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AfD

There is an AfD for Grünfeld 4.Bf4. EliminatorJR, is the merged article ready yet? Bubba73 (talk), 19:52, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

• Yes - (User:EliminatorJR/GRUN). I've commented on the AfD, btw. EliminatorJR ^Talk 00:32, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Merge implemented (Grunfeld Defence). I've gone over it a few times - I'm sure nothing encyclopedic has been lost. EliminatorJR ^Talk 01:36, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
    • The only mainspace article that links to it is List of chess openings, and that should be removed once it is changed to a redirect (or whatever). Bubba73 (talk), 01:44, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Thanks EliminatorJR, Bubba73, WalterChan, Sjakkalle, and anyone else I've left out for working on merges and other chess opening page cleanups. We've had strong agreement here for some months that this work was needed, but merges aren't very much fun. I appreciate your efforts. Quale 05:41, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Grunfeld and naming conventions

Should Grunfeld be used instead of Grünfeld? Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English) indicates that it should. Bubba73 (talk), 20:31, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

In my opinion definitely not. I don't even see anything to support your interpretation of the naming conventions. Namely it says that "There is disagreement as to whether German, Icelandic and Faroese names need transliteration for the characters ß, þ and ð. There is disagreement over whether to use œ and æ." Nothing on ü. Before those, it even says that "A survey that ran from April 2005 to October 2005 ended with a result of 62–46 (57.4%–42.6%) in favor of diacritics". Being Finnish, ä and ö are critical parts of my language so I know the need for the diacritics. Kimi Räikkönen, for example, sounds just silly when spelled "Raikkonen", not to mention spelling Teemu Selänne as "Selanne". --ZeroOne (talk | @) 22:49, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

At the top it says "Article titles should use the Latin alphabet, not any other alphabets or other writing systems such as syllabaries or Chinese characters. However, any non-Latin-alphabet native name should be given within the first line of the article (with a Latin-alphabet transliteration if the English name does not correspond to a transliteration of the native name)". "ü" is not in the Latin alphabet, and it is not on US keyboards. A transliteration of it is "u", and there are books that do that. Bubba73 (talk), 23:20, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

PS, I'm talking about in the title only. An American would type in "Grunfeld" in the search field, having ho practical way to type "Grünfeld". Bubba73 (talk), 23:29, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Doesn't the search function ignore diacritics anyway? EliminatorJR ^Talk 00:17, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Aparantly not, because when I enter "Grunfeld 4.Bf4" it doesn't find "Grünfeld 4.Bf4". Bubba73 (talk), 01:08, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, you're right. Having said that, the main article (which is the only one now remaining) has a redirect from Grunfeld Defence (and Grunfeld Defense) anyway, so it probably doesn't make any difference now. EliminatorJR ^Talk 01:35, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

In this specific instance, The Oxford Companion to Chess, MCO-14, and NCO all use the Grünfeld spelling, so we should too. I think it's appropriate to use the correct name and add redirects as needed to make it easy to find. WP:ENGLISH suggests use of the most common name in English. Although the Grunfeld and Gruenfeld transliterations were popular in the past, it looks to me that the recent trend is strongly toward using Grünfeld. I think this has to be considered case by case. I involved myself in some ugly business concerning the page titles of some chess bios (Talk:Arpad Elo) and there I felt strongly that the opposite result was correct. Quale 05:26, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with Quale here who argues for following general convention, due to the presence of diacritics in the most reputable pieces of literature which can be found, we can keep them here as well. We need to be dilligent about placing good redirects however. (I have faced similar problems when writing Norway-related articles since the Norwegian alphabet has three extra letters, leading to all sorts of complications on the English Wikipedia.) Sjakkalle (Check!) 06:49, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Grunfeld merged article

FrozenPurpleCube has now slapped {fact} tags all over the merged article, even on parts that are definitions of the opening and other parts that are sourced by the referenced books. I sense thin edge of a wedge. Comments? EliminatorJR ^Talk 10:19, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

