Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess/Archive 3

message: for an opening article -> here. EliminatorJR Talk 13:52, 15 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Another AfD

message: A discussion is brewing at Talk:Deep Blue - Kasparov, 1996, Game 1 on how best to cover the 1996 and 1997 matches, in particular the games. Sjakkalle (Check!) 15:04, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Now there is an overarticle Deep Blue versus Garry Kasparov, with two subarticles.  Bubba73 (talk), 04:05, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deep Blue - Kasparov matches. Debate on coverage 

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)
replies: text: But then there are eleven (if I counted correctly) articles that give the details.  The Queen's Gambit is a very large topic.  Bubba73 (talk), 15:37, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

text: I agree, the Queen's Gambit is one of the better attempts at a page.  Not perfect, but at least in general the right idea.  It has sources, it gives context and history.  I do wish a bit of exposition on Luis Ramirez and Göttingen were in the article though.  Yes, people can just click the wikilink, but it doesn't mean you can't say anything about them.  Or heck, what was that 1873 tournament in Vienna that it became popular at?  There isn't even a link to it.  Somebody might be perplexed, and without even a link to know what it was.  Leaving them to do what?  Look elsewhere?  At the least, mentioning that it was part of the Weltausstellung 1873 Wien would be nice. (Might be worth mentioning this tournament there, adding the same to List of strong chess tournaments. FrozenPurpleCube 21:39, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  And if all of those eleven subarticles were put into the main article, it would be largely moves and strategy, which you said is what you don't want.  Most of the articles on openings are not large enough to have multiple sub-articles giving the details.  Bubba73 (talk), 00:57, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Then perhaps they don't need to be covered on Wikipedia, but removed, or if the content is valid, perhaps transwiki'ed elsewhere, such as to Wikibooks.  If all you can do is describe the moves and strategy, I'm sorry if this continues to offend you, but there's no real way you can get past WP:NOT#IINFO.  And what do you think of my other suggestions though?  Would it be worthwhile to describe the circumstances of the tournament?  FrozenPurpleCube 04:04, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

text: I notice you're saying once again that you can't agree chess articles should not contain algebraic notation.  The problem with that statement is, nobody is proposing that they shouldn't, it's a misconception on your part, and that of several other people.  What I have been saying is that algebraic notation, and that only, is a problem.  And you're right to say "what's so special" that Lucena chose to write about it.  But the thing is, the article doesn't explain that. It provides a bare statement, and sadly, his article doesn't provide any further context itself.  (Nor does your new article on Göttingen help much either.  (I'll assume that you intend to rectify that though, by expanding the coverage).  The key is to get beyond simple strategy and include significant context such as that.  If that's not possible, then that's when the page should be deleted, or moved to another site.   FrozenPurpleCube 14:11, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

text: In any case, while some moves may be necessary, is it truly necessary to list the moves of each and every variant?  Even when no context or notability can be provided?  It's one thing if say, Garry Kasparov can be referenced to say something on a given variant, but if he just played the opening at some point....then it'd better be a very important game on its own.  Which of course, means, documenting that reaction in the Chess world.  This is not something that has been done, instead the pages in this category are frequently just a list of moves with a bare bit of strategy to go with it.  If there's mention of some game, there's no context given for the game.  There's room for some chess openings on Wikipedia.  But the current setup?  It's not the way to do it.  The pages are of haphazard quality at best, and Wikifarming at worst.  (Sadly, many of the articles were obviously set up by a user who has already been accused of spamming Wikipedia with their external links).  It's all nice to say covering Chess openings is important, but not every opening needs to be covered.  And if they do, it needs to be something more than Staunton Gambit, which besides lacking references, provides minimal context, but is instead dominated by several example games.  Then there's the   Don't you think it'd be nice if the article explained why the games were important?  (And I find the links to the java re-enactments of the games as a bit troublesome in the way of EL anyway).  Then there's the [[King's Knight Opening which provides neither references, not any attempt at content beyond describing the move.  Doesn't even mention the Reti Opening which I see it was created as a redirect as well.  Perhaps this has just flown under the radar, but um, that's exactly my problem.  Too much has grown up without actually working at it.   FrozenPurpleCube 14:11, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

text: This may be hard for you to realize, but I am not actually hostile to the subject of chess, or chess openings.  I am, however, dismayed by the quality of these articles, as they lack encyclopedic content, references, and substance.  Some of them are probably somebody's idea of getting their content wider exposure by using Wikipedia.  Something has been needed to be done for a while, and yet...it has remained undone.  It's one thing to like chess, and want chess to be well-covered on Wikipedia.  But it's in need to be covered better, which doesn't mean more pages, but better ones. FrozenPurpleCube 14:11, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Historical description of chess openings 

