Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess/Archive 7

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Contents

Chess Template

Using Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser I have compared the chess related articles in:

I have added the template (without rating) where it was missing. Now theses three classes contain the same articles, grand total of 1874. When you create a new chess related article is created, please add the template and add it to the list of chess topics. Voorlandt 08:33, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

Portal:Chess

FYI to anyone monitoring this page, Portal:Chess has redlinks for all of this month's content. --BigΔT 20:40, 1 July 2007 (UTC)

Chess Query Language

I saved this article from a speedy (it was tagged as spam, which it wasn't, but it was certainly a copyvio) and tried to improve it. Feel free to take a look and add anything you can. Cheers, EliminatorJR Talk 23:57, 3 July 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject for chess players?

Well, the number of articles about chess players seems to grow and grow. Probably some 75 % of the articles in this project are player biographies. I apologize but I, for one, am not so interested in all these players. Here's just an idea: how about establishing a new WikiProject, as a sister project to this one, called WikiProject Chess players (or chess people/persons)? The Top- and possibly High-importance players could be included in this project, too. What do you think, is this project getting too large or can we still handle all the articles? Am I over reacting, is everyone else very fond of the player biographies? I don't actually know if any other project is separated like this but I think some might be. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 19:43, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

You mean like the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics? Personally, I like to keep things together in one project. Voorlandt 19:48, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Well, no, there is no WikiProject:Mathematicians. Actually, there's no WikiProject:Baseball players nor WikiProject:Ice hockey players and both projects have thousands of articles more than our project, so clearly my idea wasn't the best. But now that you pointed out WikiProject:Mathematics, their approach seems to be good. They have added a parameter called "field" into Template:Maths rating and they have a bot that keeps a list of articles by field. Maybe we could do something similar if someone is capable of/willing to run a bot. Or maybe we just don't need one and can get along with the current categories and the WP 1.0 bot. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 20:48, 21 July 2007 (UTC)

How about a workgroup for chess players within Wikipedia:WikiProject Biography? Carcharoth 21:40, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

King's Indian Defense

To whom it may concern: In all images on the King's Indian Defense page, the white king and queen are reversed and I also suspect that all of white's moves are reversed.---Blakjak664 01:09, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't see any obvious errors of that kind at King's Indian Defence, and no one has edited it since June. Bubba73 (talk), 01:40, 22 July 2007 (UTC)


Chess bios of players 2600+ players

Personally I think that is too many and too biased towards the present. Bubba73 (talk), 01:30, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
Perhaps; on the other hand, we have so many chess biographies anyway that adding these would probably make sense. youngvalter 02:10, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
And to add to that, it seems that every current major league baseball player has a bio, and that must be at least 700 players. Bubba73 (talk), 02:12, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
On the other hand, I don't recognize any of these names. Of course, I am of an older generation. Bubba73 (talk), 01:09, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Ah, but Eingorn's in his 50s. Chernin and Minasian both won USSR championships. youngvalter 02:28, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
I'm in my 50s too. Any winner of the USSR (or Russian) championship certainly deserves an article. I'm not so sure that everyone currently over 2600 should be included. Bubba73 (talk), 02:37, 21 July 2007 (UTC)
Here are the players who were at 2600 or above on 1/1/78: Fischer, Hort, Karpov, Korchmoi, Larsen, Ljubojevec, Mecking, Petrosian, Polugaevsky, Portish, Romanishin, Spassky, and Tal. As great as 2600 is, I don't think the players above are as notable as these players. Bubba73 (talk), 03:48, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Possibly the elo criteria is not the best one to choose who owns an article and who does not. I would suggest to use another criteria as "being in the top 10 at one point of history", which seems more dynamic and takes into account the elo inflation. Maybe we should start a special discussion aims at choosing the proper (set of) criteria ? Or maybe there was already this discussion somewhere ?
WP:BIO says about athletes: "Competitors who have played in a fully professional league, or a competition of equivalent standing in a non-league sport" are notable. In chess, almost everybody above elo 2500 or so meets this, so I do not see a reason why not include these persons. Moreover the 2600+ guys are almost always Grandmasters, and Granmasters are notable per WP:BIO again: "The person has received significant recognized awards or honors."--Ioannes Pragensis 07:19, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
OK then, let's do all 2500+, but I am afraid it will take a hell of a time... Also we run the risk that some very notable are forgiven, like some very great masters from the past. So I have another suggestion: let's start by all who where in the top 5 at some time, and when we have finished we start all who where in the top 10, then all in top 20, and so on... In this way we would start by the most significant ones, and we would be sure not to forget anyone. SyG 18:30, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
When I originally made the list, I did it to see how complete Wikipedia was(is). Fairly complete I would say, considering the amount of players that didn't make it into the list (that is the ones that Wikipedia already had). Also, some of these players are still very young, and it would be nice to keep the list and see which one of them become really notable. Others should already have a spot in Wikipedia (for instance Jeroen Piket). Either way, I think systematically adding people based on rating is a bad idea. If they are notable enough, they will get created at some point. Now that I think of it, another reason why I created the list, was the possiblity that some really notable players missed the boat. Voorlandt 19:34, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
I agree; we don't have to be so systematic about these biographies. So far I've been pleasantly surprised by the number of notable and semi-notable players we do cover, especially compared to what we had even just a year ago. youngvalter 01:30, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