• I've added a ref tag for Chessgames searchable database, that'll fix the references to which players use the opening. I could've referenced the others to the relevant reference work but to be honest they're patently spurious, so I've removed them EliminatorJR ^Talk 10:38, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
  • The fact tags on the paragraphs regarding the ECO codes indeed misplaced and ill-advised, considering that they were already sourced, the Encyclopedia of Chess Openings is the source. Sjakkalle (Check!) 10:42, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Seems good to me. Originally I was going to say that we should add a reference for ECO in the article, but now I realize that since we link ECO, all we should need to do is make sure that the ECO and List of chess openings pages are adequately referenced. I haven't examined WP:V closely recently, but I think pages can use facts sourced in other pages without having to independently and repetitiously source them again. Quale 14:14, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Foreign language sources

I have added some new claims to a couple of articles, namely to Sicilian Defence and King's Gambit, using a Finnish chess book as a reference. Wikipedia:Verifiability says that it is perfectly ok to use foreign language sources but English language sources are of course encouraged. What do you think, would you like me to continue adding Finnish sources, as I don't really have an access to any English chess books? Can someone find books in English that can replace the Finnish references? I think that it is better to cite a book than a random web page, but do you think it is the same if the book is in a foreign language? --ZeroOne (talk | @) 15:51, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

• As you know, chess is and long has been a very international sport. I encourage you to add any references you judge to be high quality in whatever language you find them in. Like many ugly Americans, I am hobbled in this respect by being fluent in only a single language, and unfortunately my 25-year-old weak high school level French doesn't really help much. Contributors who are conversant in languages other than English are a tremendous resource to the English language Wikipedia, and are one way of helping with WP:CSB. Claims currently only sourced with non-English references may sometimes be augmented in the future with English references. Quale 16:08, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Totally agree. Any source is better than no sources. Like Quale, my English is only augmented by some average French, but as he says, if a later English language cite becomes available, it can always be added. EliminatorJR ^Talk 17:10, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
• The verifiability policy has a paragraph on foreign sources. They are perfectly acceptable, but if you have a choice between an English one and a foreign language one, pick the English one assuming they are of equal quality since they are more accessible to the readers. Sjakkalle (Check!) 06:05, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
  • Sure, I'm aware of that, but as I said, I don't really have the choice. I consider the book is of a better quality than random English web pages. --ZeroOne (talk | @) 06:57, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Yep, so your use of foreign sources in this instance was definitely appropriate and the right thing to do. :-) Sjakkalle (Check!) 08:18, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
    • Oops, I see now that I read only the responses and not the original post, and wound up talking right past you. Sorry about that. Sjakkalle (Check!) 08:22, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

New Merge Pages

Next one up (I'm going in alphabetic order here) - Alekhine's Defence (3 pages). Shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Looking ahead - issues I've thought of....

• Queen's Gambit; separate pages for Accepted and Declined, or one article?
• King's Indian Defence; one article?
• Sicilian Defence; one article for mainline and one for Dragon, or one article?

Thoughts? EliminatorJR ^Talk 00:17, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

(Please forgive me for lightly formatting some of your questions and adding links to make the articles easy to find.) There's nothing written in stone, so he are my personal opinions:

