Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess/Archive 26

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Nigel Short

For your information, this article has now been the target of WP:COI once more. Your comments on the matter are welcome. Thanks, Toccata quarta (talk) 03:18, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

If his record against world champions isn't commented upon in the rest of the article, it shouldn't appear unsourced in the lead. Such details shouldn't appear in the lead anyway. I suggest moving the paragraph in question to "Tournament and match results" and citing the database results and his DVD. Cobblet (talk) 04:53, 31 August 2013 (UTC)

Merging Irregular chess opening to Flank opening

Because the former article is currently a stub and I don't see how it could be improved. Please comment at Talk:Flank opening. Cobblet (talk) 07:52, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Ruy Lopez, Marshall Attack, Rombaua Trap at Afd

I see from the WT:CHESS archives that I'm not the only person to notice this article is a hoax. Let's get rid of it. Cobblet (talk) 04:04, 2 September 2013 (UTC)

Three articles at WP:GAN

Namely Chess in Armenia, Chess handicap and Modern Benoni. Cobblet (talk) 09:53, 3 September 2013 (UTC)

Placement of notation template in articles

Right now it seems all our chess opening articles place Template:Algebraic notation next to the TOC. However, chess notation is usually used in the very first sentence—"The Sicilian Defence is the chess opening that begins with the moves 1.e4 c5", etc. So should we place the template before the lead paragraph instead?

I understand that some people might prefer it next to the TOC as it uses up some of that white space, while putting it above the lead generates more of it, but I think the extra white space is less visually distracting than the fact that the tops of the TOC and template boxes don't line up for some reason. If you'd like a comparison, take a look at Modern Benoni versus User:Cobblet/sandbox.

I suppose one way to reduce the amount of white space Template:Algebraic notation generates would be to have the text on one line rather than two, like in the "section" variant of that template. But even in its current form I would prefer placing the box above the lead. After all, the whole point of including the box is to warn the reader, and I think that placing the box such that it does its job properly should take priority over aesthetic concerns. Let me know what you think. Cobblet (talk) 17:44, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Putting the algebraic notation box at the top also pushes down the diagram on the right. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 18:08, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

It might be desirable to have the top of the infobox line up with the top of the first paragraph (although now that I look more closely at Modern Benoni, the lineup isn't perfect either.) But for the sake of comparison, I switched the order of the two in the code. How's it look now? Cobblet (talk) 18:21, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

There is a difference between your two comparables, in that the article at Modern Benoni has the Wikipedia article name in big font heading up the article, whereas your sandbox version doesn't have that title. So if your idea were implemented the first thing vertically down from the article title, would be the notation box. I really think that is over-emphasizing the notation box, that it is better to have the first sentence of the lead introducing the subject as the next thing, instead. The notation box adjacent to the TOC in openings articles not only exploits unused space without pushing the entire article down, but the notation box in that location has a "sticky-out" position that makes it hard to visually miss. The aim of having the notation box occur prior to any move notation the lead might contain, I think is an overly-logical way of addressing the situation and sort of presupposes people access data like machines in strictly top-down sequence. IMO the location of the notation box adjacent to the TOC, due to its "sticky-out" position, easily gains the attention of any reader not familiar with move notation that occurs in the lead -- the reader might be looking for help to interpret the notation if they are unfamiliar, and there is the notation box in an attention-getting "sticky-out" location for them to see. (The only problem might be for really long leads, where the TOC is shoved down far or even off the page. But I'm not aware of any openings articles with leads that long.) In summary, IMO the proposed location after article title and before the article lead sentence draws attention away from the content of the article by drawing attention to the notation box first, that location also pushes the entire article vertically down reducing the amount of article content on the page, the box next to TOC is very apparent for any reader who might need it, and the idea the notation box constitutes a "warning" and must appear before any notation occurs is an overly-logical over-reaction to balancing the objectives regarding the notation box in openings articles. Ihardlythinkso (talk) 21:52, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes it does: "User:Cobblet/sandbox" is the title "in big font". If the purpose of the box is to warn the reader, is it a bad thing to make it hard to miss? And what are the other "objectives regarding the notation box" that we have to "balance"? In any case, I find it more distracting out-of-alignment next to the TOC than above the lead.

I wouldn't mind it nearly as much if there were just some way of aligning the top of the notation box with the top of the TOC. But after playing around the template syntax a little bit I see that's not so easy to achieve. Oh well, not a big deal then, particularly if other people believe that I'm "over-logically over-reacting" here... Cobblet (talk) 22:24, 27 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes it does: "User:Cobblet/sandbox" is the title "in big font". That's not what I meant, perhaps I didn't explain right ... It's not font size that makes the comparisons different, but absence/presence of the article subject title "Modern Benoni". (If that title is absent the notation box can't detract from it. And detracting from the title "User:Cobblet/sandbox" doesn't really siphon away anything, since it isn't a meaningful title subject name, just a technical computer file name.) Ok, Ihardlythinkso (talk) 04:02, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Is it a bad thing to make it hard to miss? That argument sort of presupposes that the easier to notice, the better. But that certainly is not true. (For e.g., if we could make the notation box "flashing", then it would certainly be harder to miss, wouldn't it. But that would be a bad choice. That's why balanced objectives is called for.) The objectives include noticability, but that is not the only objective from past discussions. It was generally agreed that getting the notation box away from the lead image, especially when the lead image was a person image in a biography article, was a good thing, so as not to detract from the lead image. It was felt that even adjacent to the TOC, robbed attention and was distracting from person lead images, whereas next-to-TOC was less distracting re diagrams as lead images in openings articles. (Putting the notation box above a lead diagram in openings articles, took the prime spot away from the diagram title.) The whole thing about moving the notation box to section(s) where it is needed in biography articles was a good innovation that gave one administrator fits since it violated "hatbox" conventions for non-chess articles, but in my own view was the most perfect application of "Ingore all rules" there can ever be. There is more dialogue on notation box relocation development in an earlier thread at WT:CHESS, and a painful dialogue between this editor and the aforementioned admin at Talk:Algebraic notation if you're interested. My view about "over-reaction" was re the evaluative criteria you listed for the proposed new location, nothing personal, and was just this editor's opinion. Back when the current plan was developed I thought it was a pretty good consensus effort, there were adjustments along the way. I added my own thoughts too. For example like you, I'd prefer the box be level with the top-of-TOC, but am unaware how to code a half vertical step down (if that would even work); and the lower-than-TOC position doesn't bug me like it does you, higher-than-TOC position alternative is most certainly worse. (Perhaps there's a way to code it flush, I don't know how.) I could very easily make the article-level box slender like the section box as you suggested, but that plan would still have the negative aspects mentioned earlier IMO, only a bit less negative, plus I think it would just "look weird". But I can easily make that option in 5 minutes if consensus wants that. Ihardlythinkso (talk) 00:17, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

All I meant to say is, I find the box less distracting above the lead than out of alignment with the TOC. It's just my own opinion. I think I see why you can't get it to align easily—if you leave out the break, the software aligns the text inside the box with the top of the TOC, so the border of the box ends up above it. It would be great if there was a way to make it not do that.

