 07:24, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
No, I am not "leaching" or "conflating" anything. We simply do not include a list of things are deemed "notable" without stating why they're notable and offering the reader some objective inclusion criteria, such as "matches against top ten players" or something similar. Otherwise it's just an editor's opinion on why the list contains what it does. I think you need to re-read the wording of the maintenance tag I added, and if you don't think that applies to chess articles, I'd like to know why. The Rambling Man (talk) 07:56, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
off topic
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
You won't be hearing from me, I'm done w/ this. --IHTS (talk) 08:49, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
"Stop personalzing things" you claim? Who wrote My take is that The Rambling Man is leaching or conflating his interpretation? Totally disgusting. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:10, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
"Leaching" as in "the bleach leached into the drinking water". (Were you thinking "leech"? Different word.) Totally objective, nothing personal. What is your problem anyway?? --IHTS (talk) 17:14, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
I thought you were "done w/ this"? Stick to your word. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:38, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Again you misinterpret. Done discussing the embedded list issue w/ you. I don't break my word, ever, A-hole. --IHTS (talk) 09:06, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
That you didn't stick to your word is self-evident. Nice personal attack, though, noted. The Rambling Man (talk) 09:10, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
I did stick to it, Mr. Full-of-Shit. --IHTS (talk) 10:23, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
I hardly think so... The Rambling Man (talk) 10:30, 12 April 2018 (UTC)

I agree WP:IINFO should apply: "data should be put in context with explanations referenced to independent sources." Lists of game links containing nothing other than unsourced assertions should be removed. I don't think we've ever defined appropriate "objective inclusion criteria", nor do I think it's necessary. WP:IINFO and WP:NOTEVERYTHING ("Information should not be included in this encyclopedia solely because it is true or useful. A Wikipedia article should not be a complete exposition of all possible details, but a summary of accepted knowledge regarding its subject. Verifiable and sourced statements should be treated with appropriate weight.") provide the standard that should be followed. Cobblet (talk) 12:53, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

I'm not a fan of these sections as they can easily get bloated - we've got better over the years at cutting them down, and this is just two which is fine. I agree they need to say what is making worthy of being picked out - a win over a much higher ranked opponent, a brilliancy prize, an innovation etc.--Pawnkingthree (talk) 13:03, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
I agree the length is not a problem here, just sourcing. Cobblet (talk) 13:08, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
It's the definition of inclusion criteria which is the problem. The Rambling Man (talk) 13:12, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Like I said, this isn't necessary if the length of the list is appropriate. The claim is that the games are notable: evidence for that claim should be provided. Cobblet (talk) 13:17, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
That's called "inclusion criteria". The Rambling Man (talk) 13:22, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
You said we had to state why the games are notable, and offer "objective inclusion criteria." I am saying that the second part is only applicable to stand-alone lists and not in situations like these. Cobblet (talk) 13:34, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Nope, see the text on the maintenance tag: This section contains embedded lists that may be poorly defined, unverified or indiscriminate. Please help to clean it up to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:06, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
I don't see how that's relevant – the tag itself is not Wikipedia policy. Do you have something constructive to add to the comments regarding GNG below? Cobblet (talk) 14:20, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
The existence and consensus for the tag tells you all you need to know. We need to understand what makes this games "notable", and to whom. Right now, there's no such criteria defined, even in the Fischer article. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:40, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
There's consensus for the tag's existence, not your interpretation of it; although I agree with your usage of it at Stefán Kristjánsson. If by "objective inclusion criteria" you meant that editorial judgment should not be exercised to make each individual selection, then I'm not aware of policy that goes that far. Even WP:LISTCRITERIA (and again, it's doubtful that this guideline was meant to apply to lists other than standalone lists) doesn't rule out subjectivity if inclusion is "based on reliable sources given with inline citations for each item." The questions it says to "ask yourself" obviously require editorial judgment. Cobblet (talk) 15:22, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
I'll just go back to a very basic point: how do readers (and editors) know what should and should not be included here? What constitutes a "notable" game? Buggered if I know, and I've been discussing this with you lot for a day now. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:52, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
If it's a fair representation of reliable sources to say that they're notable, they may be included; if it isn't, they shouldn't. Multiple guidelines warn us against exhaustively including every such game if it results in an unwieldy list (WP:CSC, WP:NOTEVERYTHING, WP:ListFormat): if we have to make a selection from these, that should also be done neutrally. Cobblet (talk) 00:05, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
But that's the point isn't it? How does anyone, especially our readers, know it's a "fair representation of reliable sources"? None of the Fischer sources say the games listed there are "notable", but they do gush with prose from one or two authors about how meaningful those games were. But that's not good enough. The Rambling Man (talk) 05:05, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
Claims like "immediately recognized as an all-time classic", "staple of endgame instructional literature", "most famous and instructive move and is still being cited today", " "made a great impression on the chess world" are not claims about "meaning"; they're claims that these games are well recognized by and hence notable to chess players in general. And when world champions like Botvinnik and Fischer himself consider certain games his best of the 1972 match or just his best game ever, those are claims worth mentioning because of the stature of the person making those claims. I have now rewritten claims that don't focus on who these games are notable to. Cobblet (talk) 18:47, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
I'll be working through chess articles in due course and tagging every one which has dubious "notable games" entries. All this "in universe" and tacit POV acceptance may have been okay in the past, but it's no longer the case. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:25, 11 April 2018 (UTC)
Maybe we should apply WP:GNG for individual games. Some games such as The Game of the Century are so famous as to merit their own article, others such as Schiffers-Harmonist are sufficiently famous that it would be difficult to imagine an article about the protagonist without including the game. Main point being that the game should be independently covered in reliable sources, rather than merely being the editorial selection of a wikipedian. MaxBrowne (talk) 13:29, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Right, a good example of this being done well is Bobby Fischer#Notable games where there is a source provided for each entry establishing notability.--Pawnkingthree (talk) 13:33, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
I'd apply GNG a little differently to games in a list like this than standalone articles on a game (e.g. I wouldn't expect any of Stefán Kristjánsson's games to have received the same amount of coverage as D. Byrne–Fischer, so the required number of sources would be fewer), but I agree the criteria are the same. Cobblet (talk) 13:41, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
That's not a great example, the second in that list offers no reasoning at all as to why it's more or less notable than any of Fischer's other games. The Rambling Man (talk) 14:08, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
That second game is the one exception; I'm thinking of removing it.--Pawnkingthree (talk) 14:16, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Gligoric-Fischer 1961 is quite an awesome game actually, one of the great tactical fights, it's included in My 60 Memorable Games and deserves to be better known. But it is somewhat "editorial" to include this game but not (say) Fischer-Tal from the 1960 Olympiad. MaxBrowne (talk) 00:50, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
The last one too. So how are notable matches selected for this section? Are they included if Saidy liked them? Or if multiple reliable sources referred to them in isolation of the other matches Fischer played? The Rambling Man (talk) 14:40, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Sorry, overlooked the lack of a reference but that was Fischer's comeback game, his first for 20 years, and generated enormous coverage. The others are all widely regarded by multiple sources as among Fischer's finest games, not just one writer's opinion.--Pawnkingthree (talk) 14:50, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Yeah, but where are the multiple reliable sources in this article? I see one or two descriptions of games being "amazeballs" or whatever, but nothing from multiple sources listing these as "among Fischer's finest games". Where are the other of his "finest games"? The Rambling Man (talk) 14:52, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
As I said above, it's best not to include too many. These are the obvious choices, spanning his career from prodigy to World Champion to his return from obscurity. I'm not sure it's necessary to list all the multiple sources; each game now has an inline citation.--Pawnkingthree (talk) 15:15, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
The claim is that these games are "notable", not that they alone indisputably represent Fischer's very finest games. We do not need multiple sources to show that the claim of notability is verifiable if the single source is of sufficiently high quality. Cobblet (talk) 15:22, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Mixed messages coming through here. And underlining, once again, why the current situation is unacceptable. No-one here can adequately define why any given game should or should not be included, and certainly no-one is telling our readers why these particular games of Fischer's should be the only ones here. Not serving our readers well at all. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:52, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Readers are well served by content that adheres to Wikipedia's core content policies. Lists that aren't standalone articles should be treated like any other content. No one is explicitly telling our readers why each and every fact in the Fischer article was chosen and why others were not chosen, why they were written up one way and not in another way, or why each image was chosen and others not chosen – there's no "objective criteria" for any of these editorial decisions other than compliance with WP:NPOV, WP:V, and WP:NOR. The embedded list of selected games shouldn't be handled differently. Cobblet (talk) 17:30, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Well you nailed it, these embedded lists fail NPOV, who decides what does and does not go in them? Why do we have a maintenance tag specifically for embedded lists? Hmmm, perhaps because embedded lists need to define how items are selected for inclusion. Right now, how does the reader know why those specific ones have been selected? I think we've got enough uncertainty, even between project members here, to acknowledge that the current status quo is not acceptable. Or we could tag all such sections with the same maintenance tag I suppose. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:24, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
Who decides what does and does not go in them? The editors, of course.
These embedded lists fail NPOV: only if they're not a fair representation of the views of reliable sources as to which of the player's games are notable.
How does the reader know why those specific ones have been selected? By consulting the reliable sources the editors should have provided that explain how these games are notable.
Why do we have a maintenance tag specifically for embedded lists? Because of the existence of MOS:EMBED, which the tag's documentation links to. That guideline says: "The content of a list is governed by the principle of due weight and other content policies", and "Consideration should be given to keeping embedded lists and tables as short as feasible for their purpose and scope: material within an embedded list should relate to the article topic without going into unnecessary detail." No mention of definitions in this or in any other content policy. Cobblet (talk) 00:05, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
Sorry, no, that's like wrong, wrong, wrong. Readers are not informed what constitutes "notable" here. You keep missing the point. There's no definition as to what "notable" means. Is it a list of games which took a long time? Is it a list of games which were played after 20 years of retirement? Is it a list of games which one writer has seen fit to declare "amazing"? Just like the so-called "good example" of the Fischer list, these kinds of embedded lists had no curation, no fair representation of the views of reliable sources, instead cherry picking a few quotes, mainly from one or two authors, and as such these embedded lists are poorly defined and need to be explained to our readers or else tagged to prevent them being misled that the lists somehow have some kind of selection criteria. The Rambling Man (talk) 05:04, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
"Notable" doesn't mean anything beyond its plain meaning: "worthy of notice." Readers don't need to be informed that a word means what it usually means. You're reading into it a meaning it doesn't normally have and one we don't intend it to have: if we did, we would've said "most notable games." You continue to labour under the illusion that all embedded lists must "somehow have some kind of selection criteria." They don't: as I highlighted above, embedded lists only have to comply with the policies that govern encyclopedic content in general. None of the core content policies demand the kind of criteria you're demanding: some sort of "objective" criteria by which NPOV can be assessed. Neutrality is not about objectivity. We're not at FLC, where comprehensiveness is a criterion for promotion, and comprehensiveness for lists whose contents may be open-ended is often easiest to assess against specific criteria. These aren't FLCs; they're not even standalone lists. Cobblet (talk) 18:47, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
Wrong. I'm not looking at FLC, I'm looking at WP:V. I will continue to tag articles which have dubious (or no) inclusion criteria for "notable X" as per the maintenance tag. I think you're entirely incorrect, and not serving an encyclopedic approach in any way, shape or form. Embedded lists to define their scope. If you don't understand that by now, we're wasting our time. Chess articles are not exempt from POV or V, so I'll just work my way through those articles which need the assistance. We're not here to serve editors, we're here to help our readers understand why certain items are somehow considered "notable". Without being able to define that or tell our readers why that's the case, we're getting it wrong. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:24, 11 April 2018 (UTC)


