User talk:Gregorytopov

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Welcome!

Hello, Gregorytopov, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few good links for newcomers:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  Herostratus 05:06, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

You seem to have made a remarkable recovery from your grisly death at the hands of evil feral monkeys, Mr. Topov. That being that case, I look forward to your applying your skills to improving the 'pedia. Cheers! Herostratus 05:06, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] re: Rook

The only change I made to the article was to correct a broken internal link. Feel free to edit the article however you see fit. The changes you propose seem warranted. Maxx573 01:52, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] re: Stanley Random Chess

Well, it ought to be able to describe the basic premise of the game in a short paragraph.

Is Stanley Random Chess a Nomic-like game (such as Mao appears to be) where the rules are obscure, or like Mornington Crescent (game) (which has no rules, but pretends to?

What is the relationship between Stanley Random Chess and the Stanley level of play for Chessmaster? Are moves in Stanley Random Chess ever made at random?

If Stanley Random Chess is a parody, you should say so. If some of the statements in the article, for example that the game has a long history, are constructs designed to further the enjoyment of the parody, you should say that (and not attempt to extend the parody into Wikipedia, amusing as that might be). If the game really does have a long history, you ought to be able to cite some good references.

Off subject, but is there a strategy for optimizing play against a totally random chess player? Just wondering. Herostratus 07:00, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Re the SRC AfD

Hi Gregory. Listen, I'm sorry if I pulled the trigger too fast on the Stanley Random Chess thing. Perhaps we should have talked first... but we get so much stupid vandalism here (which your article ephatically is not) that we move pretty fast.

You look to be a smart cookie and I'm confidant that you can become an outstanding Wikpedia editor (if you want to be). I'm impressed by your respectful non-whiny attitude to the whole thing. It is in no way a mark against you if your first article is found to be not quite the right kind of article for Wikipedia. I've had an article deleted too.

Here's what you can do: if the article is deleted, you can re-create it, but all statements must be accurate. You have to decide if you want the article to exist, given that it must say "SRC was invented in 200x but pretends to a earlier origin for humorous purposes..." or whatever, given that explaining the humor may deflate the humor, which I think is a problem with the Mornington Crescent (game) article.

There is a Wikpedia rule against re-creating a deleted article with substantially the same content as the deleted content. But its OK if the article is substantially different and addresses the concerns in the original deletion discussion (you should point this out on the new article's talk page).

Or, if you want to work fast, you can edit the article now and perhaps win the day.

BTW, I found the whole thing greatly amusing. I myself am tempted to humor (and in fact I have inserted a small joke in a couple of my articles, which no one has found yet). But, you know, its all serious and stuff here.

Well, nothing like being thrown into the deep end. I look forward to your future contributions. Herostratus 07:45, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Stanley Random Chess

Hi, thank you for your comments regarding the afd on this page! My objection comes from the fact that in order to be considered a legitimate topic for a Wikipedia article there needs to be several independent reliable sources - journal articles, news articles, mentions in major websites, books, etc. - describing it. Wikipedia is not designed to be a promotional tool, but rather to describe things that are already well-known elsewhere, and it does not appear that this article is well-known outside of a website that doesn't even have an article itself! Verifiability refers not to any source at all, but to sources that have a fact-checking process and are reasonably expected to be reliable: see Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Cite sources for the relevant policies on this. It is, however, always nice to see new contributors, so I hope you try your hand at editing articles! Regards, Ziggurat 19:13, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

In response to your questions: notability of articles has a guideline (Wikipedia:Notability), but this is not official policy. The policy that I'm referring to is the one I've linked to above (Wikipedia:Verifiability), and its corollary Wikipedia:Reliable sources. Basically, if an article does not have these reliable sources (as I said above, journal articles, news articles, mentions in major websites, books, etc.) then it's impossible to say what is true and what is heresay. It's a strict bar, but as you're no doubt aware Wikipedia has had issues with information coming from unreliable or un-fact-checked sources, so most of us try to be as careful as possible. For the record, I do not believe that SR Chess is a hoax at all, just that it doesn't have sufficient external notoriety to be an article right now. If/when it is published in a book of interesting chess variants, or a reliable newspaper article is written about it, or it is described in a chess-related journal, I'd quite happily vote for it to be kept. Regards, Ziggurat 21:29, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] More Random Chess

Hello. I don't really think you can blame people for not taking the trouble to check things when you've made it such hard work for people to find any useful information - I had to browse around a few sites before I could feel sure that SRC was purely a web-based game, let alone that it wasn't a complete hoax. And citing game data on a site that requires registration and a working email address hasn't helped your case much, particularly when it turns out to have been misrepresented.