By the way, I read some of the discussion you mentioned, but I didn't catch why we switched from hatnotes to boxes in the first place. Cobblet (talk) 00:36, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

I thought the hatnote was fine so I thought the reasons for switching from hatnotes to the bulky box were stupid, but some people really wanted to do it although I don't remember why. All I can recall is that someone, I think not even a member of the chess project, insisted on removing the chess notation hatnotes for reasons I did not understand. You might be able to find something about it in the WT:CHESS archives. Some time later we had a separate and fairly lengthy discussion about box positioning. I didn't care much about it at the time, but I am OK with other people working to make little improvements even in areas that don't concern me very much. Now that we have the box in the dead space to the right of the TOC I've gotten used to it, and I prefer it to having the box at the top of the article for the reasons that Ihardlythinkso enumerated. Quale (talk) 01:02, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

FYI I've asked at the Village Pump about spacing down half a line [1]. Ok, Ihardlythinkso (talk) 01:09, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. And thanks for clarifying the history, Quale—now I understand it got converted to a side box as a result of this discussion. I guess people want to reserve hatnotes strictly for disambiguation purposes, which is fair enough, but I would've preferred a hatnote myself as well. If we can't fix the alignment issue, I can live with the status quo. Cobblet (talk) 01:24, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

I can't recall if this has been mentioned before, but an alternative system that would be very discreet, and yet would offer the uninformed newcomer an obvious way forward, would be to simply wikilink the article's first 1.d4 (or 1.e4 or whatever), to the Chess notation article. Maybe I'm overlooking something, but the bulky box does tend to wreck the symmetry/order of some pages. Brittle heaven (talk) 02:09, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

I think it is better to have it at the side of the ToC than at the top. With it at the top, you have to go down more to start the lead section, and less of the lead section is on your screen. Most people going into technical chess articles (openings, endings, tactics, etc) already know algebraic notation. Biographies are more likely to be read by a non-chessplayer, and there we have been generally moving the box to the first section that contains notation. And general-interest articles such as chess, rules of chess, Outline of chess, and history of chess avoid it altogether. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 02:43, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Re: the hatnote vs. box thing Cobblet mentions above, I think you're right that it was a "hatnotes mustn't be used for this" argument. But hatnotes are used for things other than disambiguation, such as explaining non-Western name order found in Asian names among others. I still think that argument is weak, but I also think that the hatnote was easy to overlook, so the box might actually be better for that reason. As far as linking the first move goes (Brittle heaven's suggestion) I'm not sure that would work all that well. Most chess opening articles link the moves to Wikibooks:Chess Opening Theory, so the link is already used up. I've always disliked those Wikibooks links intensely as I think they add less than nothing to the articles, but Wikipedia is not about what I dislike. We have discussed employing a brief parenthetical mention that the moves are given in algebraic notation just before first use, but the hatnote was introduced to try to improve on that old practice so it might be a step backwards. Quale (talk) 04:49, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, I could sense that my idea was far too simple. I must have been to wikibooks at some point, but never felt any need to revisit! Brittle heaven (talk) 11:34, 28 August 2013 (UTC) —Actually, given that the non-savvy newcomer is most likely to click on the thing they need explaining, it would be far more logical for the appropriate wikibook to carry the notation explanation/link, than for it to clutter the main article, where probably 99% of users need no such assistance. Brittle heaven (talk) 11:46, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

There are times when an explanation of algebraic notation is needed, but there are no moves that can link to Wikibooks. (For two examples of this, see article Judit Polgár.) Ihardlythinkso (talk) 12:35, 28 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm entirely in favour of scrapping all links to Wikibooks. I haven't looked at all the pages, but it seems like the chess theory project over there has been inactive for years now. We've also used {{wikibooks}} at the end of some pages (e.g. Sicilian Defence#Further reading to direct the reader to a relevant Wikibooks page, and we could make that a universal practice for chess openings, if people think such a link is valuable. I do like Brittle heaven's suggestion very much. Does anyone else? Cobblet (talk) 08:43, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

I like it too. Quale (talk) 22:53, 29 August 2013 (UTC)

Getting notation box out of articles is a good thing; not clear though what the replacing link plan is exactly. (The devil/details thing.) Ihardlythinkso (talk) 01:10, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

The proposal is to remove all instances where Template:Algebraic notation is currently placed next to the TOC, and wikilink the very first instance of algebraic notation in the article to Chess notation. I'll suggest some examples:

• The Sicilian Defence is a chess opening that begins with the moves 1.e4 c5.
• (From Chess strategy#Space) In this diagram from the Nimzo-Indian Defense, Black attacks four squares on White's side of the board (d4, e4, f4, and g4).

For cases such as game fragments in biographies, where most of the article does not use chess notation but one section uses it extensively, I could see a case for continuing to use the "section" variant of the template—since people reading such an article are less likely to be familiar with notation, it might be helpful to provide a more obvious warning. But I don't have a strong opinion either way in this case. Cobblet (talk) 01:39, 30 August 2013 (UTC)

If there are no further comments, I'll be implementing this change to all articles in Category:chess openings this weekend. Cobblet (talk) 23:36, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

I'm unsure. For one thing, it will be a lot of work to change them. Secondly, with it next to the ToC it stands out well and doesn't take up any space. On the other hand, it is in the tradition of linking the first use of something. However, those links usually go to an article about the thing highlighted. These would go to an explanation of notation rather than an article about 1.e4. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 23:53, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

I think we need to get an opinion from someone outside this project - someone who is very familiar with what Wikipedia should use for something like that. Could ask at the Village Pump. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 00:00, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Deep Blue and scheduling of games

There is a discussion on Talk:Deep Blue (chess computer) regarding recent edits related to the game scheduling. Any feedback is welcome. isaacl (talk) 03:54, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Algebraic notation box - reduced width when adjacent to TOCs

I've shortened the notation box width for when used adjacent to TOCs (by making it 3-lined instead of 2-lined), so it has a better chance to fit between Infoboxes and unusually wide TOCs (e.g. articles Ruy Lopez, Modern Benoni). Ok, Ihardlythinkso (talk) 07:58, 4 September 2013 (UTC)

The new version isn't working right for me. For one thing, it is 5 lines instead of 3. Secondly, on the Modern Benoni article, it overlaps with the ToC. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 23:55, 5 September 2013 (UTC)

On my laptop screen it's four lines in Modern Benoni. Cobblet (talk) 00:35, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Bubba, could you see if Ruy Lopez is okay now? (I made a change. If Ruy Lopez is still wrong let me know I will revert to the earlier 2-line version.) Ihardlythinkso (talk) 02:41, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

It is not overlaping the ToC box now. It is taking 5 lines. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:06, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

It is taking 5 lines in the Ruy Lopez article? (Please ignore the Modern Benoni article for the moment.) Ihardlythinkso (talk) 03:20, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

I've added a little more width. How many lines in Ruy Lopez now? (The differences we see might be dependent on browser default font size.) Ok, Ihardlythinkso (talk) 09:48, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

On my screen they are now four lines. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 15:46, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

I've added a little more width again. How many lines in Ruy Lopez now? (If not 3, I'll revert back to the original wide box.) Ihardlythinkso (talk) 23:03, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

Update: Okay I see now that the number of text lines in notation boxes will be a function of the default font size set in one's browser. (I use Firefox with default [Arial] font size 15, I'm thinking you have a larger size set, what size is your default font set to? [In Firefox, Tools → Options → Content → Fonts & Colors.]) Ok, Ihardlythinkso (talk) 13:30, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Quick reply - it is still four lines for me in Thunderbird bot three in IE. I do have a relatively large default font set. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 00:08, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

My firefox default font is 16-point New Times Roman. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 00:49, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that info. I made a change whereby I've removed the graphic from the notation boxes. (My rationale for removing it is that the graphic has a fixed size for the "1.e4" representation, and that size likely won't match the size of the rest of the box text depending on whatever font size a user has as default in their browser setting. So a substantial difference in size probably makes the notation box look funny due to the size mismatch. Removing the graphic also makes all notation boxes less wide, which is a good thing.) If the change isn't liked, just let me know and I'll revert it. Ok, Ihardlythinkso (talk) 06:23, 8 September 2013 (UTC)

chessgames.com

See Talk:List_of_chess_openings#Wiki_as_an_advertising_hook?. It isn't doing that for me and I'm not a paid member. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 23:49, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Not sure what links he's referring to - but if there are any links to ChessGames' "opening explorer", that will indeed run into a paywall after you step through a few moves. That may be the situation. --SubSeven (talk) 00:50, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Your definition of "a few" is different than mine. In fact you can step through the first 13.5 moves (27 ply). If it really were only a few moves before you hit a pay wall I would strongly suggest the removal of the links, but that isn't the case. Quale (talk) 02:32, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

My experiences are not matching yours.. just hitting random lines I'm hitting paywalls on move two, four, six.. [2][3][4][5] --SubSeven (talk) 02:58, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Wanted to put a Chessgames.com link in Infobox for King's Gambit, Rice Gambit, but was stopped after White's 6th move here. Ihardlythinkso (talk) 03:06, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Chessgames.com does have a paywall for its "Opening Explorer". One hits it when one gets to less than 300 games or so. (The games in the database are all freely accessible, though.) Toccata quarta (talk) 03:21, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