Importance ratings - women's world champions, pre-Steinitz masters

Just thought I would add my opinion on a subject brought up previously. I don't think all female champions should be accorded Top priority, but I think the following three people do deserve Top status:

Also, the way pre-Steinitz players have been assigned Top status seems a little arbitrary - I'm not sure why Luis Ramirez de Lucena and Pedro Damiano are listed while Ruy López de Segura is not, for example. But I don't know much about any of them, so I'll let others decide what to do with them. youngvalter 20:12, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

  • I didn't check, but I may have been the one who set Lucena and Damiano to Top priority. Ruy Lopez not being Top was probably just an oversight, because I thought that everyone listed at World Chess Championship#Leading chess masters pre–1886 should be rated Top. That's only 16 articles, and I think it covers all of the Top importance chess bios from up to 1886, so I don't think it's too many for about 400 years of modern chess history. I'm not insistent on Top priority for these bios, so anyone should feel free to adjust as they see fit. Quale 20:24, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
  • To me, those who left behind chess-related writings deserve Top priority. But for those who didn't, it's hard to assess if they actually left a lasting contribution to chess, so maybe they don't merit the same standing. I've never heard of Paolo Boi, for example. youngvalter 02:19, 25 July 2007 (UTC)
As far as the women, Susan Polgar is listed as "high", but should she be "top" because of her involvement in popularizing chess? The general public probably has heard more of her than Judith. Just a thought. Bubba73 (talk), 01:42, 26 July 2007 (UTC)
That may be true in the United States, but I'm not sure her contributions are as well recognized elsewhere. youngvalter 01:10, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

Also noticed that Anand and Topalov are top-importance, but Khalifman, Ponomariov and Kasimdzhanov aren't. I suggest we make them all high-importance. youngvalter 18:07, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

A-class articles

I have been working quite a bit on the Bughouse chess article and would like to get it to A-class status. On this page Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessment, it is implied that A-class articles need to have a formal review. I can't seem to find the appropriate link. This question was also raised at Talk:Endgame_tablebase. As far as I understand, the review will have to happen within the Chess Wikiproject. See for example the Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Review. Does anyone know what how to set up such a page/procedure for the Chess Wikiproject? It also seems like the chess-template would have to be adapted. Voorlandt 08:40, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

I don't know, but we should find out. I thought about asking at the help desk, but I haven't done it. Bubba73 (talk), 14:27, 28 July 2007 (UTC)

Here is a discussion on the review process Wikipedia_talk:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessment#The_A-class. Basically, we need to choose between

  1. We create a formal review procedure
  2. We let users label articles grade A and when there is disagreement we discuss it on the talk page of that article.