Sorry if I'm coming across as harsh, anyway. It's really because the AfD discussion pressed a lot of my buttons - I'm a regular, long-time, serious player of Mao, Nomic and Mornington Crescent, so a bunch of people dismissively saying that their chess game is clearly on the same or a higher level, in both merit and active players, is rather hard to take. I'm sure SRC is a fun game, but it really doesn't look like it has the notability to merit a place in Wikipedia, from the sources you've cited.

And yeah, Boardgamegeek is good, particularly when deciding what games to drag along to other people's houses... Do you know Brettspielwelt as well? --McGeddon 23:51, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Nomic's easily my favourite because it allows a lot more scope for genuine, functional creativity - making up lots of little rules and game-mechanics and then watching what happens when they intersect. It does need a good set of players, though; Mao's much better for playing casual games, for breaking out a poker deck and quickly dragging some people in.
Although yes, Mao is almost impossible to start in isolation, which is a shame. I tend to play a simpler variant that starts without any secret rules, and lets all the players in on it (although you can still play it to confuse bystanders, very easily). Very easy to teach people, and a good way to kill idle gaps between longer games.
SRC sounds fun, anyway. I think I'd probably prefer just playing ruleless chess, that a lot of my enjoyment of Mornington Crescent is the creation and reinforcement of tiny rule ideas (or running jokes, if you like), but I'm sure SRC has its own angles once you're playing. Is there any way to play it on a physical chess board? I suppose dice.
As for the signature thing - you don't need to type your user ID after the four tildes, that's all. --McGeddon 00:45, 26 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Yes more Random Chess

Thank you for cleaning up the article. I voted Keep, even though I was the nominator Articles aren't usually deleted unless there's a pretty clear consensus to delete, so the article has a fair chance to be live.

As for the ghosting of your name after your sig... that's weird. Is there anything strange in your User Preferences (at very top of page)? Anyway you can get a quick answer to stuff like this at the Wikipedia:Help desk. Herostratus 23:10, 25 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Even more random chess

Hi, I'm so glad to see that (unlike 99% of article creators whose creations were deleted) you have managed to understand how consensus works so well. Generally the outcome of a debate is determined by comparing who has the stronger arguments (generally based on the policy backing up an argument amd/or common sense, such as in the case of copyright violations). Although AfD is not a vote, it has elements of strawpolling, so strong opposition to deletion also has to be factored in. From what I understand, the random chess article didn't have any reliable sources that could back it up, and the miniscule (was it 10?) number of players didn't help much either. Since policy dictates that our articles be independently verifiable, the article had to go. (Otherwise if we make an exception, we start heading down a slippery slope, even if you didn't mean to advertise -- which was a secondary concern, IMO.) I can userfy the article for you later today (I'm a bit pressed for time and am on a rather lousy internet connection at the moment), but bear in mind that people have been penalised for using Wikipedia as a webhost before. If you really want to preserve the article but don't want it hosted on Wikipedia, I can save the wiki/HTML source code and send it to you. Johnleemk | Talk 05:44, 30 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] User:Gregorytopov/Stanley Random Chess

The article has been moved to your userspace. Bear in mind that users have been penalised before for keeping deleted content in their userspace, but as long as you don't use Wikipedia as a webhost (i.e. only editing content in your userspace while not helping out in the encyclopedia space at all), you should be fine. You can look at Wikipedia:Verifiability and Wikipedia:Reliable sources for further information. Those obscure variants can be nominated at AFD, which has a bunch of nice (if verbose) instructions. Johnleemk | Talk 09:14, 1 April 2006 (UTC)

Are you intending to resubmit this as a Wikipedia article at any time in the future? WP:USER advises against indefinitely archiving a page in your personal user space. --McGeddon 22:58, 26 September 2007 (UTC)