I apologize. It must depend on the opening, although it may have something to do with the number of games in the database with the stem line chosen. I should not have assumed that you would hit the paywall at a uniform depth in all lines. Here's the example in the Chigorin D. to the Ruy that I had tried: http://www.chessgames.com/perl/explorer?node=1379197&move=14&moves=e4.e5.Nf3.Nc6.Bb5.a6.Ba4.Nf6.O-O.Be7.Re1.b5.Bb3.d6.c3.O-O.h3.Na5.Bc2.c5.d4.Qc7.Nbd2.cxd4.cxd4.Nc6. Note that in your first example it's a very uncommon line, 1.Nc3 c6, where the chessgames.com database apparently has games with only three continuations, and two of those have a total of only five games. The most common continuation 2.e4 is behind the paywall here, but if you enter this position through the much more common Caro-Kann sequence 1.e4 c6 2.Nc3 you can go much deeper if you follow the common lines. Quale (talk) 03:31, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Chessgames.com's "Opening Explorer" does not have a mechanism for identifying transpositions. Toccata quarta (talk) 04:04, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

So, after reading WP:EL, it seems that content with paywalls is forbidden as external links, but may be OK to use as a reference. So, I'm not sure which one is the case here, I didn't run into the link(s) in question. I would certainly encourage anybody who sees a link to the Openings Explorer as an external link to remove it. --SubSeven (talk) 00:51, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

WP:EL doesn't say or even imply "forbidden", it says:

"one should generally avoid providing external links to sites that require payment or registration to view the relevant content".

I've never seen a link to the Openings Explorer in EL section of any article. (Only in article Infoboxes.) Ihardlythinkso (talk) 05:59, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

An EL in an infobox is still an EL. --SubSeven (talk) 15:16, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

Right, I see that. Template {{Infobox chess opening}} contains parm 'chessgid' with description:

chessgid is the ChessGames.com internal Opening Explorer code for this opening, that is the part that comes right after node= in the html of the opening explorer

Just to clarify, are you encouraging editors to remove the Openings Explorer link from Ruy Lopez Infobox, and from other similar articles? Ihardlythinkso (talk) 18:01, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree with removing links to the ChessGames.com opening explorer. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 18:14, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

That's what I'm recommending, yes. Fair enough on the wording of WP:EL, it's not 100% forbidden, but unless there's a good reason to make an exception in this case, I think it's time to do some cleaning. --SubSeven (talk) 18:58, 22 June 2013 (UTC)

User:SubSeven removed the Chessgames.com Openings Explorer link from {{Infobox chess opening}} template, affecting all openings articles that had a link to the Openings Explorer. I'm not sure the justification of that, for two reasons: 1) as noted above, WP:EL doesn't forbid those links, and 2) also noted above, the links already added to articles uniformly didn't exceed the paywall threshold (or they wouldn't and couldn't have been added in the first place), so where the links existed, the paywall wasn't a factor and didn't inhibit access to the info provided by the Explorer.

Is/was it the consensus of ProjChess to remove the Openings Explorer link from all chess openings Infoboxes? (If so, then the template doc specifying 'chessgid=' should also be removed to complete the change, so as not to cause confusion.) Ihardlythinkso (talk) 12:57, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

I waited about two weeks after the conversation concluded, and nobody had yet argued to keep the links, I took that as consensus. You're correct about the 'chessgid=' in the documentation of course. Regarding your two reasons for being unsure:

• WP:EL says to avoid them, so we are avoiding them. And this is not a single link to paywalled content, this is dozens, if not hundreds. We need to make an argument FOR, not against, a massive campaign to send people to paywalled content.
• Your second reason, I'm not really understanding. The way the explorer works is, once you start to 'explore', you soon hit the paywall. All of these links were of limited usefulness. --SubSeven (talk) 19:33, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Your first point that the links violate WP:EL policy doesn't fit. When the links were used in article Infoboxes, the relevant content was not "hidden behind a paywall". (If there was a paywall ahead of the opening position in the Infobox, then linking to the Openings Explorer wasn't done.) The links to the opening position in the Infobox has usefulness to see Chessgames.com complilation of statistics for frequency of play, win-loss statistics, and alternative lines. I don't know why you would roll forward with your assumption that including such a link contians implicit guarantee of full use of the Openings Explorer -- it is just a link to aforementioned info and perhaps more capacity (backward exploring, perhaps forward exploring in some cases). Ihardlythinkso (talk) 07:54, 9 September 2013 (UTC)

Speaking of opening explorers

Check out Module:Opening theory. Feel free to rename/improve as appropriate. I tested it on the longest deepest opening for which we had an article. Turns out we go deeper than wikibooks in this case [6]. ―cobaltcigs 09:58, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

notable?

New article on Ken Smith (chess) - notable enough? Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 05:15, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Yes, especially considering his achievements in poker as well, although for that reason the article should be moved to Kenneth Ray Smith. Cobblet (talk) 05:53, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

I am inclined to say yes as well. There is some non-trivial coverage on him in the 1972 San Antonio tournament book that Smith participated in (finishing last, but scoring a few points, such as a draw against Keres, against top international players). Combined with the achievements in Poker that Cobblet mentioned I think notability is OK. Sjakkalle (Check!) 17:45, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Video of Capablanca speaking English

This Chessbase article from March links to a Nederland 24 (Dutch Public Broadcasting) video of Capablanca being interviewed in English on the then-upcoming World Chess Championship 1935. Euwe is also interviewed, speaking Dutch. (Anyone who wants to hear how to pronounce "Euwe", here's your chance!) Apparently there's a wealth of chess-related video on the site, even if it's mostly in Dutch—there's a video of Euwe and Botvinnik playing blindfold blitz chess, for example. Cobblet (talk) 05:53, 20 September 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I couldn't access it there, but it is also on YouTube. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 16:44, 21 September 2013 (UTC)

Chess games on Wikidata

Hi! I guess the members of this wikiproject might be interested in the following discussion on whether or not include chess games in Wikidata: [7] --DixonD (talk) 12:40, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

ICCF Denmark

Is ICCF Denmark needed? It is basically a list of people, and only two of them have articles. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 00:20, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

It appears that a long time ago, somebody started to fix all the redlinks in ICCF national member federations but soon gave up. A handful of these have been expanded since (I saw the US and Finland ones were) but the rest ought to be either redirected to the relevant "Chess in <country>" article or simply deleted if that article doesn't exist, as is the case with Denmark. Cobblet (talk) 00:31, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

I can't see any point in keeping it. Too many red links to suggest any real worth or importance, particularly after being in existence for many years. Also, there is no equivalent article on the Danish Wikipedia and the only reference given is to a dead link. Brittle heaven (talk) 11:42, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

There are probably quite a few similar articles in the same situation. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 16:21, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Comparison of top chess players throughout history

I'm struggling to see the point of this new enormous table which swamps the article. The author says it is to compare players that have had Elo ratings. Yet these are players of different eras, whose peaks may have occurred pre-1970. For example, his weighted ranking (whatever that is) shows that Henrique Mecking is higher ranked than Botvinnik, and that Ehlvest and Keres are of more or less equal importance. Surely this is why Sonas and Elo and others introduced retrospective ratings, so that some comparison could be made of players at their peaks? Am I missing something? Brittle heaven (talk) 12:44, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Apologies to User Toccata Quarta, who has already indicated similar reservations on the article talk page. Brittle heaven (talk) 13:03, 17 September 2013 (UTC)

Hi guys, I saw you have deleted the table I have introduced.