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 Matthew_Yeager (talk). 1:26, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: 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)
replies: text: I like your additions to the KID, so personally I say, "thanks, more please".  If you want to improve the Sicilian Defence article I think you can go ahead.  Mediation has been requested (Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Sicilian Defence), but even if accepted I don't think it's likely to result in any changes to the article.  The "controversy" is just one unsatisfied person who really doesn't have anything nice to say about any chess content on Wikipedia at all.  On the other hand, if you don't enjoy the endless, mind-numbing tedium of having one individual who doesn't know anything about chess but who will not stop dictating to everyone else how they must write chess articles and what they are not permitted to include, you may want to wait a while. Quale 06:15, 18 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Articles Expanded, Input PLEASE! 

message: OK, I've taken into account the comments above.  here's the suggested merged irregular openings article, with diagrams and with the more notable opening keeping their own page.  And here's a suggestion for merging the individual Grunfeld articles.  Comments? EliminatorJR Talk 13:47, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: About Grunfeld, the Mos (I think) says that you should have some text above the first section.  So something like the first sentence and the first sentence of the third paragraph needs to be moved above the first section and the first section can be renamed "History".  The remaining sentence of the third paragraph can be rephrased and moved down to the section on the Exchange variation.  Bubba73 (talk), 15:08, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Irregular openings: I like this, with the idea that if openings get large enough they will get their own article.  I think that Parham Attack is big enough to stand on its own, and there is already a Parham Attack article with more information.  Bubba73 (talk), 15:16, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  The same thing may apply to Polish Defense/Sokolsky Opening.  The article probably has enough to stand on its own, but this could be a close call. Scratch that - I thought that Polish and Sokolsky were the same.  Bubba73 (talk), 15:19, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

text:  Alapin's Opening has its own article that seems to have more info than your new article.  It may be able to stand on its own.  There may be others like this.  Bubba73 (talk), 15:36, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

text:  Saragossa Opening can stand on its own.  We need to go through all of these, and check. Bubba73 (talk), 15:39, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

text: You need descriptions for the articles which link to main article.  Questions as to whether or not any article should have a sub-article are another matter, but a bare link is a bad way to handle it.  FrozenPurpleCube 16:55, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Strong oppose merging articles on irregular openings.  Reasons against include the fact noted by Sjakkalle several days ago that the irregular openings have nothing in common except that most of them are uncommon.  I also don't like the patchwork appearance of summary style articles in which some openings are broken out into separate articles and others get brief mention inside an irregular openings franken page (pasted together out of many dissimilar separate pages).   The current Irregular openings page treats the openings uniformly and is close to perfection in my opinion.  Strong support merging variations and subvariations into the parent opening.  On the other hand, I think summary style is ideal for treating important variations of a single opening.  For the Grünfeld, it makes sense to put its variations together and only split them out when a section becomes too large.  FrozenPurpleCube hasn't expressed nearly as much concern over the number of chess opening pages as he has dislike for the content of the pages themselves.  In my view, merging a few pages on irregular openings isn't likely to make Manticore much happier and will make chess openings coverage on Wikipedia worse.  Merging variations and subvariations into the parent pages will make Wikipedia better for everyone. Quale 17:32, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  To be honest, I wasn't suggesting this out of any desire to make FrozenPurpleCube happier - I genuinely think the number of opening stubs is too large and was looking at ways to reduce them.  It looks like the consensus is to go with single opening merges rather than this method, which is fine. EliminatorJR Talk 22:53, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: You are wise, because it is my opinion that making FrozenPurpleCube happier would require make the chess opening pages worse.  I don't actually think there are too many chess opening stubs, with the exception of the large number of subvariation pages that were created some months ago for linkspam purposes as has been repeatedly noted here (even long before the current dust up).  In general I find the goal of reducing the number of articles to be somewhat suspect in itself.  If you look at Amar Opening, I think the standalone article is much better than the cut-down section in ICOD#Amar Opening.  I don't really consider the Amar Opening article to be a stub.  The page probably is not capable of great expansion, but I don't think there's any need for it.  It's a short, complete, self-contained explanation of the most important information about this minor opening.  Not every page should be as long as Ruy Lopez.  (In fact Ruy Lopez probably shouldn't be as long as Ruy Lopez.)  I think that Wikipedia could easily have 200 or more good chess opening pages, but they should be grown primarily from the top down to provide a solid foundation.  Just glancing at MCO-14, I think Wikipedia should have a page on every opening mentioned in the table of contents (I think we have most or all of these now), and actually I see no reason Wikipedia couldn't have a good article on many of the entries in the substantially longer index. Quale 01:09, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  It looks like consensus is against the Irregular Openings merge, with good arguments.  As you say, the multiple sub-variant pages do need looking at though. EliminatorJR Talk 01:12, 24 April 2007 (UTC)