  • Pardon me for shortcutting discussion a little bit, but reading through this I'm not clear why this is particularly difficult. Apologies if someone has already proposed this and got shot down, but why not just: if a game has been covered by two reliable sources (not including collections/compendia of games e.g. a book of Fischer's games or a single source with every game played in a particular tournament), include it. Whether it's formatted in prose or in a list can vary from article to article. No need to have it meet GNG -- we're not creating a stand-alone list of notable games; we're creating a list of example games relevant to the subject of an article. "Notable" is often used in both informal and wikijargon ways all over the pedia; that's ok. That said, why not just "Example games" or "Sample games" or even just "Games". If the two source criteria makes for an overly long list, discussion on the talk page can determine which should be included, based on the specifics of the sourcing, just like with any other aspect of a subject. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 16:21, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
That's better than the current state. The Rambling Man (talk) 16:52, 5 April 2018 (UTC)

For Fischer, one reliable source is John Nunn. In his book "The world's greatest chess games" he included 8 wins or draws by Fischer: D. Byrne 1956, Tal 1960 (draw), R. Byrne 1963, Panno 1970, Larsen game 1, Petrosian game 7, Spassky game 6, and game 1 of the 1992 match.[6] That's pretty close to the list in the article and (in my opinion if it matters) is has no glaring omissions. Adpete (talk) 05:33, 6 April 2018 (UTC)

For what it's worth Wilhelm Steinitz seems to have it almost right, although there's still no real inclusion criteria noted. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:31, 11 April 2018 (UTC)

