Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess/FAQ/Etiquette

message: ==Chess openings: thread 1==
I've recently been involved in some AfD's that have brought up game guides as a reason for deletion.  Now me, I think a lot of the things that are considered game guides by people are a bit odd, and in my seeking for what articles are in Wikipedia, I came across :Category:Chess openings and found it has over a hundred entries.
Many of them are unsourced, though I'm sure there are sources, so I don't object to that.  But what arguments do you have for them being encyclopedic content?  List of chess openings I get, but does Ruy Lopez's chess openings really deserve 18 individual entries?
Now I hope I'm not interpreted as trying to make a WP:POINT or being disruptive.  That's why I'm not Proding or Afding anything, but I am seeking some information as to why people believe so many of these articles exist, or should exist.  Anyway, hoping to see some thoughts here.  FrozenPurpleCube 18:01, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Notability

message: I've recently been involved in some AfD's that have brought up game guides as a reason for deletion.  Now me, I think a lot of the things that are considered game guides by people are a bit odd, and in my seeking for what articles are in Wikipedia, I came across :Category:Chess openings and found it has over a hundred entries.
Many of them are unsourced, though I'm sure there are sources, so I don't object to that.  But what arguments do you have for them being encyclopedic content?  List of chess openings I get, but does Ruy Lopez's chess openings really deserve 18 individual entries?
Now I hope I'm not interpreted as trying to make a WP:POINT or being disruptive.  That's why I'm not Proding or Afding anything, but I am seeking some information as to why people believe so many of these articles exist, or should exist.  Anyway, hoping to see some thoughts here.  FrozenPurpleCube 18:01, 26 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Chess openings: thread 1

message: As list of chess openings shows, there are a lot of short articles on sub-variations of the Ruy Lopez and the Sicilian.  There are even such articles for Nimzo-Indian, Alekhine, English, Benko gambit, and others.  Most of these articles are stubs of only one or two paragraphs.  We need to decide whether to keep the articles this way or to merge them back into their main articles.  Bubba73 (talk), 16:48, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Chess openings: thread 2

message: While I do not believe deleting opening articles (see this AfD) is the way to go, there could certainly be some cleanup - how about merging and redirecting some of the stub articles on irregular openings to a single Irregular Chess openings article?  Should I be WP:BOLD and go ahead and do it?
Articles I have merged;
2...Bf5 Defence & Baltic Defense
Barnes Opening & Gedult's Opening
I've also redirected Épine Dorsale to Italian Game. 
Articles I suggest could be merged into the above article.  Note: I have not suggested openings that arise from another (i.e. Blackburne Shilling Gambit which if anything would be merged into Italian Game).
#Alapin's Opening
#Amar Opening
#Anderssen's Opening
#Balogh Defense
#Barnes Opening
#Benko's Opening
#Clemenz Opening
#Desprez Opening
#Dunst Opening
#Durkin Opening
#Englund Gambit
#Fred Defence
#Grob's Attack (might be notable enough to have its own page?)
#Kangaroo Defense
#Mieses Opening
#Napoleon Opening
#Parham Attack
#Polish Defense
#Portuguese Opening
#Saragossa Opening
#Sokolsky Opening
#St. George Defense
#Van 't Kruijs Opening
#Ware Opening
Comments welcome. EliminatorJR 
First off, I suggest moving this to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess so that the Chess Project can be more properly aware of the situation, and maybe you can get some action done. This is just too out of the way a place to discuss it.
Beyond that, the biggest problem I have with your proposal is that it has no reasoning behind it, and that you haven't even looked at the real problem behind the articles, namely that so many of them are nothing but algebraic notations of chess openings, with at best a brief mention of some person playing it. I have yet to be convinced of the encyclopedic value of that. Especially since there so many chess openings with names and codes. There's currently 196 odd articles in this category.  Do we want that to grow even further? FrozenPurpleCube 14:02, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Chess openings: thread 3