I would very much like to hear opinions about this.Voorlandt 09:13, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I slightly favor #2, except that I think that an editor who has made major contributions to an article should refrain from giving it an "A". (In fact, the grading of anything above "start" should probably left to others.) Then if anyone disagrees, we will talk about it. A formal review procedure would be OK, but we have enough to do without spending time on a formal review. Bubba73 (talk), 14:36, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
One project which has such a review procedure is WikiProject Chemicals. Judging from here, it seems fairly simple to implement and wouldn't be too onerous. youngvalter 15:06, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
It is OK with me to have a procedure, but me might be OK without one. If we set up a procedure, I'll try to be involved. Bubba73 (talk), 15:16, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
Given the current discussions in Wikipedia_talk:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessment, it seems all this GA-class and A-class is something of a mess. In my opinion they should fix it somehow for the whole Wikipedia, before each WikiProject implements the solution chosen. Anyway we could say that A-class needs a review by a non-contributor, but that this review does not need to be burdensome.
Also, I would be happy that we establish clearly the difference between B, GA, A and FA for our chess project, not only giving examples for each category but also explaining why it cannot be in the upper category nor in the lower category. SyG 16:44, 29 July 2007 (UTC)
I like the ideas of youngvalter and syg, having a subpage for reviewing can be quite simple and effective. One advantage over the talk page is that the discussions on such a subpage will have more participants. Voorlandt 17:17, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I have set up a first draft for a review subpage Wikipedia:WikiProject_Chess/Review. I think the most important reason for having such a review process is that an article is brought under the attention of uninvolved editors, who can give an unbiased opinion. Please help and improve the subpage. Once everyone is happy with it, I suggest we start by reviewing the current A-class articles. Voorlandt 08:01, 2 August 2007 (UTC)

Just to get things going, I nominated three articles - the two that are A-Class already and one that was A-Class until it was demoted not too long ago. youngvalter 01:26, 3 August 2007 (UTC)

Template for chess openings

Probably this question has been asked for a thousand of times, but I cannot find it :-). Would it be possible/interesting/useful/stupid to build a Template for chess openings, so that all articles for chess openings have some common look/structure/sections ? I am currently working on some openings articles but I am a bit lost about how to make them evolve, especially as we are still far from having A-class articles on openings. SyG 11:14, 11 August 2007 (UTC)

I think that a template for openings would probably be useful. It could give the name, the distinguishing moves, the ECO codes, and a classification open/closed/semi-open/Indian/Irregular, etc. Bubba73 (talk), 14:14, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
Great idea, and considering there are not that many opening articles it could be done in a relatively short time (compared to the chess bio template which is missing on so many pages)!. It should have the possibility to include a characterising diagram such as the diagram on top of the Ruy Lopez article. Most templates also have an external link, like fide for chess bios, boardgamegeek entry for strategy games, imdb for movies, etc.. How about the possibility to add a link of chessgames.com, like http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessopening?eco=D03 (which is very informative imho). Voorlandt 20:05, 11 August 2007 (UTC)
I have made a draft template Template:Infobox_chess_opening. Please do make any necessary changes. Also I think it is best to wait to use it, until some others have seen this, and everyone agrees on the format and info that needs to go in there. Voorlandt 08:37, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
Nice one Voorlandt, especially as I am completely unable to create the fist line of the beginning of the start of a Template article myself! I have started to suggest some minor changes directly on the Talk page, if someone wants to comment on them SyG 10:07, 12 August 2007 (UTC)
Looks great. Let's go with it. Bubba73 (talk), 16:00, 12 August 2007 (UTC)


A sport or a game ?

Is chess a sport or a game ? ;-)

Don't worry, I do not wish to start again this hopeless debate. But on our project page we are stating that "The parent of this WikiProject is the WikiProject Sports." However I have not been able to find any reference to Wikipedia:WikiProject Chess under the so-called parent Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory/Culture/Sports, nor under Wikipedia:WikiProject Sports.

