Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess/Archive 1

message: How should the openings like Modern defense be named? In some talk-page someone stated that the last word (Opening/Defence/Attack) should be capitalized and no one argued. I'm only concerned about the word "defense" - defense or defence? The naming scheme should be consistent. My vote goes to Defense. Many are named as Defences but Defense easily wins the Googlefight and List of chess openings lists way more defenses than defences. --ZeroOne 01:26, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I think that's right (just in case it's not clear to non-native English speakers: "defence" is British English, while "defense" is American English). It's important to be consistent within each article, but attempting to use only "defence" or "defense" in all articles may lead to fights (people can get surprisingly worked up about this sort of thing). Incidentally, see Wikipedia:Manual of Style#National varieties of English for more on this. --Camembert 18:58, 8 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Defense vs. Defence

message: On the article on the Queen's Gambit Accepted, there have been some edits and some reverts regarding the use of the male pronoun "he". The first one was made by an anon 64.230.179.10 which systematically replaced "he" with "it" . That looked so wrong that I changed it back. Later, User:Iansk made another edit taking off the "he"s in order to make the article gender neutral, . This one looks good so I at least will let it stay.
My use of the male pronoun is of course not to imply that only men and boys can play chess. Although Bobby Fischer probably would disagree, girls and women are most certainly capable of playing chess, and are quite capable of defeating the likes of myself (I lost two consecutive games against girls, aged 13 and 11, last November) and even Kasparov (him at the hands of Judit Polgar). The use is because I want to imply that the players are people and not machines, and because nearly all chess books I have read use "he" when referring to the players. I feel that "he" has almost become a gender-neutral pronoun for use when the gender is undetermined.
Question: Should we use the male pronoun "he", the female pronoun "she", or avoid pronouns altogether to keep the chess articles gender neutral? The use of "it" is the only pronoun I will oppose. Sjakkalle 06:23, 18 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pronouns, should we use male, female or neutral? 

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

message: These articles need some help. If anyone is familiar with these organizations and wants to fix them up, that would be great.  American Chess Association should be in category:Chess Organizations rather than just Category:Chess. That name was used by an organization back in the 19th century, but is currently used by a small group associated with the World Chess Federation.  The history of the old group is probably more interesting than the current group, but WP doesn't have anything about the original group yet.
World Chess Federation is usually used to mean F.I.D.E., but this article talks about an obscure organization out of Las Vegas headed by Steven Vaughan.  Apparently it is a real organization, but its fringe standing in the world of chess should be made clear. After the article is fixed it too should be added to Category:Chess Organizations.  Quale 19:36, 5 May 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup needed on [[World Chess Federation]] and [[American Chess Association]] 

message: I just stumbled upon Wikiportal Star Wars. I didn't know such portals existed but I think they are a great idea. So, how about creating a Wikiportal Chess? Unfortunately I don't have the time to do it myself. --ZeroOne 14:09, 29 May 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I (with help from Cjpuffin) started the chess portal. Check it out, post comments, and improve it as you see fit. — Bcat (talk | email) 03:31, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, great job! The portal looks very professional already. :) --ZeroOne 12:50, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Wikiportal 

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

message: Right now WP doesn't consistently use categories in the biography articles we have on chess players.  The master category is :Category:Chess players, with subcategories :Category:Chess grandmasters and :Category:Chess players by nationality.  Naturally the Chess players by nationality category is broken down further, but we're missing a lot of nationalities that we should have.  (:Category:Jewish chess players is also a subcat.  Strictly speaking "Jewish" is not a nationality, but there have been so many important Jewish players including many world champions, so I think this deserves a category and belongs as a subcat to Chess players by nationality.)
Here are my questions/suggestions.
#Currently many chess grandmasters are in both the :Category:Chess players and :Category: Chess grandmasters cats.  My suggestion is to put the GMs only in the GM subcat.  Then the master category can include notable chess players who played before the FIDE GM title was instituted in 1950 (remembering that the Czar named the original 5 GMs in 1914) and other notable chess players like Stanley Kubrick who were not professionals.  Would that be OK?
#We need more categories in :Category:Chess players by nationality.  Unfortunately as an American I'm ignorant of some of the subtleties.  :Category:British chess players probably can include the English and the Scotts, but I'm not sure what to do about the Irish and the Welsh.  There don't seem to be too many notable Irish players, though.
#What should we do with the former USSR?  Should the category be USSR chess players?  Soviet chess players?  Something else?  Just categorize them in their home republic?
#How many cats by nationality do we want to put on a single player?  Boris Spassky can be categorized as a Russian and a French chess player.  Many strong U.S. players are from former Soviet republics.  I think it's OK to categorize these players in both (or sometimes 3) cats that would apply.
Any thoughts? Quale 21:33, 7 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Categories for chess player biographies 

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)
replies: text: Thank you for your answer. I only can add is good for readers to learn to analyse the chess board from both player`s view, so they can analysed his or her own position and enemy`s one. --GengisKanhg (my talk) 23:38, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I think this kind of concern is the obnoxious extreme of the politically correct movement, and has no place affecting chess conventions. Period. Themindset 10:55, 11 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Racism shadows? 