  • Agree w/ user Cobblet. And I'm wondering how much of the discussion stems from semantics re word "notable". (For example, the Judit Polgár article uses sechead "Illustrative games". And it has the same purpose & means the same thing as when editors use "Notable games" sechead. So do the same arguments re inclusion definition make sense?: "Why are the listed games illustrative while others are not?" "What is the scope of illustrativeness for the list?" I don't think so. Other games can be illustrative also not just the games listed. Why were they listed? The sechead itself answers that. In who's opinion? An editor of course, who applied editorial judgement.) I tend to think "Illustrative games" is slightly inferior to "Notable games" as sechead, since begs the Q "Illustrative of what?" Nevertheless the answer is also implied: Illustrative of the article subject's play. But I'm supportive of a WP:CHESS convention of using "Illustrative games" sechead instead of "Notable games" sechead, especially if doing so w/ kill potential for an inane debate occurring on same matter in future (presuming again that impetus for debate might be due to semantics surrounding a word, and that "Illustrative games" as default sechead replacing "Notable games" can mostly nullify that). p.s. There currently exist hundreds of bio articles w/ sechead "Notable games" -- a whole lot! --IHTS (talk) 10:08, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Comparing the "Notable games" in Wilhelm Steinitz with those in Bobby Fischer, our notes to the latter are larded with superlatives, whereas our notes to the former tend more towards the technical explanation of what happened in the game. I think the former are more useful to the reader. I have argued in earlier discussions in favor of the former. The counter-argument, which is not without merit, was that the public reaction to Fischer, i.e. his celebrity status, was itself notable, and it's OK to talk about it in the article. But in describing the selected games, I think the balance should fall more toward talking about the game, than toward talking about the reaction to it.
I do not think the article itself should talk about "inclusion criteria". Inclusion criteria are of interest to us, the editors, but of almost no interest to casual readers. May I suggest that an appropriate place to describe inclusion criteria for "Notable games" would be as a subsection of WP:Wikiproject Chess. Bruce leverett (talk) 13:49, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
No, readers deserve to understand why certain games are consider "notable" while others are not. And they certainly wouldn't give two hoots about this Wikiproject. The Rambling Man (talk) 13:58, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
Well, tastes differ, I suppose. When I was a kid, whenever I discovered an encyclopedia I hadn't seen before, I would look for the entries for Lasker, Capablanca, etc., hoping to see a game that I didn't already know about. I didn't much care what the "inclusion criteria" for the game were; I just wanted to play it over.
I really do not know if our project pages are the "right" place. If a reader starts getting interested in being an editor, he will soon find stuff like the Five Pillars, etc., and will learn as much as he needs to about general inclusion criteria. But if he wants to know about inclusion criteria for specific things like the "Notable Games" sections of chess biographies, whatever would lead him to our project? It's a legitimate question.
But articles themselves cannot be explicit about their own inclusion criteria. Wikipedia articles in general do not explicitly state (or restate) the rules that editors are expected to follow with creating or editing articles. "The first rule of fight club is, you do not talk about fight club." Bruce leverett (talk) 17:57, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
But articles themselves cannot be explicit about their own inclusion criteria. Wikipedia articles in general do not explicitly state (or restate) the rules that editors are expected to follow with creating or editing articles. absolutely incorrect. That's precisely why we have tags like {{famous}} and {{Cleanup list}}. The vague/dubious/POV/personal inclusion of so-called "notable" events is discouraged, it's not encyclopedic at all. This isn't Fight Club, this is an encyclopedia, remember? Keeping secrets from our readers is not constructive. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:35, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
A general note may be suitable for weaker players as their games are often notable simply due to the strength of the opponents. I cannot think of one general note that would work for top players, however, so the description of the game should serve as an explanation as to why it is included. Hrodvarsson (talk) 20:30, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
A description of the game from one individual being used as inclusion criterion would be inherently POV and therefore fall foul of NPOV. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:48, 12 April 2018 (UTC)
The description(s) would be covered in RS, along with the game itself. In any case, why did you say the Steinitz article has it "almost right"? And can you give an example of what a note about the inclusion criteria should be for top players? These sections in general should be improved but I am not sure how to go about doing what you suggest to do to improve them, as a one line note about the games does not seem to me to be feasible. If a note is required for each individual game, I think it could be explained in the description. Hrodvarsson (talk) 23:26, 14 April 2018 (UTC)
I'm still trying to figure out what you are getting at. I'll try one more time, but I will then have to quit, to avoid repeating myself.
I'm looking at the list of Notable Games in Wilhelm Steinitz. For each item, there is an explanation of why the game is notable, along with a citation of some authority, usually a well-known chess writer who included Steinitz's game in his own book. This looks quite reasonable to me, and I recall following that pattern a couple of years ago when I edited one of the games in Bobby Fischer.
But, you're saying, it's not enough. What would you like to see that isn't there? Pick a specific example. Or, if you would prefer, I'll pick one: the game with von Bardeleben. What sentence or sentences would you add to this, or how exactly would you modify it?
I'm not trying to ask a trick question. I think the list from Wilhelm Steinitz was well put together, but if you have a suggestion to improve it, let's get down to brass tacks. Bruce leverett (talk) 02:07, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
User:The Rambling Man is not a chess player, he's a wikipedian. (He's abrasive and has had a few run-ins with arbcom but never mind about that.) Attempting to paraphrase him, his concern is that selection of notable games for a player is arbitrary, at the whim of an editor, usually uncited, and that some of the games selected may not in fact be notable. In the case of weaker players especially, this is probably true. I think we should have a certain minimum standard, e.g. publication in a chess book by a reputed author, publication in a reputed journal such as Chess Informant or New In Chess, publication in a reputed newspaper column (e.g. Kavalek, Barden, Short), Best Game or Brilliancy prize etc, and that such a source should be provided with any game selected. In the case of elite players like Fischer, I'm not so fussed about why "Game A, Game B and Game C" were selected and not "Game X, Game Y and Game Z". Such lists can only ever be subjective as far as what they include or exclude, but any game that is included should be able to be justified. MaxBrowne (talk) 03:19, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
You actually know absolutely nothing about me Browne, so desist from claiming you do so. And if it's "never mind about that", why bring it up in the first place? Truly pathetic. The Rambling Man (talk) 08:51, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
What about criteria for inclusion in notable games lists? Do you agree/disagree? MaxBrowne (talk) 09:07, 13 April 2018 (UTC)
I'm happy if some kind of objective approach is taken and that our readers understand what that is, not for some personal "favourite games" thing to be there. The Rambling Man (talk)
Wikipedia is about neutrality, not objectivity. Personal biases related to all forms of content are eliminated by building consensus for a neutral representation of reliable sources. Embedded lists are just one way of presenting content and are not an exception to the rule. The establishment of arbitrary criteria is irrelevant as it is just as prone to bias if it is not done through consensus-building. Cobblet (talk) 18:59, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
No-one said anything about the establishment of arbitrary criteria, just that lists, embedded or otherwise, of "notable" items need to define what makes them notable. It's pretty obvious to anyone that you can't and shouldn't apply an "arbitrary" set of criteria here as that can't work across the spectrum of chess players, but nevertheless there's absolutely no reason why our readers should be left wondering why certain Wikipedia editors believe some games to be somehow "notable". No good reason at all. So time to shift your thinking on this one. After all, and as I mentioned a few times, this scenario is precisely why we have maintenance tags to note such issues. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:59, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
Of course readers should be informed as to what makes these games notable to the chess world as a whole. My point has always been that that kind of notability can be demonstrated using reliable sources. You seem to want something more than that. Whatever that thing may be, my impression up until now is that it comes from you alone and isn't supported by any policy, which makes it seem arbitrary to me. Unless you drop your perpetual self-righteousness and explain your concerns more clearly, I'm not going to engage you further. Building a consensus isn't about shifting people's views, but incorporating their concerns; and I can't figure out what it is you're concerned about that can't be fixed through the use of reliable sources and consensus-building discussion. Cobblet (talk) 21:56, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
Then you simply don't understand the problem. We fixed the original problem weeks and weeks ago, with a very suitable solution, perhaps you should familiarise yourself with that as a good example of how to address the nebulous "notable" issue for our readers. In the meantime, take your personal attacks and go away. The Rambling Man (talk) 21:59, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
I certainly don't share your understanding of the problem. The "solution" at Stefán Kristjánsson demonstrates exactly what I mean by arbitrariness: it's not clear to anyone why only games against players rated 2600 at the time can be notable. The criterion that was chosen is no more arbitrary than the selection of the games itself: adding the criterion accomplishes nothing. The problem I would originally have had with the selection was that there were no sources referring to these games as notable: that problem was solved when those were provided. I will refrain from commenting on what you should do if you refrain from commenting on what I should do. Cobblet (talk) 22:47, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
It makes it 100% clear as to why those games are there. And what you must do, not should do, is refrain from making personal attacks. So when you're ready to discuss this without doing such, I may continue, but until then, you may have the final word as this is not achieving anything other than giving you a platform to attack me. And I'm not prepared to tolerate that. The Rambling Man (talk) 22:50, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
I'm glad that criterion made it clear for you. We'll just ignore the readers who might wonder why only wins against 2600+ players were given, or why only these examples were chosen when Kristjansson also defeated other players over 2600. They'll just have to shift their thinking too. Cobblet (talk) 23:14, 19 April 2018 (UTC)
The note makes it clear why those games are included but I did not originally include those games for the reason of simply being victories over 2600+ opponents. (He defeated Tomasz Markowski in 2004 but I judged that game, and others, as less notable than the Sokolov and Wojtaszek games.) I possibly should have given a more detailed description of the games as to explain why I chose them, but that would have been my own commentary of GM play. I also planned to include more games later, but I did not get around to doing so. I now think this type of selection is troublesome as someone could have added a game that I did not think was notable or vice versa, and there would have no basis for either supporting or opposing inclusion other than personal preference. I believe the fact that both of the games I included were highlighted in RS vindicates my judgement, but this easily could not have been the case. (The Wojtaszek game had been mentioned but was not highlighted until a couple weeks after I included it in the article, so that could be a case of citogenesis, or Helgi Ólafsson reviewed Stefán's games independently and happened to select the same game I selected.) Hrodvarsson (talk) 23:57, 16 May 2018 (UTC)

This is going to be lengthy, so I am shifting things back to the left margin.

Since the initial flap over Stefán Kristjánsson, The Rambling Man has applied his tag to several Wiki chess biographies: Howard Staunton, Adolf Anderssen, Emmanuel Lasker, Alexander Alekhine, and Magnus Carlsen. So I decided to visit these to see what the fuss was about.

The one I liked best was Emmanuel Lasker. There are seven games in the Notable Games section. I recognized four of them from just the names and the date. Of the others, I recognized two of them after I had started to play them over. Only in the case of Steinitz-Lasker 1899 am I really unsure that I have already seen the game.

Bear in mind that I am not a Lasker historian, or a chess historian of any kind except to the extent that I have been editing chess Wiki for a couple of years. The reason I am familiar with these games is because chess has a "canon", and they are part of it. Every one who has studied chess has been exposed to this canon. Also bear in mind that when I was exposed to these games, decades ago, it was already several decades since Lasker had died, but it was still decades in the future before there was Wikipedia, or even before there was an Internet. There is no other explanation for my familiarity with these games, than that they are part of the "canon". Note that the canon is much larger than the contents of List of chess games.

It is perfectly natural to call the games section of Lasker's article "Notable games", given that the games are part of the canon. Conversely, the fact that a game is in the canon, seems like a perfectly normal and natural reason for including it in a "Notable games" section. How do we know what's in the canon? The usual Wiki definition of "Notable" is just fine for this. In Lasker's article, every game comes with a citation of some source, usually a textbook or a game collection or something. What's not to like? Well, OK, the caption for one of the games is not too helpful. That is Steinitz-Lasker 1899: "The old champion and the new one really go for it." But other than that, everything seems in order.

