Talk:Mann (chess)

Lead image for Mann

Please do not delete images to chess piece articles without first consulting the Talk page. These graphics depict examples of icons that have been used for the chess pieces historically, recently, or both. Although many fairy chess pieces may have more than one icon that has been used for the piece, it is good editorial practice for an article about the piece to show one or more examples of icons for the piece. For justification for the use of the icons in the introduction of this article please refer to these references (one or more which may already be in the article):

http://www.chessvariants.com/piececlopedia.dir/man.html

(Shows two icons with a "radial-spike" pattern which have a similar shape to the icons in this article).

Also here:

http://www.chessvariants.com/graphics.dir/cazaux/catalog.html

Also here:

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess960-chess-variants/a-critical-analysis-of-the-guard-in-chess

(Also has an icon which appears similar to the icon in this article).

Also here:

http://thomasguild.blogspot.com/2014/06/courier-chess.html

Shows the mann being used in the thirteenth century with an upright chesspiece (has similarity to the shape of the icon in this article).

Also here:

https://www.chess.com/forum/view/chess960-chess-variants/a-game-of-musketeer-chess?page=6

Also here:

http://courierchess.com/thepieces.htm

Shows the mann being used in a painting from the year 1508 with an upright chesspiece (and a shape that invokes a radial pattern).

Also here:

http://www.cyningstan.com/game/130/courier-game

Shows the same painting and also a hand-drawn image of an upright icon.

Also here:

http://www.ancientchess.com/page/play-courier-chess.htm

Shows the mann being used in the thirteenth century with an upright chess piece.

Selecting the best contemporary icon might be an arbitrary choice. If there are multiple existing graphics for a chess piece, the best option may be to show two or three examples. For example, (when available) an old and historic image, an earlier (dated) one, and a modern one. LithiumFlash (talk) 02:49, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

You are blowing blue smoke and don't know what you are talking about, neither do you understand WP requirements, you are fabricating your own. There are no icons of 13th century origin, you are engaging in WP:SYNTH by referring to 3D artistic creations and your own imagination/extrapolation/whatever. This is an encyclopedia, not a play-pen for your Chess.com blog obsessions and 'Infinite Chess' variant without one WP:Reliable source. You are adding cutzie icons that have no justification as lede position images based on your own standards what is "appropriate". You do not understand WP guidelines and are engaging in edit-warring. (When you introduce new material and it gets reverted, you do not caution other editors to not revert, your sources are not defacto from God unless proven otherwise, and when you throw a bunch of Internet links to blogs, artistic creations used on other sites, and previously referred-to manufactured SYNTH as substitute for any reliable source, um sorry, that doesn't float. I'll be deleting your crap when I find the time, you've made lots of messes with your 'Infinite Chess' obsession. --IHTS (talk) 11:00, 2 April 2017 (UTC)

Rather than selecting a single best icon, I think a consensus can be found to show a selection of actual chess piece images and/or graphics that have been used for this piece. Precedent for this has already been established for standard chess pieces (see the gallery for knight). I've added seven references pertaining to the graphics. Please discuss here before making deletions. You are also welcome to help by supplementing existing material (rather than deleting). Other icons that you find that may have been used (guard, sage, commoner, or prince) can be added too, and I think will improve the article, and help illuminate the variety of graphics that have been used over time and region.—LithiumFlash (talk) 00:51, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

No.

• What you're prescibing is pure personal WP:OR for the reader. It is therefore misleading. You don't have even one WP:Reliable source for the prince & guard icons. The refs you've added carry no weight.
• "Consensus"?!? WP:Consensus has meaning only in WP content discussions, not off-WP, if that is what you meant.
• Your "precedent" argument is unclear & unspecified; also understand, WP articles are not WP:Reliable sources.
• Your "over time and region" is misleading as it is pure abstruse fantasy-fiction that doesn't belong in an encyclopedia.
• You need to review WP:BRD and stop with the hypocritical patronizing, you have been habitually edit-warring and restoring removed material without discussing or reaching consensus on Talks.