On the other hand, we are duly listed under Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Directory/Culture/Games and under Wikipedia:WikiProject Games.

So am I missing something somewhere ? Should we fight to go in the Sports category ? Or, as our original parent has abandonned us, should we console ourselves in the arms of our adoptive parent ? SyG 09:18, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

  • You deserve a reply, even if the reply is "I don't know". Actually, I don't know. Chess is a game and a sport. (When I play chess it's clearly just a game, but if you know what you are doing, it's a sport.) Do we know what difference this might make? Aside from the occasional person who wanders in (generally not associated with any project) to tell us that we're doing everything wrong and we must delete most of our chess articles and completely eliminate all use of algebraic chess notation from the rest, we are fairly self reliant. I hope this doesn't mean that we're created a walled garden inside Wikipedia, but I don't know how much outside assistance we require. Quale 15:37, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
  • The recent (failed) appeal to the Olympic Committee to include chess along with contract bridge as "mind sports" shows that most people do not consider intellectual games to naturally fall under the rubric of sport. A sport requires at least some degree of physical dexterity. (E.g., even video gaming would count as a sport.) Yes, there's a sporting aspect to all competition and physical conditioning is especially important for extended competition, but it's possible to compete in chess even if you're blind and completely paralyzed. Name any recognized sport in which that is true. IMHO chess, particularly considered as a whole as this tree of articles does, remains a game rather than a sport. --Wfaxon 16:07, 31 August 2007 (UTC)
OK then I will change our parent to Strategy Games instead of Sports —Preceding unsigned comment added by SyG (talk • contribs) 09:16, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Tagging all chess articles as part of WikiProject Chess

For information, I am currently asking the bot experts to tag all chess articles as part of WikiProject Chess, using the corresponding banner. If you have reasons to believe this is a bad idea, you are welcome to quickly give your opinion here or at Wikipedia:Bot requests#Tagging chess articles as in the scope of the WikiProject Chess SyG 06:44, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

  • See the first message on top of this talk page! Quite a while ago I have started doing this using the listcomparer of Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser. Namely I check if all articles in the category chess and subcategories have this template. I also use it to make sure the List of chess topics is complete. (I run this on a weekly basis). Ofcourse it would be nice if this could be done automatically every few weeks. Btw, you don't need to be an approved user of AWB to use the inbuild listcomparer. Give it a shot and you will see that we are very complete (maybe except for changes of the last few days). Voorlandt 07:08, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
    • Ooops! yes now I understand this tagging bot is exactly what you have done manually. Well, first greetings for your courage! I have never used AWB because I am a newbie (don't bite me then!), but I will probably try it soon. SyG 09:43, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

Chess diagram to include FEN with Javascript?

What do you think of improving the Template:Chess diagram to show the FEN string of the position, too? Maybe via a small "Show FEN" link so that it wouldn't look too distracting. I bet this can be done with fairly small effort using Javascript. Any JS wizards out there? —ZeroOne (talk / @) 12:52, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

How about something like this (maybe right aligned from the caption):

  FEN

Voorlandt 13:15, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

I don't think it is needed. Bubba73 (talk), 14:34, 16 August 2007 (UTC)
Including FEN would be fine - one way or another. --AndrejJ 11:08, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
Voorlandt: Yes, that's almost exactly what I had in mind. Now if only the FEN could be automatically generated from the diagram. —ZeroOne (talk / @) 15:51, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
Actually, even better would be generating the diagram from the FEN.└ VodkaJazz / talk ┐ 23:18, 5 September 2007 (UTC)
Indeed, it could be. The current diagram, however, is more human-readable than a FEN-string. Either way, it would be a good feature to have the FEN from the diagram and the diagram from the FEN. —ZeroOne (talk / @) 20:55, 6 September 2007 (UTC)
FEN2Wikipedia --AndrejJ 04:41, 7 September 2007 (UTC)

I just figured that Wikipedia doesn't support embedding JavaScript into its articles... which is probably wise. The next question that arises is if the MediaWiki scripting language can be used for a relatively complicated task such as this? —ZeroOne (talk / @) 16:15, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Do variations change ECO codes?