When I went to the articles about Staunton and Anderssen, things were not so nice. Neither article has a single reference to a source regarding any game in its Notable Games section. I surely cannot fault The Rambling Man for placing his tag there, although I would think some less esoteric tag such as "citation needed" would have been adequate.

I haven't gotten to Alekhine yet. I went to Magnus Carlssen, and I soon realized that it had its own problems. Two of the captions are not sourced, and all of the remaining four have sources that are news articles. While an article may be an adequate source for the claim that Carlsen beat Topalov, it is not an adequate source for the claim that the game was notable. As long as Carlsen is World Champion or anything close to it, all his games will be in the chess news. There have to be higher criteria for promotion to Wiki.

There are several reasons why it is problematic to define notability for games by players like Carlsen; and these apply not only to him, but to players who are still active in international chess, such as Anand and Kramnik, as well as those only recently retired, such as Kasparov. The spotlight shining on Carlsen makes all his games look noteworthy now, but most of them will eventually be largely forgotten, the same as with past World Champions such as Lasker. Moreover, for recent players, the textbooks and game collections that we ordinarily rely on for the judgement of notability haven't been written yet.

The caption to the first game in the list is, "At the age of just 13 years, Carlsen had serious winning chances in a rapid game against Garry Kasparov, who was ranked No. 1 in the world at that time." This doesn't even tempt me to play over the game, let alone persuade me that it is notable. The caption to the second game is, "This was Carlsen's first win against a 2800+ player." So, it may have been personal milestone for him, but that criterion means next to nothing for me. The other four captions are plausible, but I can reach out to the Web any month and find Carlsen games that have more to interest me than these.

So, I'm unhappy about the general condition of the Notable Games list in Carlsen's article, and I am not sure I have helpful constructive suggestions for making things better. I think we just have to be exceedingly careful about building Notable Games lists for modern players.

By the way, I think that a "Notable Games" section is optional in a chess biography, even of an undoubtedly great player. Milan Vidmar, which I have recently worked on, doesn't have one, and I couldn't think of any really obvious choice, although his win with the Budapest Gambit against Rubinstein is good for a laugh. Perhaps the Slovenian chess canon has some choice games by Vidmar, but I don't know them.

This brings us around to where the discussion started, which was with Stefán Kristjánsson. After some initial dialogue, Hrodvarsson made a valiant attempt to improve that article's Notable Games list by, among other things, digging up news articles (by a chess grandmaster) about the games. Besides being "only" news articles, these are in Icelandic, which means that although they might be adequate for Icelandic Wiki, they are even less helpful for demonstrating notability for English Wiki.

Nevertheless, I would be happy to defer to the judgement of Hrodvarsson on this matter, because he is a competent editor who probably knows a good deal more about Stefán Kristjánsson than I do. But what happened next was a weird twist. Editor Ritchie333 drove by and changed the title of the section from "Notable Games" to "Games", with the comment, "simplified". I can't help but think that this was kind of like a joke or a prank. Although I have complained about how problematic it is to designate notable games by modern players, I don't think the solution involves some players' articles having "Notable Games" while other players just have "Games". So I would encourage Hrodvarsson to either restore the article to having "Notable Games", or to set it to having no games. Bruce leverett (talk) 03:28, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

You're right. You killed the debate. The Rambling Man (talk) 18:26, 25 April 2018 (UTC)

Post-discussion

There's no close, is there a consensus? Again, if secheads were Illustrative games or Sample games instead of Notable games, would the tagging/removal argument "What makes these games illustrative?" or "What makes these games samples?" exist?

BTW, [7] [8] [9] [10] FYI, --IHTS (talk) 07:36, 15 May 2018 (UTC)

Now he's telling us we're not allowed to link to chessgames.com. I think there is a good case for WP:IAR here, linking directly to an interactive board enhances the encyclopedia. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 00:31, 16 May 2018 (UTC) I have raised this at WP:ELN. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 06:52, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
Editors have raised questions about chessgames.com links going back some years. I think there are valid concerns, even though I think the links should be kept because they are beneficial to the encyclopedia. Some questions include: Is it kosher to link to a commercial website, especially to the degree that we do in chess articles? If we link one commercial chess site (chessgames.com), why not include links to some other popular chess websites that also feature game scores or opening variations? If we do link other sites as well as chessgames.com, why do we not link every chess site? (I think this would not work because of the large number of chess sites, but that suggests we need some criteria for deciding which sites to use.) I think there are some reasonable arguments for handling this the way we do, but I don't think they've been discussed or stated in any depth. Quale (talk) 03:26, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
Chessgames is the best established and most convenient site for direct linking to games. There are others like 365chess, chesstempo, redhotpawn etc but chessgames covers all the important games, has an easy intuitive interface and does not require registration. If you google a famous game, e.g. "Reti Capablanca 1924", the first hit will almost certainly be for chessgames. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 13:09, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
I think those are good points. Quale (talk) 01:59, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
I would also like to mention that I have had a positive experience with correcting an error in a chessgames.com score. They got the name of my opponent wrong (confused Edward Friedman with Aviv Friedman). I sent in the correction and it was promptly made. The fact that it is actively edited and corrected is not to be taken for granted. I have found the game in chess.com and in 365chess.com using the wrong name, but there was no obvious way to submit a correction, and I figured they were probably just copied from chessgames.com anyhow.
I also found some spectacular errors in 365chess.com when I looked up "1985 Midwest Masters". It listed Mark Ginsburg instead of Jeffrey Ginsburg, Joan Tomas Batet (an A-player from Spain) instead of Jon Tomas, and Joe Gallagher instead of James Gallagher. It seems to have all of the game scores, which is good, but how did they manage to screw up the names while copying them in from the tournament book, which I assume is what they did? Bruce leverett (talk) 06:33, 22 May 2018 (UTC)

Matthias Blübaum‎

Matthias Blübaum‎, an article that you or your project may be interested in, has been nominated for a community good article reassessment. If you are interested in the discussion, please participate by adding your comments to the reassessment page. If concerns are not addressed during the review period, the good article status may be removed from the article. AIRcorn (talk) 10:38, 24 May 2018 (UTC)

Full article for game analysis??

Hello fellows,

Are we allowed to create a full article dedicated to important/notable chess games with complete analysis? I notice we have The Game of the Century (chess). Wikipedia could become a database of analyzed games for the chess masses :). Thank you IQ125 (talk) 14:23, 28 May 2018 (UTC)

That's not the only game we have. But most games will fail WP:GNG, and great care has to be taken in writing such articles in a way that complies with WP:V and WP:NPOV. Cobblet (talk) 01:57, 29 May 2018 (UTC)
I'll add WP:NOR to the things to be wary of in articles on individual games. It's not acceptable to plug an engine in and write your notes based on that, for example. Safest way is probably to use a reputable published source (e.g. Burgess, World's Greatest Chess Games) and summarize/paraphrase the notes. Can quote the notes up to a point but too much of that would be COPYVIO. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 05:33, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Definitely looks like it is okay then to me. Just ensure that there are notable third-party citations. Most famous games have been analyzed to death. I am surprised there are not more of them in Wikipedia. I have now found Category:Chess games. IQ125 (talk) 12:12, 29 May 2018 (UTC)

Don't know if we should really encourage creating more such articles. There are only a very few games that pass WP:GNG in that they are part of chess canon, and we have articles for most of these and a few more besides. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 03:21, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
I think IQ should look to Wikibooks:Chess/Famous Games for that kind of project because Wikipedia policies don't really encourage or even allow that here. I think sourcing requirements are more lax at Wikibooks, and the Wikipedia prohibition against original research should be less of an impediment. It would probably even be OK to stuff a Wikibooks page with unpublished analysis from your favorite engine, and Wikipedia policies strictly prohibit that here. Quale (talk) 04:31, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

WikiProject collaboration notice from the Portals WikiProject

The reason I am contacting you is because there are one or more portals that fall under this subject, and the Portals WikiProject is currently undertaking a major drive to automate portals that may affect them.

Portals are being redesigned.

The new design features are being applied to existing portals.

At present, we are gearing up for a maintenance pass of portals in which the introduction section will be upgraded to no longer need a subpage. In place of static copied and pasted excerpts will be self-updating excerpts displayed through selective transclusion, using the template {{Transclude lead excerpt}}.

The discussion about this can be found here.