message: I would like to tell you about a message I had put in every talk of chess article in all wikipedias (all languages).
Title: IN ENGLISH: International wiki chess aid
Text:
Hi everybody in the World interesting in chess and wikipedia.
This is an international chess aid new for making chess boards.
#English speakers wikipedist had been made a template for displaying chess boards easily at . This template uses images from english wikipedia. They are using it in a lot of articles.
#The images used by this template had been copied to wikimedia.COMMONS and put it in an appropiated category: 
#Then, now the template can be used in a local new template without any change (only you meaby change the template`s name and obviosly you should change the template invocation) .
#Spanish speakers wikipedist already start to used it at  an others articles.
#The template explanation is in its talk page.
#If you want to change the image(s) is not very difficult, you only should add them to commons and change their names in the template (with out changing the already existance images, of course). 
#A large disccuss about the template, like flexibility, special applications (like board with arrows), choose board appearence, and much others questions are in the english talk (discussion) of the template.
We hope you enjoy this colaborative work an make more and more chess articles in every wikipedia(s) you work.
Thanks.
(If there are mistakes, I am sorry, my english is not my natural language)
14th June 2005 aprox. 22:00 hrs GMT User gengiskanhg from english and spanish wikipedias.
--GengisKanhg (my talk) 21:21, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  International announce about chess board template 

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

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

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

message: Hi, I'm a member of the Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team, which is looking to identify quality articles in Wikipedia for future publication on CD or paper. We recently began assessing using these criteria, and we are looking for A-class, B-class, and Good articles, with no POV or copyright problems. Can you recommend any suitable articles? I know Chess is a featured article, any others? Please post your suggestions here. Thanks a lot! Gflores Talk 17:40, 2 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think you should check out Portal:Chess and its archives of Selected articles, players and games. :) --ZeroOne 22:29, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Articles for the Wikipedia 1.0 project 

message: I created Template:Chessgames player for linking to players' stats at ChessGames.com in a uniform way. Please comment or just begin using the template. Also remember that we also have Template:Fide. :) --ZeroOne 22:16, 13 March 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I thought you deserved a comment for your work—thanks.  I've been using your template. 165.189.91.148 21:49, 14 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  ChessGames.com template 

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

message: I'm wondering if Troitzky line might need to be renamed to something like "Two knights versus pawn endgame".  If so, then some material from checkmate and perhaps endgame can be moved to that article.  What do you people think?  Bubba73 (talk), 04:46, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, I did it - moved to the new article Two knights endgame and added some general info.  Bubba73 (talk), 23:55, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Troitzky line 

message: I have a request for a modification to the Chess diagram templates to allow resignation to be depicted. The image could simply be the current King, rotated through 90o. --GW_SimulationsUser Page | Talk 19:35, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Hmm. How would you use that? I have never seen such a notation elsewhere. Isn't the description below the image enough? You can write "The position at which black resigned" or something similar. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 00:13, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Template update 

message: Something that would really be nice is if we could have a position in a diagram and then the user could click to step through moves and see the result in the diagram.  Is anything like that available?  Bubba73 (talk), 23:11, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, that would be nice. However, that would require some very clever javascript, a Java applet or some server-side support. Maybe the WikiTeX Chess support will some day be implemented to Wikipedia, too. However, I'm not too confident in seeing it here anytime soon. It has already been available for years. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 00:11, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  What would really be nice 

message: Are chess positions and moves copyrighted?  Does it matter whether the position is a composition or from a game?  Are moves from a game different from a checkmate with the queen?  Bubba73 (talk), 02:17, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Chess positions, moves and games cannot be copyrighted. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 00:03, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  copyright? 

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

message: It seems to me that we need some large articles on chess, but it would take a lot of work.  Larger articles such as "positional play in the middlegame" or a comprehensive "rook and pawn endgames" (even though there is rook and pawn versus rook.  I've worked on a lot of endgame articles, but they are biased in favor of small articles of a few screens because that is about all one person can write.  Some of these small articles are practical (e.g. Lucena position) but others are mostly esoteric (e.g. the Troitsky line, which has been incorporated into Two knights endgame). 
My point is that there are a lot of small articles and that the chess articles are (as a result) biased towards that, many of which are esoteric.  Should we try to work on larger, more comprehensive articles, or would that be too large of a project (practically writing a book in some cases), and in which case we should just refer the reader to other sources (i.e. printed books)? Bubba73 (talk), 23:54, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The larger discussions and articles should be put into Wikibooks:Chess. Wikipedia is, after all, just an encyclopedia. "Positional play in the chess middlegame" doesn't really sound like an encyclopedia topic to me. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 00:01, 21 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Large articles needed? 

