Wikipedia:Featured article review/Chess/archive1

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Chess[edit]

Review commentary[edit]

Brilliant prose promotion, no original author. Messages left at Board and table games and Chess. Sandy (Talk) 14:46, 20 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Poor referencing. --Ideogram 09:13, 19 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]

  • Comment. No inline citations (see History section in particular), external link farm, section headings don't conform to WP:MOS, weasle words (e.g.; "has been described as", "is sometimes seen as", "another theory exists"), and some of the images are tagged and need attention. Sandy (Talk) 15:01, 20 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Status? This article has been significantly improved by Bubba73, Ioannes Pragensis, and Andreas Kaufmann ( diff since nom), but I suggest moving to FARC only to keep it on track, as there is a bit more work to be done. History could use better citation, there are still some instances of weasle words, some of the References need to be expanded to full bibliographic style, there are still image tags which need to be addressed, and I'm not sure the word "Chess" should be re-used so often in the TOC (per WP:MOS). Some of the references appear to be to personal websites, rather than reliable sources, and one of the references is a Wiki. Leaving talk message for Ideogram. Sandy (Talk) 14:51, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • The rules say "The nomination should last two weeks, or longer where changes are ongoing and it seems useful to continue the process. " - The article is under work currently (40+ items in the changelog during the last 24 hours), so I suggest to let it still in the FAR phase.--Ioannes Pragensis 16:13, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Sounds good as long as work is progressing. Sandy (Talk) 17:35, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments Prose is terrible. "Variants of gameplay" is a grab bag of topics, the subsection "Ways to play" talks about time controls and variants, which don't belong together, and the "Computers" section could use expansion. "Strategy and tactics" section could use improvement. Consider adding a "Competitive play" section like that in Go (board game). Personally I don't give a fig for references, but since Go was de-featured for this (among other) reasons, I felt it would be fair to hold this article to the same standards. --Ideogram 19:07, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Terrible prose - agree, we need a good stylist. Variants of gameplay - I improved it already, thanks for the hint. Expansion of Computers - we do not have place for it, the article has already more than 35 kB. Competitive play - it is already described in the History section. References - agree, they are important; does somebody have good English books about Chess history? Cheers, --Ioannes Pragensis 20:23, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
35KB is not large, especially for a topic as important as Chess. I wouldn't worry about the size for now. --Ideogram 20:30, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
WP:SIZE says that we should keep the length of the main body about 30 kB. Otherwise it is too long to read for average readers. We have a special article about Computer chess, so we need only brief intro here, I think.--Ioannes Pragensis 20:40, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
That's just a guideline. Many featured articles, especially on important topics, are longer. The recently promoted Angelina Jolie is 71KB for instance. Which is more important?
The computer chess section doesn't have to be a lot longer, just more balanced. Right now it says too much about the history of creating chess playing machines, and nothing about how computers play chess differently than humans, and only one sentence each about computers as chess seconds and for internet play.
A "competitive play" section could talk about rating systems, how tournaments work, and generally inform new players who might want to participate.
"Strategy and tactics" is the heart of chess and this section really needs to shine. If you are worried about size you don't have to add a lot in the other areas I mentioned, but this should be much longer, and the majority of the article. --Ideogram 20:51, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Of course Angelina is more important. And she does not have sub-articles like we do, therefore all the stuff must be in the main article about her. :-) - But seriously, I agree with your ideas about Competitive play and Strategy and tactics. Moreover I think that we should better elaborate the post-war history of chess; I wrote a short outline only, but it should be enhanced.--Ioannes Pragensis 21:58, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
If you can afford to wait, you might consider placing your outline in the article with sections labelled as stubs to invite other editors to contribute. I used this tactic with some success on operating system. --Ideogram 22:05, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for the idea, I did it.--Ioannes Pragensis 22:52, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Size check Overall 36KB, prose size is under 30KB and doesn't show as size check - one of the shortest FAs I've seen in a long time, plenty of room to expand. Sandy (Talk) 22:27, 30 November 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Active improvements ongoing, extend FAR. Concerned about the number of stub tags added, and hope those will be addressed during FAR? Sandy (Talk) 16:36, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I added the stub tags, following Ideogram's advice, to mark the weaknesses of the article and places where it should be extended. In my opinion, these issues must be addressed soon, or the article will lose the FA status. I will work on it in hope that others will help, too.--Ioannes Pragensis 19:34, 1 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Wow, lots of work going on here, but where did the WP:LEAD go? Hope it will work its way back up to 3 or 4 summary paragraphs. Sandy (Talk) 16:00, 4 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • It has been just destroyed by a vandal. I'll try to repair it.--Ioannes Pragensis 16:42, 4 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I believe that the phase of raw cleaning is behind us (a horrible work). Now we need another input for the fine-tuning. Cheers, --Ioannes Pragensis 21:33, 7 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - I've done a small amount of work on the article, but a couple of editors have done a tremendous amount of work on it. I think it has impoved greatly. If you haven't looked at it lately, please take another look. Bubba73 (talk), 15:56, 12 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]

FARC commentary[edit]