I've been doing some minor work on Ruy Lopez, Exchange Variation and it says "ECO code C68 examines these responses to 5.0-0: 5...Qf6, 5...Qe7, 5...Bd6, 5...Bg4 or 5...Qd6 ". My copy of the ECO volumes are the first edition, and there these are in C69 instead of C68. Do these change, or is the article in error? Bubba73 (talk), 14:33, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

  • If I'm reading it right, http://www.sahovski.com/other/index.php?other=5#C seems to say that C68 is correct. I'd be more confident is someone else could verify this, because I find the multiple conditions used to describe the codes confusing. Quale 19:47, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
    • That's right: C68 is 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 without 4.Ba4 and without 4.Bxc6 dxc6 5.0-0 f6 (the latter being C69). ECO codes have changed slightly since their inception, I believe. youngvalter 00:55, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

FAQ

Following a suggestion from User:Ioannes Pragensis on 8th December 2006 (!), I have created some sort of FAQ which aims to organise our archived discussions by subject. For the moment I have put it with the Archives on top of this Talk page. Probably there are better ways to leverage it, and probably there is a lot of room for improvement in the presentation and the content. Welcome to your ideas! SyG 13:34, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Request for help - Bughouse chess

Hi, In recent months, I have tried to improve the article on Bughouse chess. At this stage I would like to put it up for Wikipedia:Featured_article_review. Before that, I really would appreciate some feedback from the chess community, to give the article the best chances of making it to feature article. The article is medium-long, so it should only take about 10 min. Please edit as you see fitted, or comment on the talk page Voorlandt 13:41, 24 August 2007 (UTC) (edited Voorlandt 14:46, 24 August 2007 (UTC))

  • A third supporter was wanted, I'm your man. I've also copy edited the openings paragraph - small, but still half a dozen examples of weak phrasing now fixed.Addyboy 14:19, 24 August 2007 (UTC)

Ok, so I nominated the article Bughouse chess for FA, and it didn't make it (see Wikipedia:Featured_article_candidates/Bughouse_chess/archive1). I now have put it up for Peer review at Wikipedia:Peer_review/Bughouse_chess. Again, any comments greatly appreciated.Voorlandt 06:50, 8 September 2007 (UTC)

NOTE: Bold project userbox background change

About a week ago or so, I commented on the talkpage of the project's userbox page about what I saw as poor contrast between the black background and the link to the project page. Just now, since there was no feedback, I was bold and changed the background from black to an olive green color (trying to emulate the typical dark square "green" of canvas chessboards). I think the readability is improved. It could be made better I admit, but I liked the idea of using that green color for the project. I do have no objections to using any arbitrary color if it imporves readability and is easy on the eyes.

Please feel free to revert my change, but if so, let's start a discussion on the talk page there about the readability issue. Baccyak4H (Yak!) 17:13, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

That is fine for me, what you did is certainly an improvement. SyG 20:23, 9 September 2007 (UTC)

Problem with ALL chess diagrams

It seems all chess diagrams are having problems right now, just pick a random article having a chess diagram and see by yourself (for example, Ruy Lopez). Is it only my computer that is going mad, or are you experiencing the same horror ? I posted an urgent request on the help desk about that right now. SyG 15:57, 15 September 2007 (UTC)

According to the devs, Wikipedia is having some server stress issues that are causing the server to prioritize things, and some images are not showing up. It should return to normal soon. Sorry for the confusion! Ariel♥Gold 15:59, 15 September 2007 (UTC)
Looking at what happens in Commons, it seems the problem will remain for about 5 days. Take a seat! SyG 16:11, 16 September 2007 (UTC)
Houra! It seems the problem is solved now SyG 19:55, 18 September 2007 (UTC)