--IHTS (talk) 02:19, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

The spiked pictogram is a recent design for a centuries old piece, only used for a few month by a handful of people on chess.com playing some correspondence games using the forum as medium. Putting it in Wikipedia is as silly as adding a paragraph describing my backyard to the article describing the world's great deserts. H.G.Muller (talk) 13:55, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

Funny! And agreed. Removal is appropriate. --IHTS (talk) 03:04, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Various pictograms for the mann go back much farther than "a few months". I'm not going to provide a list of all the references all over again - they are already at the top of this topic. The first one shows five various icons of the Mann (not an inverted king) going back to 10/2/2001 (about 16 years ago). The second reference shows an icon for a piece that moves as a mann (again not an inverted king) going back to 1999 (about 18 years ago), which was written by Hans Bodlaender who is a chess historian (references can be found at the article about him). Another reference listed above shows a mann as an upright chesspiece with a spike upper section being used in the thirteenth (about 800 years ago). And another reference above again shows a mann as an upright chesspiece with a radial upper section being used in the year 1508 (more than 500 years ago). With the recent revisions to this article, it has again become dull and uninformative, and also missing very relevant and important information. I fixed the article by restoring some of the previous content and placing it in "History" (rather than the lead paragraph).—LithiumFlash (talk) 15:23, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Each pictogram would have to be judged on its own merits. Even if some alternatives would have been in use for decades by thousands of people and dozens of books and magazins, it doesn't mean that 'anything flies'. The pictogram I was talking about was invented recently, used by 1 person (likely you) to illustrate a handful of games in a chess.com forum. And I think it is a bad design at that, because the bottom half of an inverted rook suggest rook-like motion (as in the commonly used pictogram for the Rook-Knight compound), which the piece doesn't have. The Cazaux pieces are not in common use, even on chessvariants.com itself (the set shown there does not even have black pieces, and thus cannot be used in diagrams for actual positions!). And even if it would have enough importance to be mentioned, (which IMO is a firm 'no'), the appalling quality of the current image would be enough reason to delete it. Within chessvariants.com only the Alfaerie pictogram set is popular enough to say it is some kind of de-facto standard (there). We also do not list the pictogram the WinBoard GUI (which is influential and in widespread use) uses since 2008 to depict the comonner. H.G.Muller (talk) 06:40, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

This chess piece is very old and the article should have example pictograms and also photos of actual pieces if there are copyright-free images. The article knight has 2 photos at top and 20 more at bottom. With the variety of pictograms used for the mann there is even more good reason for this article to display a variety, and they have references so this article is OK but more pictograms and images can be added. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:304:CF02:C940:C108:F6F1:A70E:224A (talk) 13:10, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Where can I see the GUI commoner mentioned by H.G.Muller? If there is a site where it is marked with a license compatible for Wikipedia then I'll see if I can upload a pictogram. If it does not show a license I can still make an approximate reproduction as long as the website does not prohibit it. Also a reference will be needed.—OhioOakTree (talk) 05:05, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

The rule-description page of knightmate ( http://hgm.nubati.net/rules/Knightmate.html ) contains a WinBoard screenshot that shows it, and in the 'Moves at a Glance' section a separate 33x33 png image. The XBoard source-code package contains SVG images for all the WinBoard/XBoard pieces ( http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/xboard.git/tree/svg?id=25b886a645b99410094e64e5920b0e6c0e65d3ec ). XBoard is GPL open source, so the image can be freely used on web pages. I don't think it is a good idea to dress up the article with as many images as possible. I could easily design and supply 20 more that would also not be used by anyone but me, like the spiked image that LithiumFlash tries to advertize. In fact I already have one, which can be seen at http://www.chessvariants.com/report/cashew-shogi on g2: just a square, mnemonic for its move footprint. I don't think Wikipedia is the right place to promote designs that are almost never used by anyone but its designer. There could be some justification for showing the Alfaerie symbol popular on chessvariants.com, but showing Cazaux pieces is just nonsense. H.G.Muller (talk) 08:37, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for link to the chess GUI - I did add as an image for "commoner". The Mann has a rich history so a few pictograms improves this article (Arch has more than 100 images). Here the few images are informative of the Mann and its related chess pieces.—OhioOakTree (talk) 16:43, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

The argument that Knight (chess) contains 20 images of the Staunton piece, is a poor argument. (First, it's WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS argument. Second, the add of 20 images was poor -- there is actually very little variety shown compared to what exists in RL, apparently the adder had access to a family of related photo images is all. As a result that sec is inappropriate too & s/b deleted too.) --IHTS (talk) 23:25, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

Man or Mann?