message: Here is an example (from Queen's Gambit) of how chess opening articles should be written:
The Queen's Gambit is one of the oldest known chess openings, as Lucena wrote about it in 1497 and it is mentioned in an earlier manuscript in Göttingen. During the early period of modern chess queen pawn openings were not in fashion, and the Queen's Gambit did not become common until the 1873 tournament in Vienna. As Steinitz and Tarrasch developed chess theory and increased the appreciation of positional play, the Queen's Gambit grew more popular. It reached its peak popularity in the 1920s and 1930s and was played in 32 out of 34 games in the 1934 World Chess Championship. Since then Black has increasingly moved away from symmetrical openings, tending to use the Indian defences to combat queen pawn openings. The Queen's Gambit is still frequently played, however, and it remains an important part of many grandmasters' opening repertoires.
The difficulty of course is that for many of the obscurer openings where it is easy to bash out a diagram and moves and general opening strategy, it is much harder to reliably source historical information on the opening or opening variation. If that is the case, then sadly Wikipedia cannot adequately cover the topic. Carcharoth 15:21, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Chess openings: thread 4

message: User:Theandrewdotcom seems to have begun creating an article for each of the 500 ECO chess opening codes listed at List of chess openings. See his contributions list. So far he has created articles for 200 of the 500 codes.
I would question whether each of these codes are notable enough for their own article and suggest they should be merged into List of chess openings. I have left a comment to this effect on his talk page. 
I think it might be appropriate to propose the deletion of each of these newly created articles but first seek the opinions and knowledge of participants of this project. Adambro 20:45, 10 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Chess openings: ECO code

message: Next one up (I'm going in alphabetic order here) - Alekhine's Defence (3 pages).  Shouldn't be too much of a problem.
Looking ahead - issues I've thought of....
*Queen's Gambit; separate pages for Accepted and Declined, or one article?
*King's Indian Defence; one article?
*Sicilian Defence; one article for mainline and one for Dragon, or one article?
Thoughts?
EliminatorJR 00:17, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: New Merge Pages

message: Regarding the Opening Stubs subcategory of Chess Openings:
* Grunfeld 4.Bf4 needs to be deleted, since it has been merged.  But that is being held up by a AfD.
* the two Pirc stubs need to be merged. (done)
* QGD, 3...f6 needs to be merged (done) (added:) and QGD, Mainline Orthodox Defense.  Someone mentioned that they were working on QGD.
* Ruy Lopez subvarations - all of these need to be merged. -- done except for Exchange and Marshall
* Sicilian subvarations - all of these need to be merged. - done!
The rest of the stubs can stay. 
* King's Indian Defence, Four Pawns Attack is listed in the stubs, but it seems to be more than a stub.  One problem is that it has one section that simply says "to be developed".  Bubba73 19:46, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Assessment of the situation regarding opening stubs

message: * I've done a hopefully uncontroversial merge: I've redirected the one-line article Lengfellner System (which wasn't categorised properly and so didn't appear in opening stubs) to French Defence#Early deviations and added that one line into this section.
* A user has again undone the redirection of Épine Dorsale to Italian Game. Per the discussion on trhe talk page, the user appears to be saying that the Dorsale isn't an opening, but a series of moves ending up at the position after 3.Bc4, that can be branched off at any time (i.e by Black playing 1...e6 to go into the French). Personally I can't see how that makes it any different from an opening, i.e the Italian Game. EliminatorJR 10:40, 30 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge Épine Dorsale in Italian Game

message: ==Thread 1==
I ran across one of the pages about opening chess moves and was startled to find opinions being given for responses to the moves.  Describing a common move, defense, or opening is one thing - but the majority of articles at :Category:Chess openings introduce original research and unverified claims.  Who says if a response is "offbeat" or "lively"? And it's How-to info at best and pure OR at worst, to suggest a best response or list the variety of ways one might respond to an opening. After the guff I have to put up with while dealing with Pokemon related articles, I'm surprised that a topic that this has been allowed to succumb to so much OR and gamecruft. ΖαππερΝαππερ 02:32, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: No Original Research / Sourcing