Maintainers of specific portals are encouraged to sign up as project members here, noting the portals they maintain, so that those portals are skipped by the maintenance pass. Currently, we are interested in upgrading neglected and abandoned portals. There will be opportunity for maintained portals to opt-in later, or the portal maintainers can handle upgrading (the portals they maintain) personally at any time.

Background

On April 8th, 2018, an RfC ("Request for comment") proposal was made to eliminate all portals and the portal namespace. On April 17th, the Portals WikiProject was rebooted to handle the revitalization of the portal system. On May 12th, the RfC was closed with the result to keep portals, by a margin of about 2 to 1 in favor of keeping portals.

There's an article in the current edition of the Signpost interviewing project members about the RfC and the Portals WikiProject.

Since the reboot, the Portals WikiProject has been busy building tools and components to upgrade portals.

So far, 84 editors have joined.

If you would like to keep abreast of what is happening with portals, see the newsletter archive.

If you have any questions about what is happening with portals or the Portals WikiProject, please post them on the WikiProject's talk page.

Thank you.    — The Transhumanist   07:28, 30 May 2018 (UTC)

Personally mentored by Bobby Fischer

According to Wikipedia, Adam Robinson (author) "studied the game with Bobby Fischer". The blog article offered as evidence for this claim says "As a teenager, he was personally mentored by Bobby Fischer in the 18 months leading up to his winning the world championship." I'm skeptical that Fischer was mentoring a high school student any time around 1970 to 1972. Any thoughts? Quale (talk) 23:20, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

We can at least verify that he's a rated USCF Master though not a strong one - he is stuck on the 2200 rating floor. What I haven't been able to verify is the claim that he was taught by Bobby Fischer - I've only found that in promotional material. Problem is if we say "he claims to have studied the game with Bobby Fischer" we're introducing expressions of doubt, which isn't NPOV either, per WP:WTW. So maybe just remove it. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 00:51, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
We should just remove it. Per WP:BLP, any statement challenged must be accompanied by an inline citation, which is not the case here. It's probably going to be impossible to confirm independently.--Pawnkingthree (talk) 13:54, 1 June 2018 (UTC)
I'm actually not sure the article belongs in Category:American chess players. Those categories are intended for people who are notable as chess players, which is to say people who could meet WP:GNG requirements for an article on the basis of their accomplishments in chess. People notable for other things can be put in Category:Amateur chess players. Quale (talk) 02:12, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
Any chess player growing up in New York in the late 60s/early 70s probably met Bobby Fischer a few times and might have got some tips from him. This is the kind of thing that people tend to blow out of proportion in promotional material. Could go either way on the category, no strong opinion. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 06:02, 2 June 2018 (UTC)

Notable Games

Participants may be interested in Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sports#RFC on the use of notable games sections AIRcorn (talk) 08:06, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

This is just a transparent attempt to forum shop to try to get the outcome you want because you couldn't get it here. You probably think your chances are better there because most of WP:SPORTS participants know nothing about chess and may even have distaste for it, and I suspect this is true. I have no interest in what WP:SPORTS thinks about chess or Notable games sections; the editors who understand chess are here. Quale (talk) 03:04, 26 May 2018 (UTC)
Nope. Notable game sections are not just confined to chess. You are welcome to participate or can stay behind your wall here. Either way I will follow consensus of the project (the wikiproject, not this corner) AIRcorn (talk) 11:35, 2 June 2018 (UTC)
I've already responded there, and at least a couple editors clearly aren't involved w/ WP:CHESS articles. Square peg in round hole -- frustratring due to misconceptions short-circuiting communications. A bad idea. I won't be responding there further (or ever again, to any WP:CHESS matter brought to a non-involved forum). Good luck. --IHTS (talk) 07:49, 3 June 2018 (UTC)

American Chess Masters template

Even though it's 3.5 years old, somehow the {{American Chess Masters}} template had escaped my notice. Probably because they have the good taste to collapse it when used and because I try to pretend that most of these kinds of template box things don't exist. But there are at least two things I don't like about it.

Category:American chess players is fairly large, containing over 300 pages. Mercifully the chess masters template doesn't include all of them, but I don't understand what criteria are used for choosing which players to include. The template includes many rather obscure players, but it omits Isaac Kashdan, Jackson Showalter, Harry Nelson Pillsbury. Edward Lasker, etc., which is an outrage. Yes, I know WP:SOFIXIT, but those four are not the only players who are inexplicably absent and wrangling over the players to include doesn't seem to be a good use of time or energy especially when I wish the template would just disappear.

But the real aggravation is that this template essentially breaks What links here for every article it links. Every one of those pages links every other one, so Paul Morphy links Jeffery Xiong. That's just really damned annoying. Quale (talk) 05:52, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

The template has a talk page, and the first thing on the talk page is you, noting that you have opened a discussion here at WT:CHESS. I don't have time to search the WT:CHESS archives right now, but when I have some time, I will check out what you said 3 years ago. Bruce leverett (talk) 21:03, 21 June 2018 (UTC)
I do not know how to construct a pointer to that old discussion, but the archive that it is in is currently number 30, in case anyone would like to look for it. The template was created by User:Philodemos, and his defense of his creation was:
I created the template relatively recently, so I might have omitted some players unintentionally. The reason why I did create it was that I found it difficult to navigate between articles about US players; for instance, Category:American chess players lists them alphabetically, so the top players are blended with other, less notable ones.
The objections you have raised are serious. Could one fix the What links here problem by making it just a list article, rather than a template? But even if you could, it would not be very useful.
It is commendable that the creator wanted to learn and teach about the history of chess in the U.S., but his idea of assembling a list of U.S. chess masters for people to just wallow in seems rather random. Bruce leverett (talk) 03:15, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
A link to the previous discussion is here. The creator doesn't seem to be active anymore. Quale if you just wish to disappear you could nominate it for deletion as there seems to be no valid section criteria or useful purpose for it.--Pawnkingthree (talk) 15:17, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
Chess and master should not be capitalized even if template is kept. But it seems too broad. An American/United States GMs template may be useful to go along with others such as {{SwissGMs}}, {{Norwegian GMs}}, {{Icelandic GMs}}, if anyone is interested in creating such a template. Hrodvarsson (talk) 22:34, 23 June 2018 (UTC)
These templates likewise break "What links here"; for example, if you go to Magnus Carlsen and then click "What links here", you get well over 500 links, including Jonathan Tisdall, because Tisdall is a Norwegian GM.
This seems like a general problem with this use of templates. At least these templates have clear inclusion criteria. Bruce leverett (talk) 04:03, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
You may be interested in User:PrimeHunter/Source links.js which searches links not made by templates. On Jeffery Xiong it produces Source links. PrimeHunter (talk) 10:36, 24 June 2018 (UTC)

Two bishops checkmate

Are you guys interested in improving on my draft article User:Qwertyxp2000/Two bishops checkmate? I am sure there is significant coverage we can utilize throughout the history of chess that would make the article possible to add to the list of well-deserved Wikipedia articles. We already have one for Bishop and knight checkmate and Two knights endgame, which both have significant coverage in these special endgames, but none currently for two bishops checkmate. Qwertyxp2000 (talk | contribs) 23:15, 21 June 2018 (UTC)

Sounds like a plan, there's material in the article Checkmate that you could use. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 02:53, 22 June 2018 (UTC)
Feel free to add content to my draft; in fact, I would appreciate any input to editing my draft. Qwertyxp2000 (talk | contribs) 09:09, 24 June 2018 (UTC)
 Done. --IHTS (talk) 11:28, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

He's back

The game name is Capablanca Chess not "Capablanca chess" (just like game names are Fischer Random Chess (FRC) not "Fischer Random chess", Grand Chess not "Grand chess", Alice Chess not "Alice chess", and so on).

User SMcCandlish is back, to destroy all that, at Talk:Capablanca Chess#Requested move 27 June 2018.