Questionable changes to Chess strategy

An editor is making several questionable changes to Chess strategy. When these are done, they need to be checked, and I think most of them need to be reversed. Bubba73 (talk), 01:23, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

"If the king is captured than the game is over. The king is valued at 1,000,000 or infinite." yea we'll be going over that soon. lol. MatthewYeager 02:09, 24 September 2007 (UTC)
He added the value of each of the pieces, but that is all in the second paragraph, as well as chess piece point value that is linked to. There are questionable statements about knight vs. bishop. On the other hand, there is some stuff in there that just seems to be ramdom bits of information someone thought they knew and threw in - loss of the queen, two rooks on the seventh rank, opposite colored bishop endings, etc. The article needs work! Bubba73 (talk), 02:22, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

WikiProject Chess List assessment

Currently, most of the chess list we have, have quality assessment "LIST" (for example List of strong chess tournaments). Clearly this is not a quality assessment. Another point is that they don't show up in the summary table of chess articles (see main project page); they are therefore not included by WP 1.0 BOT. Since they do belong to the encyclopaedia (unlike for instance templates/talk/project pages), I would like to rate these articles normally (stub/start/B/..). It seems other WikiProjects also follow this policy (eg List of cricket terms). Does anyone object? In addition, it might be nice to have a category containing all chess lists, such as in the Germany Wikipedia [1] Voorlandt 16:00, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

  • Ok, I have amended this now. So with the next update of the statistics, we should have about 1986 chess articles! Within the next two weeks I see us hitting 2000. Voorlandt 13:26, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Category:Chess players

The Category:Chess players is currently a bit of a mess. I suggest the following changes:

  1. The category itself shouldn't have any names in it (currently it has about 300 players). The reason is that they all fit in a subcategory of Category:Chess players by nationality. There is no reason to have an article in both a category and its subcategory. This is why we have subcategories. Just like we don't put every chess related article in the category chess. Besides, to see a list of all chess players we have List_of_chess_players.
  2. What would be nice is to have next to Category:Chess grandmasters a category Category:Chess international masters and Category:Chess FIDE masters.

What do you guys think about this? It is obviously quite a bit of work! Voorlandt 22:26, 30 September 2007 (UTC)