message: Hello. The WikiProject Council is currently in the process of developing a master directory of the existing WikiProjects to replace and update the existing Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory.  These WikiProjects are of vital importance in helping wikipedia achieve its goal of becoming truly encyclopedic. Please review the following pages: 
*User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory, 
*User:Badbilltucker/Culture Directory 2, 
*User:Badbilltucker/Philosophy and religion Directory, 
*User:Badbilltucker/Sports Directory, 
*User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory, 
*User:Badbilltucker/Geographical Directory/United States, (note: This page will be retitled to more accurately reflect its contents)
*User:Badbilltucker/History and society directory, and
*User:Badbilltucker/Science directory
and make any changes to the entries for your project that you see fit. There is also a directory of portals, at User:B2T2/Portal, listing all the existing portals. Feel free to add any of them to the portals or comments section of your entries in the directory.
The three columns regarding assessment, peer review, and collaboration are included in the directory for both the use of the projects themselves and for that of others. Having such departments will allow a project to more quickly and easily identify its most important articles and its articles in greatest need of improvement. If you have not already done so, please consider whether your project would benefit from having departments which deal in these matters. 
It is my hope to have the existing directory replaced by the updated and corrected version of the directory above by November 1. Please feel free to make any changes you see fit to the entries for your project before then. If you should have any questions regarding this matter, please do not hesitate to contact me. Thank you. B2T2 21:11, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Sorry if you tried to update it before, and the corrections were gone. I have now put the new draft in the old directory pages, so the links should work better. My apologies for any confusion this may have caused you. B2T2 23:57, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Project Directory 

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

message: I think we need an article on the different tie-breaking systems used, or a summary-style article linking to individual articles.  Sonneborn-Berger system already exists (as a stub), but there is Median, Modified Median, Cumulative, etc, that need to be in an article (or articles).  I'll probably eventually get around to doing them, but if someone is looking for something to do, this would be a good topic.  Bubba73 (talk), 18:46, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: PS, there is also Buchholz system, a stub.  Bubba73 (talk), 18:51, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  tie-break systems 

message: One thing I think should be added, probably to the Game clock article, is an explanation of the various delays - Fischer, Bronstein, etc (if there are others).  Bubba73 (talk), 01:00, 5 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Well, i did it.  Bubba73 (talk), 23:07, 20 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Fischer delay and Bronstein delay 

message: Hi all,
I have a question regarding links to chessworld.net. In September, one-purpose accounts User:Juicy Plums and User:Son of Zeus started to add them in huge quantities. I tried to stop them, and had a long discussion with them and with User:Kingscrusher (Tryfon), who is the webmaster of chessworld.net and appeared to defend them (he looked like their puppetmaster, read the discussion on my talk page). The negotiations were hard and ended with an agreement in the sense that Tryfon will not add the links in the future and I will not remove them. Then after two months or so, a new one-purpose account User:No65560 appeared and started the link-bombing again, in the same style as the late Son of Zeus/Juicy Plums/Trifon. Later, two "normal" users started a conflict about this: User:Eagle 101 removed all the links as linkspam and User:LittleOldMe added them back because he thinks that they are legitimate. 
Now, my stance is slightly against the links, at least in cases where there is already a link to Chessgames.com. But this is only a weak opinion. What I think is that we should discuss it now and decide: Either
*Chessworld.net links are legitimate and should stay and we will defend them (and perhaps create a template similar to the Chessgames template), or
*We will tolerate them but not support them, or
*We will regard them as spam and combat them.
I should add that the ChessWorld.net article has been deleted (PRODed, not AfDed).
What is your opinion? --Ioannes Pragensis 16:51, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: My vote: regard links to chessworld.net as spam and combat them. Chessgames.com is much better resource. Just consider a random page which has links to both sites: Semyon Alapin. Information about him on chessgames.com is much better and rich in content then on chessworld.net. There is no reason at all to put links to chessworld.net if you can link to corresponding Chessgames.com page instead. Andreas Kaufmann 19:37, 17 November 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  I don't know much about it, I haven't seen the links.  I thought about removing this link from chess strategy and tactics yesterday, but I didn't.  Bubba73 (talk), 00:06, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

text: I (weakly) lean towards deleting the links. However, I do have a problem with giving chessgames.com special treatment. It may be the best games resource today, but will it always be? p.s. Thanks Ioannes Pragensis for alerting me to the existence of this project page. Rocksong 10:17, 18 November 2006 (UTC)

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

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

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

message: Since there were no new comments since 22nd, allow me to close the discussion. The results are:
*Where there is a link to chessgames.com, we will treat the links to chessworld.net as SPAM and combat them.
*Where there is no link to chessgames.com, the discussion has no clear conclusion. Therefore I think that we should TOLERATE links to chessworld.net in such cases.
*As Rocksong pointed out, we should be open to change the decision in the future, because the quality of game servers can change with time.
Thank you all for your time and wish you happy editing.--Ioannes Pragensis 16:35, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Results of the discussion 

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

message: I think Xiangqi does not deserve Featured Article status for the following reasons:
*It has only 12 references - not good enough for an FA.
*The sections on "Xiangqi tournaments and leagues", "Rankings" and "Xiangqi and computers" are too short.
*In contrast, some sections, including "Rules", go into unnecessary detail.
Therefore, I suggest Xiangqi undergo a Featured Article Review. If it is delisted, consider nominating it for GA status - I think it meets the GA criteria.
--J.L.W.S. The Special One 03:12, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Requesting Featured Article Review for [[Xiangqi]]. 

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