• QGA and QGD should remain separate articles.
• I don't think we have enough material on the QGA for separate articles on its variations, at least not yet, so all variations of QGA should go in the main article for now.
• The QGD territory is absolutely huge, so I don't recommend much merging here. On it's own, it's probably about as large as all the Double King Pawn openings put together. I like the current QGD page, and if you look at the contributors in the page history, you'll see why as Sjakkalle and Krakatoa have both done some work on it. (So have I, so my opinion is not necessarily unbiased). The QGD page can and should be improved, but its most desperate need is good references. Nearly two years ago we were simply too casual about the need for sourcing. I like having the main variations of the QGD split into separate pages. Although both are variations of the QGD, the Cambridge Springs Defense and the Tarrasch Defense are more dissimilar than the Giuoco Piano and the Two Knights Defense—it's mere historical accident that the King's Pawn and Queen's Pawn openings are named and grouped so differently. The current, awkwardly named Queen's Gambit Declined, Mainline Orthodox Defense should be moved to Orthodox Defense (or Orthodox Defense (chess) if there's any fear of confusion over the subject) and it also needs to be totally rewritten.
• The Sicilian Defence is also huge, and ultimately I suspect we should have a page for each of the major divisions in the opening, certainly including the Sicilian Defence, Dragon Variation. Also the Sicilian Defence, Najdorf Variation and the Sicilian Defence, Scheveningen Variation. Pages such as McDonnell Attack (which I had usually seen referred to as the Grand Prix) could be merged back into Sicilian Defense. On the other hand, if the main Sicilian Defense page gets too large, we could create a page for the closed Sicilian. For me, the naming of these pages is a more interesting question than should they be merged. A chess player would never say "Sicilian Defense, Dragon Variation", but might say simply "Dragon". Clearly "Dragon" is far too informal to use as a page title. On the other hand, I think "Sicilian Defense, ... Variation" is a bit stiff, but workable, although I think consideration ought to be given to simply using "Najdorf Variation", "Dragon Variation", etc. These are well known enough to chess players that they are used constantly, in conversation, magazine articles, and book titles without further explanation, and as separate entries in standard reference works such as The Oxford Companion to Chess.

In general I just don't see merges as a panacea. Almost every page that has chess notation in its title should be merged (for example, QGD; 3...Nf6, QGD; Slav, 4.Nc3, Queen's Indian, 4.g3)—not coincidently most or all of these were created by one user. This is not as many pages as some would have you believe, especially after the cleanup you and others have done. Most of the rest should stand alone. Quale 02:36, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I have worked on Alekhine's Defense some last night and earlier today and merged a couple of articles. I was planning to work on the other two, but I haven't put any time into it yet. If someone else wants to do them - go ahead. Otherwise, I will probably do it soon. Bubba73 (talk), 02:58, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I agree with the above on almost all points. Queen's Gambit Declined, Mainline Orthodox Defense was named "Mainline Orthodox Defense" and yesterday I renamed it by prepending "QGD". I don't think it should be named "Orthodox defense" since it is part of QGD. How about simply taking out "mainline"? My reasoning is that the name of the overall opening should come first. Bubba73 (talk), 03:27, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

My reason for this is that if a reader goes to the Chess Openings Category or to list of chess topics then all of the QGD variants would be together, and the same with the Sicilian and Ruy Lopez. Bubba73 (talk), 03:34, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Your point makes sense to me, and I don't think I gave enough thought to that issue. It is possible (and I think desirable) to create redirects from Najdorf Variation, Dragon Variation, etc. to the longer titles, to make things easier for those who search. The long names do sort more nicely in lists and categories. Quale 04:42, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

• Yes, I probably didn't phrase that well enough; obviously QGD and Sicilian (and a few others) are so huge they're never going to be merged in; it's probably more a question of reorganising the sub-pages with the main article being in summary style. Anyway, we'll come to that one when we get there. EliminatorJR ^Talk 08:44, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

• Another one; Benoni Defense and Benoni, Taimanov variation - any point in separate articles? EliminatorJR ^Talk 08:44, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I have merged the Taimanov in with the Benoni, info on the Taimanov's impressive reputation is better provided in the context of the main opening article. The Benoni is incidentally one of our older articles, but is not a very big one yet. A reasonable argument can be made for having separate articles on the Old Benoni, Modern Benoni and Czech Benoni since the strategic principles in them are so different from one another, but until the Benoni article is expanded, I won't recommend it yet. Sjakkalle (Check!) 10:45, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