  • I think that whole idea make sense. Category:Chess players is simply useless. Let's fill new categories. Ikaria 08:04, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Hello! Please look at the Category:Chess players where is written: "This category and its subcategories include notable chess players. Players who have been awarded the Grandmaster title will be found in the subcategory chess grandmasters(...)". Now many players (more than three hundred) are in this category and some are not. What is the criteria for it ? I would like to know what is a substantial difference - in that case - between for example Aloni and Czerniak ? So, the solution is simple: to add all or none chess players (of course, except grandmasters).
By the way, there is structural disorder in categories British chess players, English chess players and Scottish chess players. There are players in both categories, i.e. Cochran (British and Scottish), Mieses (British and English), and others only in one category, i.e. Short (English), Zukertort (British). Why ? In my opinion, all of British chess players ought to be also in English, or Scottish, or another (Welsh, Irish, etc.) subcategories. Mibelz 14:22, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
  • On the first point, yes I agree: all or none (where I clearly vote for none, see argumentation above). About the grandmasters, I don't see any difference there, except of course they should all be in Category:Chess grandmasters. On the second point: Following the same logic, I would say: no chess players directly into British chess players, but in the appropriate subcategory again (English, Irish, Scottish, etc). It would be nice to come to an agreement here, so we can sort this out. Voorlandt 15:23, 1 October 2007 (UTC)
  • I agree with Voorlandt, but there is a practical consideration that probably accounts for the current situation. Some editors in the past have suggested that chess players should be both in the the main Category:Chess players and also in the appropriate subcategories by nationality/country. The reason is that it is difficult to browse or search a wide subcategory tree like Category:Chess players by nationality. One example mentioned was Svetozar Gligorić—without looking it up I would have no idea which nationality category he is in. (Along those lines we should probably create Category:Yugoslav chess players to go along with Category:Soviet chess players.) This really needs a technical solution. Wikipedia should provide a way to browse all subcategories of a single parent category together. I don't think it's worth waiting for this, and I support emptying the top level chess players category now and leaving the players in the subcategories. Quale 20:53, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Forgot to add a comment on suggestion 2: I don't see a great need for categories for IMs and FMs, although they probably wouldn't hurt either. I know we have some now and will certainly get some more in the future, but I don't think we will ever have that many bios for IMs and in my view an FM has to be pretty special to warrant a bio. I'm neutral on these added categories with an opinion tending toward it isn't worth the effort. I think there's a greater need for categories for arbiters, chess officials (we don't have a good cat now for Kirsan Ilyumzhinov), and correspondence GMs (who are currently mixed in with GMs, which I think is understandable but not good). Quale 21:07, 2 October 2007 (UTC)
  • Thank a lot for your input. I will remove the remaining chess players from the top category, and put them in the appropriate national category (if not already done so). Voorlandt 09:52, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
  • On the second point, you are probably right that we dont need IMs and FMs category. I support the idea of categories for arbiters and chess officials.Voorlandt 10:50, 3 October 2007 (UTC)
  • There is also a mix-up with the Ladies to clear up sometime, in that some people use Category:Female grandmasters and others, Category:Chess woman grandmasters. We can probably agree to use only the latter, but some remodelling of the category structure may be required to make this self-evident in future. Generally, I think all of the above discussion applies to the Ladies equally well. The decision not to create IM and FM categories is probably sensible, as you would also need the corresponding WIM and WFM categories, adding further to the workload. Brittle heaven 06:54, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't think that's actually what's happening with Category:Female Grandmasters. Category:Chess woman grandmasters is the only correct cat for WGMs. The Female Grandmasters cat is apparently intended for women who hold the unrestricted GM title, as a subcat of Category:Chess grandmasters. (It's explained on the cat page itself, but people sometimes use it incorrectly anyway. We had to remove a bunch of WGMs from the cat some time ago.) I've never like that cat. GM is not a gender restricted title and "Female Grandmaster" is not a title recognized by FIDE or anyone else. Women GMs must be in the parent cat Category:Chess grandmasters, so having a Category:Female Grandmasters just doesn't seem necessary. Quale 07:18, 4 October 2007 (UTC)


I have corrected nr 1 completely now. I also took the liberty of restructuring the category chess players a little. I believe it is neat and logical now. There are a few issues left:

Voorlandt 10:53, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Use What links here for "International Arbiter" to populate Category:Chess arbiters. Though there are also articles on those who were arbiters before that qualification/title was started. See Harry Golombek and Albéric O'Kelly de Galway for examples. A search of Wikipedia for "chess" and "arbiter" should pick most of those up. See here. Carcharoth 11:48, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Category:Chess arbiters now populated. Some aren't really notable as chess arbiters, so some way of highlighting the notable ones seems desirable. Carcharoth 12:48, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
  • A list might be a way to highlight the most notable arbiters ;-). Thanks to all involved for the great work cleaning up these cats. Golombek was made an IA in 1954 and O'Kelly in 1962, so I think almost all notable arbiters alive after the IA title was created in 1951 will have the title. (The IA titles don't seem to be mentioned in those articles—I should fix that.) Thanks also for creating the category for chess lists. I had thought about doing that myself, but you actually got it done. Quale 13:47, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Category:Female Grandmasters is now empty, and nominated for deletion. I also updated the GM list in List of female chess players. The current count is 14, can someone verify this? It would be nice to have a table as in [2]. Voorlandt 16:08, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Pity we can't quote what is said on that webpage: "All I know is that smart women are hot. Susan Polgar beat me in 24 moves in a simultaneous exhbition. I slept with the scoresheet under my pillow." LOL! :-) Seriously, though, a timeline would be good. Carcharoth 16:40, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Check FIDE ratings search with sex=Female and title=GM for a list of the 14 living female GMs. Unfortunately I don't have a source for the dates that they earned their titles. The best source for that kind of information is Jeremy Gaige's Chess Personalia, and it was printed in 1987. Quale 16:56, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Thanks a lot for this. I have put it now in table form. The table does need a little bit of work still. Voorlandt 22:04, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
I created Category:Chess officials and organised stuff into three subcategories (two existing ones plus one new one). Might end up going somewhere. Carcharoth 16:36, 4 October 2007 (UTC)
Very nice!Voorlandt 17:38, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