I'm new to wiki and not familiar with exact rules hear, forgive me if I sound a bit rude. Your points regarding Botvinnik, Ehlvest and Keres are fair to indicate, but in the article I have indicated that this is only based on all official fide listings since 1970. It's a pitty that we don't have them since Morphy's time or even since time when chess is created in India, but we should analyze what we have. If we believe ELO ratings, and as elo indicated they are relatively true for players within the same era. Than the wheighted ratings of top 6 is more fair to compare players than the peak rating which you have in the same article. If you discard this table, before that you have to discard all other rating based evaluations because they are unfair even more. How you estimate peak of Botvinnik in this case , or peak of Alekhine, peak of Morphy? I'm concerned why you are discarding the table which does compare with solely offical based numbers (nothing more was added). And it's more realistic than anything else you have their rating based. The table I have includes many greatest players (53) which is truly official, many players which might be considered as good players haven't included because dispite their fame they never cross top 6 in official fide ratings. Also chess is growing every year. Also there is some fair having recent players in top (which is a consequence) because chess teory and everything related to chess is continuously growing and enlarging, I would not fail to tell that if Steinitz, Botvinnik leaves nowdays with their play and strength, everyone from 2700 family will easily get advantage over them from debut and eventually win. So recent players are much better in terms of chess sport strength. So even from that perspective the table is fair. If you are chess lover like me, I think you would consider the table more seriously. I welcome any suggestions improvements on it's development and grow or reduce in terms of wiki rules. But let's try to get an advantage from the work I have done. Easiest thing is just have it delete, but noone gets advantage from it.Frunzedz (talk) 18:00, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Hi User:Frunzedz. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, which means that its contents must rely on previously published information. Wikipedia does not publish original research. I understand your concern that using Elo ratings to compare players across different historical eras is a flawed method. The article acknowledges this point and goes on to present several previously published methods of solving this problem. However, we cannot publish the "unique metric" you have created on the page, because it has not been previously published in a reliable source. Should you do so, we would be happy to consider adding it into the article some time in the future.

P.S. to other editors: I think we should remove the bottom table as well, and the player quotes should be heavily trimmed. In my opinion the only lists noteworthy enough to include are Fischer's, Anand's and Chess Informant's; the others can either be deleted, or in cases where one player is singled out as "greatest of all time", moved to that player's page. Cobblet (talk) 18:46, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks User:Cobblet for explanation. Let me try to understand this (by asking some questions) and try to explain the table which I have introduced. I agree the point about 'weighted metric' which has no previous appearnce, it's just my try to formalize statistics, this is that's why I welcomed suggestions and now I understand the point - let's remove that column from the table. The table introduces all the players having included in top six, and gives some statistical data based on offical fide listings. Nothing new is introduced. You want reliable source, I think official fide listing since 2000 can be accessed in fide official site, for some old fide ratings I will provide reference later. It's just that number of official ratings is about 100. The work I have done is just collected this statistics about top 6. I think we can find such statistics in wiki for almost every sport. May be not rating based just championship based, etc. This article is called comparing top chess players ? What can be more fair than just including the statistics. The table is sortable so that people could see players sorted by different category. What I want is just some formalization of ELO's formulation about ELO ratings based on official statistics. Another questoin, where can be found reliable source for the table - Table of top 21 rated players ever, with date their best ratings were first achieved. I understand this official FIDE data collected in one table and sorted by peak value. Table I have introduced is nothing more than extended version of this table (excluded weighted metric which is nothing more than summary of all times player appeared in top six by place giving higher points for lower place, but ok let's just remove it, and sort based number of times player appeared in top six by default). So my suggestion is edit table and remove the column of weighted metric and just have another statistical data. Do you see any violation of wiki rules now ? Frunzedz (talk) 21:31, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

But to arbitrarily limit the table to the top 6 (rather than the top 3, top 5, top 10, top 20, top 25, top 50, or top 100...) reflects a selective judgment on your part and introduces bias into the article. Unless you can demonstrate that it is common in chess literature and journalism to focus attention on the top six players on the FIDE rating list, this is a violation of WP:NPOV.

To be fair, the other table you mentioned violates NPOV for exactly the same reason: it is wrong to arbitrarily limit the number of peak ratings listed to 21, since this has the effect of unfairly highlighting Kamsky's career and diminishing that of whoever #22 would be. My suggestion would be to limit that table to only the players who have achieved a 2800 rating, because this is considered a newsworthy event whenever it happens: Google "Topalov 2800" for example. Cobblet (talk) 21:55, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

The limit comes from availability of information. Since the first Fide ratings published includes top 6 players only (see http://www.chess.com/blog/goldendog/bits-of-old-fide-ratings-lists-1970-1996), I can provide some other sources as well. About 2800. Since rating inflation appears each year it's not fair to compare based on rating absolute value, I think (continuing arpad ELO's point) Frunzedz (talk) 22:21, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

But that's hardly a good reason, even if the more complete list does not exist (and I suspect it does): why not top 3 or top 5 then? And your last point is absolutely true, but again, it is not Wikipedia's job to tell its readers what is fair, but what others say is fair, and what is done. Cobblet (talk) 22:28, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

At least 2 sources started to list top six players - http://chess.eusa.ed.ac.uk/Chess/Trivia/AlltimeList.html, http://www.chess.com/blog/goldendog/bits-of-old-fide-ratings-lists-1970-1996 which I used initially. I remind also some old public magazines which do list top 6. Having top 10 would require match wider list, and hard maintainible. Anyway any number what have been asked the same question. Frunzedz (talk) 22:45, 1 October 2013 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Frunzedz (talk • contribs) 22:38, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Let's have a look at a passage that you added to the article:

"Weighted ranking computed by this table are unique metric by which all time chess players (having ELO rating) could be compared. Weighted ranking computed by the summary of all coefficents. Coefficents given per each listing with the following grades used - 6 points for each 1st place ranking, 5 - 2nd place, 4 - 3rd place, 3 - 4th place, 2 - 5th place, 1 - 6th place."

"Unique metric" is an admission of WP:OR. Please review that page. If you fail to understand it, please re-read it. Toccata quarta (talk) 04:03, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes we have agreed on that, and I suggested to remove that column (and any comment related to it), but keep other data which is truly statistical for top 6 players of all time since 1970 when official fide ratings published - nothing more. And we were discussing that many sources list top 6 that's why table have top 6 as well. Frunzedz (talk) 04:58, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

You have yet to give me a good reason why the table should feature all the players in the top 6 rather than fewer players (and as it turns out, the full historical FIDE rating lists are extremely easy to find), and why a larger table would be better than the list at List of FIDE chess world number ones#Player statistics, which only lists information for players ranked #1 at some point. Again, Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of statistics. Also your idea of counting the number of appearances on published lists is deeply flawed, since not only has FIDE changed its rules on how long an inactive player can remain on the list (under the current rules, Fischer would have been delisted after 1973), but the lists have been published increasingly frequently over time, so your list makes it seem as if Topalov was in the top 6 longer than Karpov, which is patent nonsense. Cobblet (talk) 06:54, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Counting mounths is also not better, because for example Bobby Fischer haven't played a single game over 3 years 1972-1975, but it's counted as he was world number one, and your list lists it higher than Carlsen who has played almost every super tournament in that period. We can dispute infinitely (probably)... you have your opinion, I have mine.... Both are subjective obviously. I got tired bringing up arguments, whatever I will bring up is disputable (or nonsense for you !) and your arguments are as well disputable for me. Let's save time. Can you please tell me the rules hear: If I don't agree with you, what's the solution ? Should I give up by some reason, or am I supposed to dispute infinitely, or there is something better which I can do? Frunzedz (talk) 07:59, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

The first sentence of the article states, "This article presents a number of methodologies that have been suggested for the task of comparing the greatest chess players in history." It is not a place for publishing statistics on players who once appeared in the top 6 of a FIDE rating list. You used chess.com as a source, and nothing is stopping you from going back there, creating your own account, and publishing your list, complete with the methodology you came up with. But it is not suitable content for Wikipedia. Cobblet (talk) 09:40, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't want to be personal, but seems like I can't. Do you really think that if player has not been world number 1 by rating it's not great player? or it's not worthing to compare with number ones ? Even if yes, this is just your subjective opinion. Considering your suggestions to me what todo outside of wiki - please keep them with yourself, I don't need them. Somehow you consider yourself judge about what should appear in this article (or moreover in wikipedia overall). Why wouldn't you just write your name at the end of this article (as well some others who have added those tables)? Because it's your prefered methods to compare chess players. You are making it subjective by declining real statistical data and instead keeping other statistical data according to your preference (or your thinking what should appear in wiki). Is this article place where you publish players individual best results with first achieved date in terms of rating ? That's what this table suggests - Table of top 21 rated players ever, with date their best ratings were first achieved. Frunzedz (talk) 10:34, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough—the assertion in the article that "one way to compare players of different eras is to compare their Elo ratings" is unsupported by third-party sources (indeed, it is contradicted by Elo's own opinion) and is an example of WP:OR in the same way your table would be, so I have removed it completely. You are right in insisting that we be consistent in applying our own policies. Cobblet (talk) 10:58, 2 October 2013 (UTC)