• Thanks, looks great. I think we're all on the same page. Although the work done on the chess openings articles two years ago made them look wonderful around the beginning of 2006 compared to what they looked like in 2004, quality has decayed a little and we have higher standards for referencing now. The work you're doing is really making the articles better. There are a couple of other arguments against merging that I forgot to mention. 1) If a reader might often want to read about the subject in isolation, merges can make that annoying. If we merge McDonnell Attack into a large Sicilian Defence article, it gains context, but someone interested only in reading about the Grand Prix will find it more clumsy. 2) It kind of messes up categorization sometimes. I have added many chess opening pages to the Category:Years in chess subcats based on the first mention of the opening in chess literature or some other highly significant event (It seems Alekhine was not the first master to play Alekhine's Defence, but it is associated with his games in 1921). If the McDonnel Attack is merged into the Sicilian, it's hard to associate its 1834 date with the Sicilian as a whole and so the years in chess categorization doesn't work well. This isn't really a strong argument against merging, but it is something to consider. Quale 15:02, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Help please: biographies of Jewish players

I have now problems with biographiea of Jewish players like Wilhelm Steinitz, Reuben Fine, Mikhail Botvinnik etc. - a user who in my opinion does not fully respect manual of style and WP:NPOV tries to stress their Jewishness - adds external links to dubious sites in the body of articles etc. I am near to three reverts rule in some cases and do not like edit wars at all. Therefore I need a help of others - can you please try to find a solution? --Ioannes Pragensis 17:40, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

• I've rv'd edits on Steinitz and Fine, which didn't appear to add to the article. EliminatorJR ^Talk 17:59, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

• Thank you, Ioannes Pragensis 20:13, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Assessment of the situation regarding opening stubs

Regarding the Opening Stubs subcategory of Chess Openings:

• Grunfeld 4.Bf4 needs to be deleted, since it has been merged. But that is being held up by a AfD.
• the two Pirc stubs need to be merged. (done)
• QGD, 3...f6 needs to be merged (done) (added:) and QGD, Mainline Orthodox Defense. Someone mentioned that they were working on QGD.
• Ruy Lopez subvarations - all of these need to be merged. -- done except for Exchange and Marshall
• Sicilian subvarations - all of these need to be merged. - done!

The rest of the stubs can stay. Bubba73 (talk), 19:38, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

• King's Indian Defence, Four Pawns Attack is listed in the stubs, but it seems to be more than a stub. One problem is that it has one section that simply says "to be developed". Bubba73 (talk), 19:46, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
  • That's a good point. Once we keep one of the main variations in a separate article, I think it makes sense to do the same for the other primary lines as well, or a summary style article will look odd. If the Four Pawns Attack is the only KID variation on its own page, a reader will naturally draw the wrong conclusion that it is the most important. That doesn't mean every variation needs a separate article, but each variation more important than the Four Pawns should be split out too. Quale 20:11, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

• Ruy Lopez - This is kind of a tough one. The current Ruy subvariations do need to be merged. The question is, what do we do with the Ruy Lopez page long term? 1) leave roughly as it is and continue to expand as needed inline, or 2) go to summary style. I would have used summary style when I worked the page over in the autumn of 2005, but I didn't see a good way to do that. Much of the material needs to stay together because the context is important in a survey article. Quale 20:11, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Some variations deserve their own article and some are too stubby (at present). The Exchange version in the main article is too long and probably duplicates a lot of the sub-article. I think the main article section on the Exchange should be shortened, making sure not to lose any information that could go in the sub-article. Bubba73 (talk), 20:19, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Sometimes its almost like telepathy. The Exchange Variation is one that I thought had enough detail so that it should be split out. Right now it's one of the longest sections and although it has great history (Lasker-Capablanca, St. Petersburg 1914 and later Fischer), it certainly isn't the most important. This throws the sections kind of out of balance. Quale 21:02, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

The article on the Ruy Exchange is big enough to stand by itself. Other branches as the Open defense and Marshall may be too. I'm pretty sure they are each more extensive than the Exchange, so it does seem out of balance with the Exchange having its own article. However, the size of the Exchange article seems to merit it. Bubba73 (talk), 03:07, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

The Ruy Exchange article is large enough, but it is not organized very well. Also too much "arguably the best... ", etc. Bubba73 (talk), 03:28, 28 April 2007 (UTC)