Help!? There was none from WP:CHESS members at RfC WP:GAMECAPS. Where do you draw the line? --IHTS (talk) 11:27, 27 June 2018 (UTC)

Not sure I get this. Are some variants "chess" and some "Chess", depending on whatever the majority of writers happen to use? MaxBrowne2 (talk) 01:56, 28 June 2018 (UTC)
Not sure how to answer, in general preponderance of RSs rule; many times there aren't many. There are other game names of this type (e.g., Chinese Checkers not "Chinese checkers"). For Capa Chess see arguments @ Talk:Capablanca Chess#Requested move 27 June 2018. For modern games the inventor often informs what is the game name (e.g. Grand Chess, Parallel Worlds Chess, Wildebeest Chess, Hostage Chess, Millennium 3D Chess, etc.). There are probably few conflicts between an inventor's game name & how RSs represent, but lots of conflicts between RSs & representation on WP. (At some point a precedent to lowercase game name second qualifiers defaulted, & inertia since then. It's frustrating, e.g. the rename of Double Chess [11].) --IHTS (talk) 17:36, 1 July 2018 (UTC)

Notability requirement re CVs and long-standing WP:CHESS (Andreas Kaufmann) precedent

A long-standing WP:CHESS precedent re variant articles' WP:Notability is being tested in an AfD for Three-check chess. Please see my comment here. Please consider providing input. Thx. --IHTS (talk) 06:19, 20 July 2018 (UTC)

Style issue in chess articles

Please see Wikipedia:Help desk#Proper style in writing Chess articles to help resolve the matter. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 19:22, 31 July 2018 (UTC)

Shatra

I've left some comments at Draft:Shatra (game), but would appreciate more input from chess experts. Please take a look. -- RoySmith (talk) 17:46, 28 July 2018 (UTC)

It appears from your comments that you were concerned about notability.
This may be a long shot, but if Shatra is a sufficiently popular "regional variant", perhaps you could find some Russian-language or Altai-language sources. Bruce leverett (talk) 00:51, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
Here's an interesting bit of background: [12] Bruce leverett (talk) 14:57, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
There's probably enough info and sources out there to justify an article. I'd be interested to know its history; is it a purely invented game, or is it a traditional game in the Altai region? What is known about its origins? MaxBrowne2 (talk) 07:25, 1 August 2018 (UTC)

is there interest?

hi all.

so we wrote in hewiki a set of scribuntu modules, to assist hewiki chess community.

basically, the idea is that more often than not, when dealing with games, the "raw material" is the game's PGN. the tools are meant to allow using the pgn directly to display the boards, instead of having to manually generate multiple copies of the hideous {{Chess diagram}} for different positions in the game. the outline is something like so: 

{{Chess diagrams from pgn
 | 12l = some comment
 | 17d = another comment
 | 21l = final comment
 | pgn = <here comes the PGN of the game>
}}

the actual template name can be different, of course - this is just the outline. you can see an example in he:משתמש:קיפודנחש/ארגח 6 (look in page source - it is not exactly as described here, but it can be made this way for enwiki. also note that in hebrew, the rightmost board is the earliest - naturally, in enwiki it will be the leftmost).

note that wikidata started hosting chess games, so the outline above can use an alternate syntax: instead of the pgn= parameter, the editor can supply the wikibase item#, like so: wb_item = <wikibase item#>

also note that when the editor wants to display a list of consecutive positions (maybe useful for openings?), a shorter syntax is available: 

{{Chess diagrams from pgn
 | from = 17l 
 | to = 20d
 | comments = { comment for 17l } { c for 17d } { c for 18l } { c for 18d } { c for 19l } { c for 19d } { c for 20l } { c for 20d }
 | pgn = <here comes the PGN of the game>
}}

the question is this: does the chess community in enwiki think this is something it might be interested in? if so, i can import the modules here, and we can build the precise template to spec together (i.e. incorporating feedback).

peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 23:37, 19 July 2018 (UTC)

i guess lack of any response means the enwiki chess community does not see this as something useful.
TBH, i find it somewhat surprising, since this toolset practically eliminates (at least, greatly minimizes) the "dark art", and more important, the drudgery, of displaying a chess game with several positions. oh well....
peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 18:25, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
Sorry for the lack of response. This is something that would be useful. I could give feedback if required. Hrodvarsson (talk) 21:46, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
@Hrodvarsson: - feedback will be appreciated. i can import the modules to enwiki if it will help. i did not do so (yet), because if there's no interest, i thought this would pollute the "module" namespace unnecessarily, but this is a very minor concern, so if it will help evaluation, i'll do it happily. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 22:26, 31 July 2018 (UTC)
I think it will help. Do so whenever you are ready. Thanks. Hrodvarsson (talk) 21:35, 1 August 2018 (UTC)
@Hrodvarsson: (and everyone else): please review (and feel free to edit and experiment) Template:Chess from pgn/doc as a demo of using {{Chess from pgn}}. everything is in flux and can be changed (or thrown away if deemed not useful). will appreciate feedback. for now, the template contains a "safety" that prevents its usage in article space, until it's "accepted" by community. peace - קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 01:57, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
It is working perfectly. I see no reason why this would not be accepted as a useful template. Hrodvarsson (talk) 21:59, 4 August 2018 (UTC)

Portal update

Although I was not part of the project, I did some updates on the Portal:Chess page. Please comment on the talk pages below:

Portal talk:Chess#Portal update

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals#Trasclude wikitable

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Portals/Tasks#d-batch request: Portal:Chess subpages

Thanks!Guilherme Burn (talk) 18:25, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

I've removed the link to Portal:Chess/Selected article list in Template:WikiProject Chess as part of this. ~ Amory (u • t • c) 00:51, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

Regarding the notability of chess variants

Recently Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Three-check chess was closed as a redirect to list of chess variants. The article (la`st version) was considered by the discussion not to pass the GNG, as the only "independent" source was The Classified Encyclopedia of Chess Variants by D.B. Pritchard.

A lot of the independent articles about chess variant are fundamentally similar - the meat of the article, the rules, are supported solely by a reference to Pritchard's writing (one or more of The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants, Popular Chess Variants, or The Classified Encyclopedia of Chess Variants). There are also sometimes discussions of internet chess servers that play it and occasionally an example game which is derived by an editor from the rules. Fundamentally, these articles hang on Pritchard for their existence. Entries in The Chess Variant Pages [13] can also be found for almost all variants, and for many an applet from [14] are in the external links

If a Pritchard reference is insufficient on to prove notability, a lot of chess variant articles are on very thin ice (e.g. Flying chess, Apocalypse (chess variant), Balbo's Game, Beirut Chess, Chad (chess variant)). Rather than discussions on every talk page, it would be useful to have one overarching discussion on what constitutes a chess variant worthy of an independent article, and which should be listed at List of chess variants (and which should be omitted altogether). It may also be useful to discuss where information which could be useful for demonstrating chess variant notability could be found. --LukeSurl t c 16:22, 30 July 2018 (UTC)

If it is any help, I found this website: http://www.mayhematics.com/s/index.htm, which has the effects of the British Chess Variants Society, which was active for a number of years, and Pritchard was associated with it, but it has been shut down for some time.
I agree that many of the articles, and even many of the entries in list of chess variants, are on very thin ice. Bruce leverett (talk) 20:24, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
AfDs for the mentioned articles would likely have the same outcome as the AfD for three-check chess. What should or should not be included on list of chess variants is a discussion for that article's talk page. Hrodvarsson (talk) 23:35, 30 July 2018 (UTC)
It's worth restating that probably most articles about chess variants would fall if subjected to the standards of that AfD discussion. I'm not inclined myself to cut a huge scythe through this collection of pages, but I'll give some attention to some of the articles which have the most extreme length-of-article to abundance-of-sources balance. --LukeSurl t c 11:24, 3 August 2018 (UTC)
  • This is a gray area topic. But my view would be to regard an entry in Pritchard as provisionally sufficient. By that I mean - we don't need to try to get all the 1000 chess variants in Pritchard included in Wikipedia. But if a variant is already included, I don't think we need to delete it either, and adding new variant from it would be discussed on a case by case basis. The same would apply for deleting a variant already included. That the only notable source is Pritchards in my view is not sufficient to delete, it needs a deletion discussion on a case by case basis. This is based on the criterion used for inclusion given in the introduction to Pritchard's book:

David’s basic criterion in 1994, a few light-hearted entries apart, was that a game must have been published in some form, or at least have been played by a significant number of people outside the inventor’s circle of family and friends. The advent of the Internet has meant that ‘publication’ can now be achieved by making a few strokes on a computer keyboard and posting the result on a web site, so the first condition is no longer a constraint, and for this edition David felt obliged to be rather more selective. ...In the new edition, therefore, David added or intended to add a game only if there was evidence that significant numbers of people were playing it, or if it appeared to offer something genuinely new rather than mere complication or superficial novelty.