Raymond Keene

What do you think about the recent edits at this article? Is it really proper to reference such a sensitive WP:BLP issue with a blog? Best, Toccata quarta (talk) 17:25, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Not really. I think all of the recent plagiarization accusations could be sourced to the Chessbase article. Sasata (talk) 18:01, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Also, the new stuff is not far from a repeat of the material already on there, so there needs to be some pruning. Brittle heaven (talk) 21:52, 13 September 2013 (UTC)

Absolutely. This article has serious WP:BLP issues right now, and suffers from WP:UNDUE weight and imbalance problems. (In the entire article the plagiarism claims chapter is the only one with subsections, greatly distorting the layout and TOC for the article.) I know that Keene is strongly disliked by many people and the article can reflect that, but it's primarily a hit piece now. The editor who added the negative material recently had done this back in 2009 as well, and there is some discussion on his talk page about issues with those earlier edits. I cleaned some of it up back then, but I don't have the time or stomach to try to fix the article right now. I hope someone else can work on it soon, but if not I will get to it when I can. Quale (talk) 17:27, 14 September 2013 (UTC)

There continue to be WP:BLP issues at Raymond Keene. I trimmed some of the plagiarism claims that clearly don't pass the muster for bios of living people, but it still needs more pruning. Issues include undue weight, a blog used extensively as a source, and repetition of the same claims noted by Brittle heaven. Quale (talk) 10:56, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

Pawn structure definitions are incomplete

Seems that there is progress being made! Thank you. Please see Talk:Backward_pawn Rook2pawn (talk) 13:13, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Tiger Lilov

His name is Valeri, not Tiger. But I cannot move the page because the title Valeri Lilov has been protected from creation. What to do? MrsHudson (talk) 14:31, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

An administrator should be able to help. But an article about this person was deleted before, see Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Valeri Lilov (2nd nomination), so I don't know if there is justification for bringing it back. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 19:33, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

IM's usually get a short article, but we do have to be careful about our sources, and stick to neutral language and verifiable facts. Clearly he is a self-publicist. MaxBrowne (talk) 23:33, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

No reason, I AFD'ed the article. Good call, B73. This kid just wants a Wikipedia page and the other 2 AFD's and "salted" re-creation aren't stopping him. Speiss67 (talk) 20:34, 15 October 2013 (UTC)

Heads up (2)

One things: New article, found some mainstream relliable mediar source: Chess_on_Yahoo!_Games. Two things: Lets get some eyes and ears on the Tiger Lilov A.F.D., there is a mass sockpuppet attack going on from Lilov's supporters. Fishface gurl (talk) 23:31, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

That newspaper article is not a reliable source! None of the "facts" in the Wikipedia article are corroborated by it. If better sources aren't found the article should be deleted. Cobblet (talk) 23:36, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

This is a work in progress. No need to shout. I found some other sources. Please try to be more helpful and help construct, much love. Fishface gurl (talk) 23:58, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

upper and lower case

In Queen's Gambit Accepted, an editor changed a lot of things to lower case. I reverted the edit, but he changed them back, citing the MoS. Someone please look at this. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 20:01, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

• I have reverted him twice now, and will stop now before I am accused of edit warring. The WP:MOSCAPS policy that Primergrey is citing is quite clear here in the WP:NAMECAPS section: "Proper names of specific places, persons, terms, etc. are capitalized in accordance with standard usage". Standard usage in chess literature for openings, as well as "White" and "Black" being used as nouns is to treat them as proper nouns that are capitalised. In contrast when "white" and "black" are being used as adjectives they are not capitalised. Sjakkalle (Check!) 20:44, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

All is well. Cobblet (talk) 21:02, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

Sjakkalle, as long as this is being discussed, are we sure the adjective-vs.-noun criterion is the rule that works how we want? Perhaps. But is it so simple and straightforward? Can you look at these examples and confirm for me which you think is better ...

1. "Joel Benjamin was White in that game." (vs) "Joel Benjamin was white in that game."
2. "Joel Benjamin took White in that game." (vs) "Joel Benjamin took white in that game."
3. "I have Black next round." (vs) "I have black next round."
4. "The White move 1.e4 [...]" (vs) "The white move 1.e4 [...]"
5. "The best White idea in the position was Ne5." (vs) "The best white idea in the position was Ne5."
6. "Timman quickly countered White's plan." (vs) "Timman quickly countered white's plan."
7. "The White opening 1.f4 [...]" (vs) "The white opening 1.f4 [...]"

(In #6, doesn't "White's" modify word "plan" thereby it is an adjective?)

Ok, Ihardlythinkso (talk) 19:09, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Actually, in the first three cases "was", "took" and "have" are copula verbs, so "white" is an adjective and should remain uncapitalized. "Took" and "have" are colloquialisms of course and should be avoided on Wikipedia; but even "Topalov played black" is likely correct—compare the expression "to play dead", where "dead" is clearly not a noun. I haven't extensively checked the literature to see whether everyone does what I've just said, but a quick Google search of 'site:theweekinchess.com "was white"' shows that at least Mark Crowther adheres to that convention. In cases 4, 5 and 7 the latter is undoubtedly correct in my mind, but in my own writing I prefer "White's move 1.e4" and "White's best idea" to avoid any disagreement over the correct capitalization (and yes, it is a bit clearer.) In #6, clearly a player's name is being replaced ("Timman quickly countered Karpov's plan") and capitalization is necessary. Cobblet (talk) 19:20, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Why is a proper name like "Karpov" the determining subsitution? What if the other player was unknown, or an unnamed computer program, or a team of players with no label or title? Isn't your subsitution and conclusion therefore arbitrary? Ihardlythinkso (talk) 20:04, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

It need not be a proper name: in that situation "White's" is replacing a noun or a noun phrase ("the Latvian radio listeners'"), so it is a noun; hence the capitalization. My conclusion is no more arbitrary than the convention itself is in the first place. (You see why this bugs copyeditors who aren't familiar with chess literature!) Cobblet (talk) 20:12, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

"Topalov played black" is likely correct—compare the expression "to play dead", where "dead" is clearly not a noun. Again, you're picking and choosing your own substitution. Why can't the substitution be instead "to play Frankenstein"? Or "to play Santa Claus"? It seems to me that this is arbitrarily picking a substitution that is lower-case and then drawing a conclusion from it. While another conclusion can and would be drawn from a different and equally valid substitution. Ihardlythinkso (talk) 20:12, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

No, because in your two cases the meaning of the word "played" has changed: it is no longer a copula or linking verb, but a transitive verb. "Topalov played black" means "Topalov played with the black pieces", but "Topalov played Frankenstein" means "Topalov played against Frankenstein." Cobblet (talk) 20:19, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Some cases may require a few moments of thought, but I think Cobblet's answer is accurate. I also agree that the possessive "White's move" is slightly preferable to "white move", not just to avoid capitalization controversy but also because it seems a bit clearer. Sjakkalle (Check!) 19:35, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I know sentences can always be rewritten and reconstructed so that a clear reference to player is created. But that is often not how players talk or write, and as a result there are many cases in articles how players talk and write. (And in many cases, like "The White opening ..." vs "The white opening" it is perfectly encyclopedic without rewriting or reconstructing.) Rewriting or reconstructing doesn't confirm or solve the issue re noun-vs.-adjective criteria, it just side-steps or dodges the criteria whether valid rule or not. If side-stepping or dodging the issue is the "rule", then we shouldn't be talking about "adjective-vs.-noun" criteria as rule. The reason I have added to this topic discussion is because the talk is about application of "noun-vs.-adjective" as the criterion or rule we s/b using for determining. Thus my examples. Saying we should dodge the issue is tantamount to saying we should delete this thread and back up to where we were before it (i.e. confusion and inconsistency). Ihardlythinkso (talk) 19:43, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Nobody is suggesting that we dodge the issue, so for every case you have provided I have given you what I believe to be the correct capitalization. That being said, any potentially disputable capitalization of "White" and "Black" is distracting to the reader and is best avoided whenever possible. Cobblet (talk) 19:54, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