text: Once again, I must ask you to avoid personal attacks and comment on the content, not the contributor.  Your continued attempts to attack me do nothing to resolve any of the issues involved in these pages, and instead create an atmosphere of hostility.  This is not an appropriate behavior.  FrozenPurpleCube 17:33, 22 April 2007 (UTC)

text:  Quale, I see your point about the irregular openings not having much in common. One more thing though, is that most all of them are in A00 (for what ever that is worth).  So restating what I think is your opinion is that you support leaving the irregular openings as their own stub articles, but merging the sub-variation stubs back (unless they become large enough), right?  Bubba73 (talk), 20:12, 22 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Exactly.  EliminatorJR merged Gedults Opening into Barnes Opening, an excellent merge  because there's so little to say about Gedults on its own.  It seems to me that Barnes, on the other hand, is a poor candidate for merge into an irregular openings page.  For one thing, the redirect from Gedults Opening goes nicely to Barnes where the mention of Gedults isn't too hard to find.  If Gedults instead redirected to a long Irregular opening page, that wouldn't be as nice.  I think each of the 20 opening moves has enough intrinsic interest as part of the complete classification of all ways for White to start a game of chess that each one deserves a separate page.  Beyond that, all openings treated distinctly by standard opening references (MCO, NCO, BCO) need a page.  A variation of a top level opening should only get a separate page if there are enough WP:V verifiable things to say that it no longer fits well on the main page.  I would expect a page for the Sicilian Defence, Dragon Variation, but probably not one for the Caro-Kann, Fantasy Variation.  Anyway, that's just my opinion.  If the majority of the chess contributors on Wikipedia want the irregular openings pages to be merged, I won't like it but I'll certainly accept it.  Quale 01:09, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

text:  That looks pretty good to me.  Bubba73 (talk), 00:09, 23 April 2007 (UTC)

text: I support a merge, but currently there's too much information loss compared to the Grünfeld Defence page.  I didn't go over them line by line, but GRUN doesn't mention The Game of the Century (chess), for instance.  If a merge removes any information compared to the current pages, we should at least explain why things were left out (possibly on the talk page, since these explanations are typically too long for edit summaries).  Quale 01:09, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: Good point. I'll look at it tomorrow when I've got a bit of time. EliminatorJR Talk 18:43, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  The article is merged in now.  I Included the Game of the Century, and also expanded the 'other variations' to include a couple of other lines.  The only material from the original articles that has gone is where it would result in duplication.  EliminatorJR Talk 02:44, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

text: I am with Quale and most others here. I think the irregular openings from the Anderssen Opening to the Amar Opening are too different and unrelated to each other to make merging a sensible option, it just reduces the number of articles for no other reason than reducing the number of articles and does little or nothing to provide improved context or readability. But the various stubs on opening variations are in almost all cases mergable, and makes the coverage easier to read when it's on one page about the opening instead spread on several variation articles with just one paragraph. Sjakkalle (Check!) 06:06, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  Fair enough. I'll start looking at merging the opening variations (when I've sorted out the Grunfeld - see above!). EliminatorJR Talk 18:44, 23 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title: Merge articles