So, a cite to this source means we have a WP:RS saying that the game either had significant numbers of people playing it, or offered something genuinely new, not just superficial.
The problem is that most of the materials on old games are hard copy and not digitized or searchable. They are in old magazines about board games, that have probably not been digitized and uploaded onto the internet for Google to find. The only way to find a mention of a game is to read through all the editions of games magazines published around the time that it was in frequent use. I was sent to this discussion by @LukeSurl: after a discussion on Talk:Duell (chess). So, we can use that as an example.
The Pritchard entry on this variation is sourced to Spielbox - a German magazine about board games and just says (Spielbox, January 1985). So it was notable enough to be discussed in a German board game magazine, but we have no idea what this magazine said about it, unless someone can find a past copy from January 1985. We also know that it was notable enough to be published under different names in the US as "Duell", by Lakeland Industries, in the UK as "Conquest" and as "The George v Mildred Dice Game" by Denys Fisher, and in Germany as "Tactix". This suggests it got a fair bit of interest at the time to be internationally published under three different names, and the UK company . In this case both Pritchard's criteria are met - Duell is based on a novel idea I've never seen before in any other game, and significant numbers of people were playing it.
Of course those are his criteria not ours. But because it is not an academic subject, and because even if notable at the time it was written about in magazines that we can't get access to easily - and even if we do - have a hard time trying to find it - then I think these may be useful additional criteria for notability.
As @Colonel Warden: put it in an earlier discussion on a proposed notability guideline for toys and games:

"The problem is that our processes such as AFD are currently dominated by Google which has a strong systemic bias against the sources which cover this field as it only seems to cover academic periodicals. For example, the journal Games & Puzzles was quite prominent in the UK in the 70s and 80s but you will find little trace of it on the net. The result is then a bias in favour of recent material such as computer games and games which get coverage in book form such as chess. Editors such as myself, who have good collections of older periodicals, are overtaxed because such paper sources cannot practically be searched quickly. "

So - Wikipedia already has a systemic bias in favour of modern games, published since the internet. If there is nothing to support it, then, after giving the author time to try to find sources, it has to be deleted, but preferrably as a redirect in case someone finds good sources for it later on and tries to recreate it. But if it is in Pritchard - I'd argue in favour of Keep, myself. If it is also internationally published, or is significantly novel, or both - then I think that is a good proxy that suggests that there is a fair bit written about it if we could find it.
What I think we should not do is to delete them. There's an interesting remark by @DGG: in this deletion discussion: "redirect as the practical solution for all of them. Preserve the history, in case anyone does actually find sources. Experience shows that doing so for these articles is possible, but slow and difficult, and so far few people here have the determination and patience."
If the decision is made to remove one of these articles - then I think we should redirect rather than delete. It is not like the case where someone adds an article which is a bio of their mother. In this case the chance is high that there is enough evidence to prove notability if someone is willing to go to a library and read through dozens of pages of magazines trying to find information about it. When a fair bit of work has been put into an article, I think it needs to be available in the history of a redirect in case someone is willing to put in the work to check that it is notable.
But if it is in Pritchard, I'd just keep it for now. Add a tag to the article {{Notability}}. That helps alert the reader that it needs more sources to establish notability without deleting it, and I think adequately describes the situation. Seems notable, has one source, needs more. But we don't need to be in a huge hurry to get more given the practical difficulty of finding them. These articles have been here for many years. Give it a year or two for someone to find them and add extra sources - so far they haven't had any template to ask them to do this. And - I don't think it does any harm to just leave them in, as gray area articles - suitably marked as such. So - that is my personal view on this matter for consideration. Thanks! Robert Walker (talk) 20:15, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
An example of a game that had "significant numbers of people playing it", but that I am uncomfortable seeing even in list of chess variants, is the game "Weak!", described thus:
Weak!:[13] White has the usual pieces, Black has one king, seven knights, and sixteen pawns. This game was played at a Columbia University chess club in the 1960s.
If this game was ever played after its heyday in the 1960's, Bodlaender doesn't mention it. What need is there for a reference to this game in Wikipedia? Who would ever look it up here? The game might reasonably have died after the Columbia students had graduated, except that Ralph Betza reported his reminiscence of it to Pritchard. It is all too easy to invent variants of chess, and there may well be other college chess clubs (or other chess clubs) that have invented their own, but mercifully most of them have been forgotten. Bruce leverett (talk) 21:19, 6 August 2018 (UTC)
To me chess variants are essentially the games equivalent of conlangs. It was felt necessary to write the WP:CONLANG guideline to deal with those. Quale (talk) 00:44, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
Well I agree that Weak! seems a much less significant game than Duell, at least on first impression from your description and reading the Prichard entry. One of numerous games with different starting arrays, invented by a chess club. He says "Best played at speed, Weak! has been endorsed by dozens of tournament players. ". That's a bit different from a game sold internationally in at least three different countries under different names, and with an artice about it in a German board games magazine. And as you say it is one of numerous games you can invent just by changing starting arrangements, while Duell is a very innovative concept. Also, anyone keen on those can read the book itself to find many more. He has three or four dozen of those in the book. I think it is a case by case basis. I wouldn't object to just removing "Weak!" from the list of chess variants. I should say though - I'm interested in games generally - I'm not especially a chess player, not actually any good at the game :). I would feel copmetent to vote in an RfC on whether to merge away Duell, I'd vote to keep it separate for now, just add {{Notability}}. As for Weak! I'd certainly not object to its removal completely from the list of chess variants page, but I'd probably abstain on the basis that I don't know enough about chess :). Robert Walker (talk) 00:48, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
  • It's worth noting that Prichard created a specialist encylopedia, whereas Wikipedia is a general one. I have no doubt Prichard likely filtered out many very trivial variants in his compilation, but you would expect, considering the nature of his and our projects, his notability threshold to be lower than ours.
The {{Notability}} tag is OK while discussion is ongoing, but it is not a permanent solution. Like all maintenance tags, it describes a situation that needs to be resolved (one way or the other), it is not a marker appropriate for all low-notability articles indefinately. --LukeSurl t c 09:57, 7 August 2018 (UTC)
  • Perhaps we are making progress. Although I am not optimistic about coming up with a cut-and-dried formula for notability of chess variants, it would be nice to have a set of criteria to consider. You have mentioned some, and although I may not like them all, it's a place to start:
"... sold ..." -- If someone sees a game in a store, that's a kind of "notability"; not what we think of in Wikipedia as notability, but it's something;
"... sold internationally in at least three different countries under different names ..." (heh -- is this good or bad?)
"... article about it in a ... board games magazine ..." -- I am not familiar enough with the alternative board games scene to judge how much or how little this means, but it might be relevant. Bruce leverett (talk) 13:24, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

[typed this up a day or two ago but never saved] I don't think anyone's in a rush to delete all of the variant articles. Three-check chess would not have come up at AfD if it weren't for the fact that its lack of coverage became problematic in its overreliance on Pritchard (and the question of whether Pritchard is describing something different than described by primary sources). I would oppose any notion that says that inclusion in Pritchard (or any specialist encyclopedia) makes something notable. Criteria like "it's in encyclopedia X" are indications of notability, meaning one can assume that if it was included there, there must be significant coverage in reliable sources. Its existence in that encyclopedia is not what constitutes all the sourcing we need. Pritchard may have omitted some, but he was not selective in the sense of those encyclopedias that we defer to as indicators of notability (certain national encyclopedias of biography, britannica, the encyclopedie, etc.). It's nothing against Pritchard -- it's just that specialist encyclopedias are, by definition, attempts to bring together as much of a topic as possible and do not limit inclusion just to those that have received significant coverage elsewhere. Indeed, Pritchard seems to draw from his own interactions with people, what is "said to have been" (though I recognize this phrasing is something of a reference work convention), etc. Any of these hypothetical guidelines to show notability should be based not on how important they sound, but on correspondence to the existence of sourcing. As for foreign sources, even if we say that there may be troves of sources none of us can access and thus that they would be considered notable per GNG, that we cannot access them means we will never have anything more than a version of Pritchard combined with substandard sources. Such a case seems like a great use of list of chess variants until which time as more than 1 source can be found (should someone decide to take action -- again, I'm not suggesting any action needs to be taken except on a case by case basis as people notice problems). — Rhododendrites talk \\ 14:55, 7 August 2018 (UTC)