To be clear, I think the decapitalized version is correct for #2 to #5 and #7, the reference is to the color of the pieces, therefore the decapitalized adjective is right. For #1, I believe that both "White" and "white" are acceptable, but that they give slightly different meanings. "Joel Benjamin was White" means Joel Benjamin was the player who is referred to as "White". "Joel Benjamin was white" means he was playing with the white pieces. Sjakkalle (Check!) 20:05, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I appreciate both you guys' followups. I need to digest all the feedback details (will take time). (I got As in English, but never heard of a 'copula' verb, for e.g.! I think the WP:CHESS criterion re White-vs-white s/b simple enough so any Project members can reasonably easily apply. So I'd like to review and summarize in time, if I can. Thx again for your inputs to my examples.) Ihardlythinkso (talk) 20:25, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

You're welcome. I hope other editors will take note of this discussion, because I hope it will clear up any confusion over the issue. A strong grasp of grammar is essential for formal writing. Cobblet (talk) 21:11, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, both. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 21:46, 30 September 2013 (UTC)

I am loathe to criticize the conduct of two of our finest and most tireless contributors, and it's no secret that the MoS is one of the most commonly misquoted and incorrectly applied Wikipedia policies; but when a well-meaning but inexperienced editor does a copyedit, could we please have a look at the actual changes before summarily reverting them? To inadvertently throw out good fixes along with bad ones not only implies an assumption of bad faith on our part, but is detrimental to the quality of the 'pedia. Cobblet (talk) 00:55, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I realized that I was reverting everything, but there were a lot of cases of changing to lower case, so I thought it would be easiest to undo the whole revision. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 01:15, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

This has happened before. The last time this nonsense came up it was User:SMcCandlish. And I agree with Bubba73. When a user makes an edit with many bad changes and a few good ones, I don't feel obligated to take heroic measures to try to rescue the small amount of satisfactory edits. Revert it and let the original editor fix his work. Quale (talk) 04:27, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Agree w/ Bubba and Quale (and disagree w/ Cobblet). To pick through would put an unnecessary and unfair burden on the clean-up editor. The adding editor s/ be encouraged to take responsibility and back up and re-do. Ihardlythinkso (talk) 18:47, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm not really editing here any more, I just logged in because someone e-mailed me that I've been mentioned by name recently in an blame-casting way, and upon seeing it, I feel like responding, because it was unnecessarily personalizing. Some of you should seriously think twice before you again "personalize" any style-related issues, on talk pages or in edit summaries, by finger-pointing at specific editors and/or by using hostile characterizations like "nonsense"; you may find out the hard way that WP:ARBATC#All parties reminded and WP:ARBATC#Enforcement by block can be used by zealot admins to sanction you severely for it. (I resigned from editing WP over this matter, actually, as I was falsely accused of doing this and unjustly topic-banned from all style discussion for a month, only to find that I had no effective recourse against this lone-wolf administrative abuse by an admin who harassed me for three months.) "Rouge admins" aside, WP:ARBCOM, WP:AE and WP:ANI have, starting in early 2013, gotten suddenly very serious about bringing a rain of shit down on people who, in style debates in particular, keep talking about the alleged characteristics of the editor and their intent instead of the validity and utility of the edits in a neutral and collegial manner.

Anyway, you need to separate in your mind three different issues, because they are in no way related.