Suggested FA criteria concerns are referencing (1c), images (4), and MoS concerns (2). Marskell 14:08, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I wonder why you move it to FARC when the changes are still ongoing and moreover in my opinion many of the original concerns were already addressed?--Ioannes Pragensis 15:40, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Just to keep things on track timewise - FARC can also be extended beyond the two-week period as long as work is progressing, so don't be concerned. Sandy (Talk) 17:20, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. Original concerns have been largely addressed, and the article has been massively rewritten. (I'm going to ping Tony to look at the prose.) Has anyone reviewed the issue with the images? If not, can someone ping Jkelly to have a look? The footnotes need to employ a standard bibliographic style - they're kind of all over the place, and need to be more consistent. Sandy (Talk) 17:22, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • Size. I know I said earlier that size was fine, but now the article has grown a bit large. The overall size is 73KB, with 53KB prose, which is quite high. Can you make more use of Summary style in some sections, to get the prose size down around 40KB? Sandy (Talk) 17:35, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • I deleted about 7 kB of prose, i.e. we are slightly over 45 kB - is it OK?--Ioannes Pragensis 18:20, 8 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. History and Culture sections could still use more inline citations - there are a lot of facts that aren't referenced. Sandy (Talk) 22:59, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Most of it are basic facts which are probably in every better book about history of chess - but my problem is that I do not have access to English books about chess and I do not think that it would be good to cite e.g. German ones if there is a lot of English books. Does somebody have access to such books and could cite them there, please?--Ioannes Pragensis 23:13, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Btw Amazon.com says: History of Chess by Harold J. Murray; Chess: The History of a Game (Hardinge Simpole Chess Classics) by Richard Eales; History of Chess by Jerzy Gizycki. So if you have one of these...--Ioannes Pragensis 23:22, 9 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I already added two citation to History section. Please add {{cn}} to the places where you think citation is needed and I will try to verify them using Murray's or Edward Lasker's book, which I have, and add a citation accordingly. Andreas Kaufmann 11:38, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm reluctant to add tags, since I don't play chess, but I'll add a few for now, and more depending on your feedback. Sandy (Talk) 03:53, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
The entire section, Post-war era, is uncited - is it possible to put one cite per paragraph, or to give an indication inline of the source of that history? Sandy (Talk) 04:09, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
By the way you can search inside in some books on Amazon, e.g. The genealogy of chess, so somtimes you can add references even if you don't have the book. Andreas Kaufmann 11:44, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you, Andreas. I discovered Google books (http://books.google.com/) for the same purpose. But they do not show all pages. Greetings,--Ioannes Pragensis 13:16, 10 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I have seen both Italy and Spain cited as places of birth of the modern chess. It should be better cited and perhaps a bit more elaborated in the article. It is possible, that there are different opinions in the circles of historians. I've added a cn tag there. Can someone look in the books, please?--Ioannes Pragensis 08:46, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: I don't want to be boring, but the number of inline citations is still too small; many paragraphs are as yet unsourced.--Aldux 14:00, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I am not against much more inline citations. But on the other side, WP:CITE says "Attribution is required for direct quotes and for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged" and not "Attribution is required for every paragraph." The article is of very high-level nature, written for non-expert readers and much of the information here is in many chess books - so I do not expect that somebody would seriously challenge e.g. the paragraph about basics of endgames today... all the wisdom there is known already for 150 years or more. I could cite e.g. Euwe's major work about endings, but it would look like if somebody cites Einstein to source that "1+1=2". Non-experts cannot understand Euwe. What do you think about it?--Ioannes Pragensis 14:28, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not sure I agree with Aldux, but since I don't play chess, I could be wrong. It seeme to me that most of the uncited paragraphs are clearly rules and descriptions of how Chess is played, and that all of that info can be found in the FIDE rules or any of the books. I was asking for cites on specific information about the history, or stats on players, but I'm comfortable with not citing the basics of how to play the game. I'm not aware, though, if any of that could be challenged. Sandy (Talk) 19:15, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I hope that I solved it by adding some citations, mostly from books for beginners and slightly advanced players into the strategy/tactics section. It will not harm, I think, and those who seek citations will be content. :-) --Ioannes Pragensis 20:20, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment I've just replaced the last remaining cn tag with a citation and every significant section has at least one reference. What next?--Ioannes Pragensis 21:03, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
    • It's looking good, but I still don't see cites in the Post-War era. We need to get Tony and other copyeditors to look at the prose. Sandy (Talk) 21:08, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry, I've overlooked it. This is a task mainly for Bubba :-).--Ioannes Pragensis 22:00, 11 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Per Sandy, and the average subsection only has one inline citation. Good work on the part of those involved, but I vote Remove unless this is addressed. LuciferMorgan 03:57, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
I count 54 footnotes and 22 subsections, about 2.45 footnotes per subsection. Bubba73 (talk), 04:25, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Once again: WP:CITE says "Attribution is required for direct quotes and for material that is challenged or likely to be challenged," which is already almost fulfilled. We need only citations for the modern history (Bubba73, please add them) and this will be OK. There are sections which should stay with one citation, that is Rules section or the short section about notation, because there is only one authoritative source for it, the official FIDE rules - I do not see a reason to add more citations there if the FIDE Handbook is already cited.Ioannes Pragensis 06:41, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment so thanks Bubba73 the Post-War era is referenced and our average number of references / paragraphs is about 3.5 (I do not count the intro, See alsos etc.). If you think that something can be challenged and therefore should be cited, use the cn tag please. - If I understand it right, the most important remaining problem is that the article should be copyedited; could you Sandy please contact somebody able and willing to do the work for us? Ioannes Pragensis 19:54, 13 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment: Just for comparison, this is how it looked before FAR (November 20, about 750 edits back in the history log, therefore not easy to find). It is also hard to find one single sentence unchanged since then...--Ioannes Pragensis 22:03, 21 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment A number of us have made a lot of edits in the last few days and weeks to this article. It's been massively overhauled. What outstanding FARC issues are there? --Dweller 13:04, 22 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep. I can't recall another article in FAR which has received as much effort as Chess. The article has been referenced, reorganized, and rewritten, with little prodding needed from FAR reviewers, and little input. I'd still like to see a few changes (I'm not thrilled with players - played in the lead, and liked some of the old lead wording better), but I believe this article has improved so dramatically that it shouldn't be delisted. Sandy (Talk) 00:39, 23 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Has this FARC been closed? --Dweller 22:21, 25 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]
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