Why are we writing 'Mann' with double 'n' here? I am sure it was called this way in Courier Chess, (the oldest game featuring this piece?), but that was because Courier Chess was popular in Germany, and hence the piece names were German. In English 'Man' is spelled with a single 'n'. In general the English Wikipedia does not list names of Chess pieces in other languages. E.g. in the articke on the Knight, we don't say "Knight (springer, caballo, cheval or paard). So why the German spelling here (even as primary title)? AFAIK the usual names are Man or Commoner. H.G.Muller (talk) 14:05, 20 May 2017 (UTC)

Reasonable. A linguistics point. Dickens (A Guide to Fairy Chess, p. 8) uses "Man" and Pritchard (Classified ECV & ECV) uses "Man (counsellor)". Hooper & Whyld (OCC (1996), p. 244) entry is: "Mann, the German name for a piece used in Courier. A Mann may be moved one square in any direction [...]". --IHTS (talk) 03:13, 25 May 2017 (UTC)

Well, as Dickens and Pritchard call it 'Man', and Hooper and Whyld are the only ones to call it 'Mann', with the explicit disclaimer that this is a German name, and we are in the English Wikipedia here, I now changed the spelling in the article to 'Man'. The plural 'Manns' is an obnoxious linguistic construct, BTW; in German the plural is 'Männer'. H.G.Muller (talk) 13:32, 22 July 2017 (UTC)

There may well yet be a case for natural disambiguation by spelling, given that "man (chess)" may suggest the usual meaning of chessman. Double sharp (talk) 08:20, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

Spelling is a poor method of disambiguation, as it would not help in spoken conversation. I have never encountered a case where confusion could arise; when people talk f.e. about 5-men end-game tables it is pretty obvious they don't refer to an end-game with 5 commoners on the board. In cases where confusion could occur people could use the name 'commoner', and this is indeed the name I prefer in any situation, and see most-often used in the area of chess variants, while I have hardly seen any use of 'man'. 'Man' is a poor name for exactly the reason you mention. H.G.Muller (talk) 13:20, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Variant TwoKings

I noticed the article mentions chess variant 'twokings' as including a commoner, and even shows a diagram for it. I think this is wrong. There is no commoner in twokings, just two kings, and a peculiar winning condition, where the relative location of these kings determines which one you have to capture to win. To be considered a separate piece type, the difference should move with the pieces when they exchange places. Chess variants that do feature true commoners are obviously courier chess (if we want to show more diagrams, why is there no diagram of that?) and knightmate. H.G.Muller (talk) 06:56, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

I agree this article is about the Mann and variations of Manns. It's not about king so I would support omitting the two-kings diagram. The article already has a jump to courier chess but adding knightmate is a good idea. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:304:CF02:C940:C108:F6F1:A70E:224A (talk) 13:22, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

In "Two Kings Each" - The reigning king can change during the phase of the game. The other king or commonder is essentially another minor piece that can be captured or traded, if wanted. If someone is interested in creating page for Knightmate, use Centaur piece for knight-king. Sunny3113 (talk) 08:44, 14 June 2017 (UTC)

Note that Wikipedia is not intended to be a vehicle for advertizing freshly invented piece pictograms, no matter how nice they might look. The standard symbol for the commmoner, used for ages in fairy problems and standard works on chess variants, is the inverted king. You cannot just substitute a picture for it that you invented yesterday, and so far is used by no one other than you in one message in a github discussion, and perhaps might appear in a future release of some chess software that yet has to acquire a 'market share'. And it is not only that the inverted king should not go out of the article as leading image; the new symbol should not even go in as an alternative. Not until it is used in books printed in large numbers, newspapers, or on hundreds of websites. So I undid your modifications. H.G.Muller (talk) 20:00, 23 July 2017 (UTC)

I don't agree that alternate symbols and names for the mann (or man) should have been removed. Some of the symbols can be easily found on popular chess-playing websites. The mode of exchanging information about games has changed dramatically in the last two decades. Most information concerning games is now published on game-playing websites, not in physical printed books anymore.OhioOakTree (talk) 05:40, 26 July 2017 (UTC)

Symbol for Knightmate

what happen? this article was better with some pieces I see them being used in online games. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 104.241.16.138 (talk) 28 July 2017 (UTC)

Ohio, nope, not sufficient for WP. You're clearly unfamiliar. See WP:Reliable source. ("Game-playing websites" don't quality, unless the contributor is, e.g., a notable grandmaster or notable expert in whatever field.) --IHTS (talk) 09:58, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