message: I ran across one of the pages about opening chess moves and was startled to find opinions being given for responses to the moves.  Describing a common move, defense, or opening is one thing - but the majority of articles at :Category:Chess openings introduce original research and unverified claims.  Who says if a response is "offbeat" or "lively"? And it's How-to info at best and pure OR at worst, to suggest a best response or list the variety of ways one might respond to an opening. After the guff I have to put up with while dealing with Pokemon related articles, I'm surprised that a topic that this has been allowed to succumb to so much OR and gamecruft. ΖαππερΝαππερ 02:32, 5 January 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Thread 1

message: I've just expanded Sicilian, Dragon, Yugoslav attack, 9.Bc4 considerably. I believe that this is a large part of sicilian theory and that enough data / information exists to make this a separate page. i've taken the section on yugoslav with 9.bc4 on the main sicilian page and merged it with this article as well as to expand on the ideas, strategies and tactics that exist. I plan to add more theory tomorrow / this week. Hopefully we can get to these previously mentioned 1 paragraph pages that provide minimal help. I can take care of the yugoslav lines! Revision should be made to the main Sicilian page to limit redundant information now that we have an informational B77 page to link to.What is the feeling of providing an illustrative game ? are we keeping the pages to strict variation and strategy or are we allowing an example to further the readers understanding ? i'm new to wikipedia editing but not to chess, please help me with any criticism so that i may better convey my chess knowledge.
I've just re-wrote King's Indian Defence almost completely. so much more information is added and variations. i was going to do this to the Sicilian page, but apparently controversy exists. PLEASE check out the two pages i re-wrote and let me know what you guys think! Are many other people contributing to rewriting these pages and adding more detail to these one paragraph articles ? please let me know whats going on and where to focus. thank you for your time, hopefully i'll get some feedback. Matthew Yeager 04:33, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Thread 2

message: I have added some new claims to a couple of articles, namely to Sicilian Defence and King's Gambit, using a Finnish chess book as a reference. Wikipedia:Verifiability says that it is perfectly ok to use foreign language sources but English language sources are of course encouraged. What do you think, would you like me to continue adding Finnish sources, as I don't really have an access to any English chess books? Can someone find books in English that can replace the Finnish references? I think that it is better to cite a book than a random web page, but do you think it is the same if the book is in a foreign language? --ZeroOne (talk | @) 15:51, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Foreign language sources

message: ==Racism shadows?==
Note: I copy this post from the talk of the Checkmate article, I think it is important to the whole project and should be disccuss.
I am traslating a part of this page to spanish, I get a question. Why every checkmate are from whites to blacks?
This fact is not trivial I think.
It has two points:
#NPV.-Novice readers are going to think the blacks always loose, or often they loose. In chess white starts and they have a few advantage at the beginning, but every chess player knows this is not trascendental to the game result.
#Metaphor.-Why in an encyclopedia are we going to reflect to humanity white are best than dark?
I invite you to be more accurate to the wikipedia philosophy.
Thanks GengisKanhg (my talk) 20:03, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Other

message: Note: I copy this post from the talk of the Checkmate article, I think it is important to the whole project and should be disccuss.
I am traslating a part of this page to spanish, I get a question. Why every checkmate are from whites to blacks?
This fact is not trivial I think.
It has two points:
#NPV.-Novice readers are going to think the blacks always loose, or often they loose. In chess white starts and they have a few advantage at the beginning, but every chess player knows this is not trascendental to the game result.
#Metaphor.-Why in an encyclopedia are we going to reflect to humanity white are best than dark?
I invite you to be more accurate to the wikipedia philosophy.
Thanks GengisKanhg (my talk) 20:03, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Racism shadows?