1. Blanket "clobber it all!" reverting is a heavy-handed tactic, and explicity advised against by WP:REVERT, etc. It has a very strong tendency to piss people off and to lead to protracted pointless disputes that get heated beyond reason. If you do not have the time to dig through an edit of that well-meaning user's rather minimal magnitude, especially given that "the decapitalized version is correct for #2 to #5 and #7", etc., then you need to flag the edit you disagree with as a new talk page discussion and ask others to look into it, not just undo it yourself, as you do not have the attention span to exercise the kind of critical judgement and editorial care required to handle such editorial responsibility. Likely not your fault; we all have real lives, and few people can devote enormous amounts of time to such editing. However, some people can, and on major topics like chess they usually will, as evidenced by this very thread, in which the good vs. questionable edits by that editor have been sifted through in great detail, but after he/she was unnecessarily treated like vandal and then repeatedly antagonized here with wording that definitely transgresses WP:CIVIL and arguably WP:NPA, too. Why is your time and energy mystically worth more than another's? Chess-specialist editors are the ones insisting (to many other editors, quite unreasonably) on some weird exception to English grammar rules, so the onus is firmly and entirely on chess-focused editors to work around normal-English-using editors perfectly rational expectations, not the other way around. Sheesh. You are not princesses, so put your damned tiaras away and behave like adults for a change, not children playing make-believe.
2. You do not have consensus or authority to force other editors to use your non-standard capitalization, simply because chess writers like it.
   1. There is no broad consensus agreeing with [some] chess fans that things like "White" should be capitalized on Wikipedia, and MOS says not to do this sort of thing for a reason. Wikiprojects do not trump general site-wide guidelines. Specialists in any and all avocational or professional areas have a strong tendency to "big-note" things in their field by capitalizing them as a form of emphasis (technical, hobbyist, industry-specific and marketing-oriented writing are all notorious for it), and MOS actually explicitly says not to do this, across the board, at WP:MOS itself and again at the WP:MOSCAPS subpage, and has said so for years with virtually no controversy except from a highly disruptive crew of about a dozen editors in one zoological subfield. The short version is that if every field got to capitalize on WP everything they like to capitalize in their own specialist publications, virtually everything on WP would be capitalized, and WP would look like it was written by illiterates or Germans (the German language capitalizes all nouns, as English used to do, too, until the transition from what we now call Early Modern English to Modern English, partway through the Victorian era, with the practice almost totally abandoned in mainstream, formal English before 1900).
   2. All the arguments for such capitalization have been examined in detail and totally shredded. There no defensible rationale for it on Wikipedia. See the WP:SSF essay for a rather harsh deconstruction of all of the supposed reasons for trying to force any particular topical field's in-house style (e.g. chess publications) on a general purpose encyclopedia; they're simply logcally bankrupt ideas as applied to Wikipedia. It's been several years now, and no one has been able to clearly refute a single point made by that essay, and it raises about 50 of them. Game over. Drop the stick. Move on. The fact that most non-chess people and even some chess people disagree with your aggressive penchant for capitalization of in-game terms on Wikipedia, and your aggressive, snobby, snotty proselytization of this capitalization, does not make their position "nonsense", it simply means they have a difference of opinion (which they've more than adequately backed up) and they greatly outnumber you. SSF spells out really good reasons for that opposition, while your camp's arguments mostly amount to a WP:ILIKEIT stance and a sore misinterpretation of WP's "follow the sources" position (which means follow the sources on facts, not follow your preferred sources' formatting and grammar choices; WP derives it style from what mainstream sources on English writing say to do, modulo what makes sense for WP's unique needs, not what some specialist field does when their preference conflicts with normal practice and confuses our readers). Your behavior on this issue is also a clear WP:OWN problem. Chess fans do not have a magical right to control the wording and style of chess-related articles. WP:CHESS is simply some editors who agree that they want to work on chess articles, nothing more (just a "group of editors", in WP:CONSENSUS's exact words) and have no more authority than any other editor on the system. Wikiprojects really, really need to get this through their dense collective heads (and I say that as the creator of several projects! >;-) The undeniable fact that lots of people do not agree with the chess capitalization stuff, even aside from MOS having a generalized rule against that sort of thing, is the very reason some of you are so tired of the issue coming up that you fly off the handle about it and bite people's virtual faces off. Step back and think about this with heads. This undeniable fact is a clear, self-proving demonstration that you do not in fact have Wikipedia consensus to force other editors to capitalize your way. Please re-read that sentence until it sinks in. It cannot be escaped. The appropriate response is to try to reach a community-wide consensus at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style to undo the rule against using capitalization as a form of emphasis; good luck with that, or finally stop WP:BATTLEGROUNDing over it. The fact that you all know that MOS isn't going to budge on this is why you're engaging in these WP:OWN tactics that you hope no one will call you on. It's well past time to let the vast majority of Wikipedia editors write the way people normally write in the English language, not how you prefer to write on chess-specific websites for chess-player convenience.
   3. They're not proper names. One important subset of this matter is that use of "White" and "Black" or "the Queen's Gambit", capitalized like that, in chess writing is emphatically not an example of the establishment and use of proper names, but of specialists capitalizing certain important and conventional things to emphasize them because they like to do so as a reading aid. Period. If you think it's proper-naming, you need to take a linguistics class. Seriously, most of you have no idea what you're talking about at all on this; just the fact that a substantial portion of the above material is a bunch of confused noise about whether something should be capitalized based on whether it's a noun or an adjective demonstrates this clearly. (Hint: proper names are always capitalized in English regardless what grammatical role they're playing, i.e. what "part of speech" they are in elementary school terms – we don't write "Texas" but then switch to "texan" or "texas-related"! Some languages, including Spanish and French, do this, but not English.) "George Washington" is a proper name. "Final Fantasy IV" is a proper name. "The Chicago Bears" is proper name. "Azerbaijan" is a proper name. "Azerbaijani" is proper name in derived adjectival form. Learn this, know it, feel it. Simple designation of one of two or more items or sets of generic game equipment or of generic competitors, sides or positions in a game, is not a proper name. We do not capitalize stripes and solids in pool, nor the neutral position, offensive referee's position and defensive referee's position in collegiate wrestling, nor offense/offensive and defense/defensive in any form of football or similar game, nor serving and receiving in tennis, etc., etc., etc., ad nausem, throughout the entire world of sports and games. The same goes for specific sequences of moves like "the queen's gambit". Yes, we all know chess books like to capitalize this. Football books like to capitalize well-known plays, but we do not do it here. Skater mags capitalize skateboarding tricks, but we do not do it here. I can spit out examples like this all day long. Types of shots in billiards are often capitalized in pool and snooker publications, but we do not do it here. Shall I can continue? As far as I can determine, the only camp on Wikipedia who still persist in the patent delusion that the terminology used in their game is a special snowflake unlike all the other terms in all the other games in the history of the world, are certain chess editors who pretend they cannot understand that Wikipedia is not a chess specialist publication and does not have any sane reason to force chess subculture quirks on people who are not among the 0.01% of WP readers who are hardcore chess aficionados. Even the card games projects who were doing this have dropped that "nonsense" (how do you like your preferences being called that?); see the usage at, e.g. Texas Hold'em, where no one is trying to capitalize things like "royal flush", "ace", "spades" and "the turn" any longer. It's just you. It's the very definition of WP:TE, a shining, stellar textbook case of doggedly persistent, disruptive, possessive, filibustering obstructionism. Get over yourselves and your petty "we're going to win at all costs because we're Right" obsession that is distracting you from actually making the encyclopedia better for people other than you, meanwhile making it very, very hard for other people to do so on these articles either and hounding them away with hostility. Having a preference to capitalize here is not "nonsense" and it's not fair to you to call it that; it's simply based on incorrect assumptions and interpretations of linguistic facts, of the purpose of capitalization of such terms in specialist publication, of how WP operates in regard to style vs. facts in external sources, how consensus works here, what wikiprojects are and how much authority they have (hint: zero), etc. Arriving here initially from chess circles with a preferences for capitalizing because you're used to it isn't "obsessive", either. It's to be expected. Going on a years-long hateful warpath about it is really, really damned obsessive however. Preferring not to capitalize here isn't "nonsense" either, they way some of you labelled it. It's following site-wide consensus at MOS to refrain from abusing capitalization for emphasis, to write plain English, to not violate WP:NPOV by forcing weird style quirks from one minority sector onto all editors, and to not violate the KISS principle and principle of least astonishment, i.e. to abide by the consensus to avoid confusing our majority, non-specialist readers. NB: This all goes far beyond sports and games. For example, the majority of music and pop-culture magazines capitalize the names of genres of music and film/television, but we do not do it here, because we know it's grammatically dicey and it leads to too many problems, rampant capitalization of all sorts of other things chief among them. There was a time only a few years ago when there was seriously a proposal on the table here to capitalize things like Armadillo. I shit you not. I don't mean the article title, I mean in constructions like "He ran over an Armadillo and a Dog the same day". Allowing one topic area to abuse capitalization (or hyphenation or whatever), to appease tendentious editors, who won't stop beating the dead horse or agree to just drop it, leads to editorial chaos again and again in short order. This happens inevitably because, say, 1 out of 10 people who read Wikipedia want to change something it or add something to it now and again, and 1 out of 50 want to become at least semi-regular editors, but maybe only 1 out of 1000 are linguists, professional editors, English teachers, or other grammarians by training and deep experience. Consequently, lack of grammatical and stylistic expertise (for a general audience, not the hobbyist publications you focus on as chess nuts) combined with an earnest desire to follow perceived Wikipedia writing norms, leads to people seeing Important Things Capitalized Because They're Important in articles withing the scope of some "capitalize or die!" camp's, and they start doing it elsewhere, mimicking the pseudo-convention they've run across. It's happened here again and again for years. Enough already.
3. BRD can be a valid approach, but it was certainly not taken here. All the above said, WP:BRD is also a well-established process, and a revert is not necessarily totally unjustifiable, if one somehow accepts the notion that whether or not to capitalize "White" and "Black" in chess articles is actually an unsettled matter, that somehow chess is utterly exempt from MOS (it's not; there is no such thing as a "local consensus", e.g. at a wikiproject or an article talk page, that trumps a broader site-wide consensus – this has not only be affirmatively decided by ARBCOM on the basis of WP:CONSENSUS and other policies as then written, this "wikicaselaw" was explicitly codified as new policy at WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, several years ago. But let's just pretend for a moment that a case can be made that lower-casing these words might actually have been questionable. BRD could be cited, and the change reverted, even perhaps at the cost of the unquestionably good parts of the complex edit. It just has to be done with the message that the revert is provisional, that good faith was assumed, that the edit raised questions that need to be resolved on the talk page, and that the editor is asked to explain the edit and its rationales. But that didn't happen here. Some chess editors feel they have the right to act with righteous retribution, and dismissive assumptions that anyone who isn't aware of or who disagrees with their "convention" is necessarily stupid or a chess-hating troll. The message you actually sent was, basically, "go fuck yourself and your nonsense, and while we're ranting go fuck SMcCandlish too (now that we don't think he's here to defend himself any more), and fuck anyone else who dares to mess with our pages and contradicts our God-given Holy Style Rules of Chess." It's extremely off-putting to any well-meaning reader-editor who expects, and edits to help ensure, that WP articles with follow basic English grammar rules, not oddball, made-up preferences no one but chess fans follow in their own rarefied books. It makes you like unhinged, obsessive jerks who are not here to write an encyclopedia, but to hijack it to advance some weird agenda. It's totally unreasonable to react with blatant, flippant, even jaded and eye-rolling dismissive hostility to people who cannot sanely be expected to have somehow guessed that you are pushing a style convention from specialist publications, despite MOS saying not to capitalize like this. If could be too harsh to say "you should be ashamed of yourselves", but you definitely need to rethink your approach here, both behaviorally and goal-wise. If that and the rest seem "personalizing" to you, a) you deserve it, and at least two of you know I definitely mean you, and b) I don't work here any more, so I don't care, and you are not newbies so you're not immune to be bitten or trouted. I really don't like being finger-pointed at, behind my back, as some kind of editorial "nonsense"-monger, by people trying to push illegitimate agendas that violate consensus and multiple guidelines and policies, and to have this happen in the course of your verbally abusing another editor and trying to make your obsessive soapbox matter his/her problem instead of yours. You're being grossly tendentious, disruptive and dickish, and you damned well know it. Ultimately, if it's really so important to you to capitalize these words that you'd threaten to go on editorial strike or quit the project over it, as a few zoological editors once did, you're sorely, sorely confused about why you are here at all, and need to read WP:NOTHERE, WP:5THWHEEL and WP:DIVA. Also, anyone who responds with "TL;DR" and keeps on being a tendentious twit on this issue needs to go find another hobby, because anyone who cannot handle 6 or 7 paragraphs of very clearly written text is simply not competent to work on an encyclopedia-editing project, sorry.