Reference a few paras ago - I would similarly vote for deleting Category:British chess Grandmasters - there is no need for it. As for the remaining (former British) 'Chess player' cats, we now have English, Scottish and Irish, so if someone adds Welsh, that takes care of the British Isles in totality. Whilst there are technically 2 Irelands (Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom and Southern Ireland is separate), we are not attempting to differentiate between political divisions here, so all Irish players can reasonably be included as one group. People in the UK and Southern Ireland regularly use the term 'Irish' in everyday speech without discerning between North or South, probably because there was once, and may one day again be, a United Ireland. Brittle heaven 23:13, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

  • Good point. I had forgotten that empty cats were not good policy. Botterill was an excellent candidate for a bio - I have added his English connection also - The European Team Championship:Bath 1973 was the first ever chess book that I bought! Actually, looking at his Olimpbase entry, I think I may have discovered why there was a 'British chess player' cat - he played for GBR in some other EEC Team event in the 70s. It is well known that GBR (England Wales and Scotland) teams feature in a number of sports, most notably athletics, but I had not heard of it in a chess context. Of course the recent chess match in Liverpool was UK vs China, so technically we could also have a 'UK chess player' cat. However, the main category head is Chess players by nationality, so probably we don't need to be distracted by these idiosyncracies. Brittle heaven 08:07, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
  • The category Category:British chess Grandmasters is now empty and put up for deletion. Moving all articles Category:British chess players to subcategories might be difficult for some (for instance Johannes Zukertort, see [3]: ...became a naturalized British citizen in 1878...<-- do they mean English citizen? ). In most cases such a move should be quite easy. Quale, nice work on the restructuring of the chess categories btw, it is so much better now! Voorlandt 08:31, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
  • This is where it gets complicated. British is correct in terms of citizenship - you do get a British passport. But as we've ditched 'British' as a meaningful entity in chess terms and as Zukertort lived in London, I'd go with the English chess player cat. There may of course be more difficult ones, if we don't know the city or place they moved to. List of nationality transfers in chess is a useful cross-check for this kind of work, but it doesn't help with this particular problem, as the pertinent destination is just described as 'United Kingdom' or '(Southern) Ireland'. Brittle heaven 10:38, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
  • How about moving those players which are clearly English, Scottish, Irish etc.. but to keep the difficult-to-categorise-ones in the category British chess players? Voorlandt 11:15, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
  • It may be the only accurate solution, but it would be a pity to have the current mess re-occur - as described by [[User:Mibelz|Mibelz] above. We need an ingenious solution from someone with ace librarian skills! Brittle heaven 12:06, 5 October 2007 (UTC)
  • I think Voorlandt's suggestion has a lot of merit, as a this issue is really hard. In fact it's probably impossible for someone like me in the U.S. with a very imperfect understanding of the U.K., but fortunately we have experts here who undertand it better. We aren't alone with this problem: even extremely well-known people alive today can be hard to categorise. See Talk:Christian Bale#Christian Bale is English, for one example. We are fortunate if the person in question played on a national team or has a FIDE federation affiliation. Otherwise … Quale 19:15, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

WP:DRV

Chess strategy and Chess tactics now at DRV - here. EliminatorJR Talk 14:46, 16 July 2007 (UTC)