They are popular at game-playing websites and I also checked the links in the topic above. Some of the removed graphics were properly referenced, for example at CVP (The Chess Variant Webpages Piececlopedia). Removal of the graphics from the article was not justified.OhioOakTree (talk) 12:32, 28 July 2017 (UTC)

The question is whether anyone at all has followed the symbols used by these self-published sources, and the answer to that is a resounding no. Double sharp (talk) 08:23, 1 August 2017 (UTC)

As I see it there are two possible situations: (1) there exists a standard that is widely followed, or, (2) everything flies, people do just what occurs to them. In case (1) Wikipedia should show that the standard is, so that people new to the subject can follow it. In case (2), showing everything that is there would be a never-ending task, as people would continuously make up new stuff. And it won't tell readers anything they need to know, as the sites that use such made-up symbols are well aware that they are used nowhere else, and willexplain their meaning themselves. In this particular case the symbols that were removed were: (a) a symbol unique to the http://history.chess.free.fr website of Jean-Louis Cazaux (of appaling image quality). Non-standard symbols are used on that website even for orthodox chess pieces (e.g. Rook and Bishop in the diagram for Courier Chess ( http://history.chess.free.fr/courier.htm ), where the Man symbol was also taken from). The Chess Variant Pages offers this in the 'Cazaux set' in their gallery of piece themes, but it is in fact unusable because the symbol set doesn't even have black pieces in it. So they only occur on CVP on whole-board images that Jean-Louis Cazaux himself made to illustrate the articles he posted on CVP about the Chess variants he designed. (b) The symbol designed by me for the built-in/default piece theme of WinBoard/XBoard, and which AFAIK is not used in any other chess-variant software, or on websites not related to the XBoard project. (c) A symbol invented some months ago by someone posting in the chess.com forum, and used there by him in images of positions in games he plays against other forum users, and who is now trying to spread this symbol through Wikipedia. IMO the symbol is not acceptable at all for Man, as it is based on an inverted Rook, which by consensus means that the piece is a Rook compound. So in fact it should count as abuse of the symbol. H.G.Muller (talk) 13:10, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Dispute over whether the Mann looks like an upside-down king or a weird claw thing

MAs we all know, the currently used icon for the mann is an upside-down king. It even says that when you hover over it in a chess diagram. The design, that, according to @H.G.Muller, "Is not acceptable at all for [the] Man, as it is based on an inverted Rook, which by consensus means that the piece is a Rook compound. So in fact it should count as abuse of the symbol."

The current icon for the mann used in diagrams

The icon Muller compares to being a rook compound, when it's literally the Mann itself

I disagree with that argument because, well, look at the Lion picture on the Grant Acedrex page. Hover over it and it says it's a Champion from Omega Chess. That doesn't mean it's the Champion piece itself. Also, what piece would the supposed compound that the mann that Muller disagrees with be? A king and a rook? A bishop and a rook? Oh wait! We already have that. It's called the Queen. ChameleonGamer 21:31, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Additionally, I found this quote from the file for the mann design refuted by Muller. "Icon of the chess piece "Mann" or "Guard" used in chess variant games." This proves that it actually is a Mann. ChameleonGamer 21:33, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Nonsense, the icon was created by WP User Lithiumflash, added to Commons, and he/she was free to invent any statement he/she wanted in the doc, it has no relevance or bearing on anything. The icon is WP user-generated, and the fact "hover" info is present also has no bearing or relevance (the hover infos are arbitrary or preferred infos by the WP coders/programmers who implemented same; that said, the hover info for mann w/ be better expressed "inverted king" rather than "upside-down king", but who has time to pursue that improvement?). User H.G.Muller is correct when he says the inverted rook half suggests compound piece, which the mann (or man) is not; and when he explains it's irresponsible to use in articles symbols invented by others for special purposes on or off WP. The doc on your preferred symbol at template:chess diagram says "mann (alternate symbol)" (did you notice the world "alternate"?), but again, whoever put that doc there had no policy basis for doing so, the doc there therefore carries no weight either. Inverted and horizontal king symbols have basis for general use in diagrams for modified kings in Dickins, Anthony (1971) [Corrected repub. of 1969 2nd ed., The Q Press, Richmond, Surrey, England]. A Guide to Fairy Chess. New York: Dover Publications Inc. ISBN 0-486-22687-5.. As much as you have enthusiasm/exuberance to use the fantastical inverted rook symbol (which is pretty cool, yeah), it's not a argument for use in the WP mann article. --IHTS (talk) 00:48, 25 May 2023 (UTC)