I'm logging back off and leaving WP again, so feel free to whack away, fap fap fap, at whatever straw man you'll likely erect in response to this in my absence. The fact that I will come out of wikiretirement and return to this ethically foundering project to run logic and moral-high-ground circles around people who drag my (real) name through the mud, in their petty attempts to make aggressive but invalid points against other editors and shamelessly drive them away, should probably be interpreted as a strong indication that I'm a poor target for such tactics. I have enough friends here with my e-mail address that doing so is unlikely to go unnoticed and unaddressed. Let sleeping dogs lie, and expect to get barked at if you keep kicking them. Way more importantly, quit abusing the good faith and intentions of other editors just to run your tinpot fiefdom, and think about the good of the project and its readers instead of what you like for your oh-so-precious chess fan reasons. No one else gives a damn, seriously. You must understand this by now. You've been acting no better than the Pokemon fanwankers and other devotee in-crowds who keep trying to turn large swaths of Wikipedia into Trekkie-pedia and Soccer-pedia and Tolkien-pedia and Progressivism-pedia, and against whom the community has had to write new essays and guidelines against trivia, in-universe writing, etc. There's already one against what you're doing, at WP:Specialist style fallacy. This is not your encyclopedia and chess articles, they're all of ours. I may not work on WP directly any more, but I still depend on it as a utility, and I still will speak up when I have a stake in its future being more free of abuse by special interests. "Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time." — SMcCandlish  Talk⇒ ɖ^⊝כ^⊙þ Contrib. 20:32, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

Ha! You're a fine piece of work. Cobblet (talk) 21:12, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

He's still a childish, thin-skinned, pretentious twit. Wikipedia will certainly miss him. Quale (talk) 00:18, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I liked the argument that body parts like "knees" aren't capitalized just like "human body" isn't capitalized (of which knees are a part), and similarly since "chess" isn't capitalized then neither s/ Queen's Gambit be. (Do ya think he still thinks that? If the article title went his way and got moved to "Queen's gambit", would that mean the acronymns are now "Qga" & "Qgd" "qga" & "qgd"?!) Ihardlythinkso (talk) 00:25, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

This is beside the point, but I would say that the acronyms "QGA", "QGD", "KID" and so forth are not appropriate on Wikipedia. Cobblet (talk) 08:11, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

They are in Glossary of chess, and the glossary is on WP. (Do you suggest to remove from the glossary?) Ihardlythinkso (talk) 10:43, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

No, just that one should not expect anyone to have to repeatedly consult said glossary while reading a chess article on Wikipedia. Cobblet (talk) 04:48, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

Out-of-context. 100 percent of the time any of those acronyms are used in chess articles, they are either pre-defined (longer names given first ala MoS), or wlink'd. (So no glossary consultation is needed, let alone "repeated" ones. (The only reason the topic of glossary was introduced, is that you suggested banishing those acronyms from WP, and I asked for clarification if that meant from the glossary as well.) Ihardlythinkso (talk) 05:13, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

I meant to say that such acronyms are in my opinion inconsistent with writing in a formal encyclopedic tone, and unnecessary in a medium with no space constraints. I'm happy they appear in the glossary. Cobblet (talk) 06:14, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

OK, gotcha. (They're in common use in articles; perhaps you want to propose they be not used. For me, I think they are part of the chess lexicon [found in book titles, etc.] and along with longer-form specification and wlink's to respective articles can't be inappropriate. But whatever -- consensus may be different & I'll go w/ consensus; but we won't know consensus unless you make proposal, etc.) Ok, Ihardlythinkso (talk) 11:22, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

I found in MOS that acronyms based on lower-case words are still in caps. (So I was wrong about "qga", etc. -- it'd still be QGA & QGD even if it were "queen's gambit accepted/declined".) Ok, Ihardlythinkso (talk) 03:38, 20 October 2013 (UTC)

At last, this project gets bombarded with some waffle. Toccata quarta (talk) 05:25, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

First, I do not refer to any person as a "twit" on Wikipedia. There is no need to enter into a mud-slinging match if your view on the matter has all the objective merits. However, I understand that the posting, much of it a rant against the chess WikiProject, is outright provocative and will attract that sort of response. The style of the writing in SMcCandlish's post makes it difficult to glean what the substantial arguments are, but I think I identified one that probably deserves an answer. It is the assertion that terms such as "Queen's Gambit Declined" are not treated as proper names outside specialist chess literature, and that the capitalization is only a style convention used by specialists. That is incorrect. Mainstream literature (by this I mean literature that is not specialized into chess) discussing these terms are rare, but those that I found, such as Encyclopedia Britannica, also follow this capitalization. And for good reason, "Queen's Gambit Declined" is the name of a specific chess opening. "Queen's gambit declined" says that something was declined by a gambit belonging to the queen. So treating them as proper names appears standard even outside of chess literature, and normal English grammar for proper names is to capitalize each word in the name. This is analogous to writing "Royal Air Force" (the name of a specific air force, referring to the British one) instead of "royal air force" which could be any air force with ties to royalty. Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:57, 4 October 2013 (UTC)

I greatly respect that you do not refer to any person as a twit, but this individual is made a twit by his own actions on Wikipedia, not by what I write. Of course that suggests that there was no need for me to write it, and that is true. (Maybe writing it makes me a twit as well.) His arguments were refuted six years ago on Talk:Queen's Gambit, and neither the argument nor the arguer have become any more appealing in the years since. But you are of course right about the technical question, and your approach to the social challenge is more wise than mine as well. Quale (talk) 00:58, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Having seen SMcCandlish's post for a few hours before I responded to it gives me an advantage. It is a little arrogant of me to be critical of those who react to it in a more forceful manner.

Still, in most cases of clear misbehavior (and accusing us of "clobber it all" mentality, implying that we are too stupid to understand English, and casting aspersions of us being "grossly tendentious, disruptive and dickish" are all examples of misbehavior), a minimally firm but formally polite response is often quite adequate. It makes it instantly clear to any casual outsider who is being disruptive if any characterizations are being made by one side only. Usually people who behave with rants and casting of aspersions here, behave that way elsewhere too, and that type of behavior slowly erodes their support within the community. At some point the remaining support is far too weak and uninspired for them to avoid severe sanctions when the history of all past behavior is brought up. Sjakkalle (Check!) 07:29, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Articles on chess titles - merge?

I propose that the articles National Master and Chess master be merged into Chess title. They deal with essentially the same subject matter. In addition, the article needs to be "globalized". For example, the title "Expert" to refer to a player slightly below master strength is purely a USCF thing. The term "Expert" is not really used in this sense outside of the US. MaxBrowne (talk) 00:13, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree that the whole series of title articles needs to be looked at, including possible merges, and also in relation to the points that I flagged up on the Wikichess Project Page, which I will repeat here for convenience;

Chess title and FIDE title link back to each other and appear to contain some crossover/duplication. Would these be better combined into one article? Also, both articles focus on performance based titles while 'International Arbiter' and 'International Organizer' titles appear to have been ignored, even though they are both Chess and FIDE titles.

A few strands to consider, so no small task. Brittle heaven (talk) 12:37, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree with merging National Master and Chess master into Chess title, and believe that the latter should also contain a summary-style section on FIDE titles. Cobblet (talk) 14:03, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

OK as per WP:BOLD I'm going to transfer the material from National Master to Chess title and set up a redirect. Might take a few edits on Chess title to make it flow coherently.MaxBrowne (talk) 15:02, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Sicilian Defence, Katalimov Variation

No reliable sources in the article, and no significant coverage in reliable sources that I know of. Other opinions? Cobblet (talk) 18:09, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

Don't think it really needs its own article, the material can be included in the main Sicilian Defence article. MaxBrowne (talk) 00:29, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 00:40, 30 October 2013 (UTC)