...of course, soon after I posted this, someone added Sovereign Chess to the list of chess variants -- a commercial game that's a few months old and cites only official sites. Borderline G11, clearly not notable, but I suppressed my initial reaction to tag for deletion for the time being since I just said nobody was looking for variants to delete. :) — Rhododendrites talk \\ 03:03, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
Go ahead and follow your initial reaction on this one, don't let me stop ya! Bruce leverett (talk) 21:06, 8 August 2018 (UTC)
@Rhododendrites:. Sovereign Chess is ringing alarm bells for me due it its origin. Two new editors have popped up to create an article on a commercial product. It's published by "Infinite Pi Games" and one of the editors calls themselves "PiGuy216" and the other, "Nateconklin" you can find name-checked as a friend of the developer on their website [16]. It seems like a classic case of single-purpose editors pushing a commercial agenda. I don't think though this has much in common with the other chess variants we are discussing here. --LukeSurl t c 09:27, 9 August 2018 (UTC)
  • Here's another particularly egregious one: Troy (chess variant). No sources apart from Pritchard (editions 1 and 2 of the Encyclopedia, and Pritchard's source is "inventor's leaflet"). Functionally, the article is a mere rephrasing of its Encyclopedia entry: [17], in which the transfer to Wikipedia has actually made it longer. Like "Weak!", I'm not even sure this belongs in the list, let alone as a standalone article. In terms of consistency, if Troy has it's own article/list entry on these grounds, there could be the same for every single variant catalogued in the Encyclopedia. --LukeSurl t c 10:49, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

@LukeSurl: On {{Notability}} - yes I know it is not a permanent solution. It means that we need more sources to establish notability - if it is agreed that Pritchard is not enough by itself. But on the other hand, there isn't a timescale on which you have to prove notability, not like an AfD. It's gray area. In the case of Duell (Chess) I think we can fairly make a presumption of notability - that the material is expected to be there but is going to be hard to find because it is in hard copy in magazines. Also - is it possible to have custom notability guidelines that are not based on WP:RS? I know that usually that's required but I wonder if we can have a special exception of some sort. The motivation for developing such a guideline would be the difficulty of fulfilling the requirement of finding sources for old games, and yet the likely notability, leading to a huge bias in favour of recentism.

After all the notability guidelines themselves are only sufficient for a presumption of notability. So - I would argue perhaps we can go a step back and have a presumption of notability based on criteria such as:

  • Sold commercially
  • Sold commercialy by a major company
  • Sold commercially internatinoally
  • Sold for x years - the longer it is the more notaable
  • Innovative idea - this is a qualitative judgement - notability on merit
  • Entry in Pritchard or in Chess Variants suggests it was an important game at its time

etc.

(where there'd be guidelines about what exactly is needed to establish notability in this list)

It is not an attempt to hijack normal notability guidelines. It is rather an attempt at developing a surrogate for notability to avoid a bias towards recentism in a topic area where it is almost impossible to search contemporary publications to find cites of the games. Even the notability on merit would be a surrogate - an innovative idea is likely to have a fair bit of contemporary discussion if we coudl find it.

@Bruce leverett: Oh I see what you mean, but - remember these are different companies too. It's not easy to get a board game published internationally. My main interest in this topic area is because I tried to make a go at it myself (sadly not successful). One of mine was nearly published - and the company that wanted to publish it, Gibson's Games, after a number of different ideas of how to produce it, decided they needed to make plastic pieces using moulds. They found that it needed moulds that were too expensive for them to produce by themselves. They decided to try to get an German company involved - sadly the idea fell through, and that was the end of the project. So, especially if it is a new game - it's not easy to get it to go internationally. If I understand it right, only if it has actually got a proven track record in one country would another company license it from the one that first published it. And to be jointly published would require a great deal of merit and two separate companies to be convinced of its value. While if it is renamed - that suggests to me that the companies have taken it on independently - each one evaluated it as good and rebranded it - based on its sales by the other company - or intrinsic merit. So - I know this is limited experience but I think it suggests that being published in three countries must mean it enjoyed a fair bit of success at least for a while. And so, probably, a fair bit of coverage too. At least - that was my reasoning. Robert Walker (talk) 20:55, 8 August 2018 (UTC)

Note that this discussion will probably hinge on to what extent inclusion in The Chess Variant Pages demonstrates notability. --LukeSurl t c 16:29, 27 August 2018 (UTC)
^I mostly agree. It's not clear to me if we would consider the articles in the periodical Variant Chess, [18] worth considering for notability when the author of an article is other than Pritchard. If you discussed that above, sorry if I missed that. --David Tornheim (talk) 10:36, 4 September 2018 (UTC)

Draft:Chess variant

Hello. I have written a draft article: Draft:Chess variant. The intention is to place this at Chess variant, which currently redirects to List of chess variants, so as to give an overview of the topic separate from the list article. I'd appreciate your inputs/edits before this is moved to mainspace. Please feel free to edit this as if it were a mainspace article. --LukeSurl t c 16:13, 18 September 2018 (UTC)

Medal template for Infobox chess biography.

Could someone integrate the medal template for Template:Infobox chess biography. It's kinda awkward to use a separate infobox for medals of a chess player who won medals in multi-sporting events such as the Asian Indoor Games such as Krishnan Sasikiran's and Wesley So's gold for the Philippines in the 2013 Summer Universiade.Hariboneagle927 (talk) 09:19, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

To be honest I'm not overly keen on medal infoboxes on chess bios. We don't talk much about gold medals, sliver medals, bronze medals etc. For example I couldn't even tell you how many medals Garry Kasparov won at olympiads, nor do I care much. He was World Champion, that's achievement enough for me. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 10:50, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
This looks interesting, but I have never modified a template before. If someone knows how to modify an infobox template this way, do they need any chess-specific advice from me (or from us)? Bruce leverett (talk) 18:45, 14 October 2018 (UTC)
I agree with MaxBrowne, chess achievements aren't really measured by medals; also Universiades aren't important competitions in chess. I think the current fields (world championship, peak rating, peak ranking, titles) are enough to describe the accomplishments of a chess player. Sophia91 (talk) 22:33, 1 November 2018 (UTC)
It is true that I had never heard of the Universiade before, but if Wesley So, Li Chao, Ju Wenjun, etc., played in it, it must be important, and maybe I should start paying attention. I was already aware of the Asian Games. Regarding the general question of medals, I would assume that the importance of the medal depends on the importance of the tournament. The whole idea of medal templates is new to me, but if other sports need them, I don't know why chess wouldn't need them. Bruce leverett (talk) 02:31, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
It comes down to tradition really. In traditional olympic sports like athletics, swimming, gymnastics etc success really is measured in terms of medals achieved, and the olympics are often the most prestigious event in the sport, as much, or even more so, than the world championship. Medals achieved in less prestigious multi-sport international events such as the Asian Games or Commonwealth Games are not to be sneezed at either. Chess is a bit different, players are more likely to measure their success by FIDE titles, national championships, tournaments won, and to some extent Elo rating than medals. People talk about GM Wesley So, not Asian Games gold medallist Wesley So. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 02:54, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
@Bruce: Putting medals in the chess biography infobox would be an insidious form of original research—it would use Wikipedia's editorial voice to elevate medals to a level of importance in Wikipedia that they don't have in the real world. No one outside Wikipedia pays attention to chess medals, we shouldn't inflate their importance inside Wikipedia. There is some importance to Olympiad results, but top players play a lot of tournaments these days. You are very knowledgeable about chess, and the fact that you hadn't heard of the Univsiade is proof that it isn't important enough to put in the chess infobox. A bad idea. Quale (talk) 02:57, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
It is indeed puzzling that I would not have heard of this evidently strong event. Maybe it's because this is some Asian thing, whereas my favorite sources of information, such as The Week In Chess, may have somewhat of a European/American bias. At least it is mentioned in Wesley So.
I agree with MaxBrowne2 and Quale that one does not see much about medals in the English-language chess press (or in the non-chess press). I guess that is a good enough reason to hold off on elevating them to the chess biography infobox. Bruce leverett (talk) 16:04, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
I concur. Probably not wise to introduce something like this, when there are so many competitions that might qualify. We might well end up quibbling over relative importance to avoid undue weight, and we'd almost certainly still get the medals talked about in the main body text by way of duplication. If we do abide by the status quo, then I would just flag up the Julio Kaplan article as possibly needing some attention; a medal tally element was added to his infobox a long time ago. Brittle heaven (talk) 23:02, 2 November 2018 (UTC)
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