Wikipedia:Featured article review/Chess/archive4

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was delisted by Nikkimaria via FACBot (talk) 1:24, 21 January 2021 (UTC) [1].

Chess[edit]

Notified: WP:CHESS, WP:BOARDGAMES, talk page 2020-04-20

Review section[edit]

I am nominating this featured article for review because of the issues discussed at Talk:Chess#FA_concerns, which have not been addressed in weeks. Setting aside minor problems such as badly formatted references (and several references to youtube or blogs), the article has unreferenced paragraphs and sections and worse, seems not to be comprehensive. Some sections are just one-sentence long, and there are entire issues that are not covered at all (chess and military [2], chess and board games [3]/[4]) or are covered too superficially (chess in popular culture, online chess). Some topics like online chess are mentioned only in the lead and not in the body at all. Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 08:13, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This is the fourth FAR for Chess. This time, I'm not working on improvements; no one will keep this article in order. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:28, 16 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The last one was 10 years ago. So maybe someone new will step up. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 09:07, 17 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment – It looks like I commented briefly at the last FAR, although I didn't have any major involvement; this is one of those topics where I lack knowledge and am afraid that my edits would be more harmful than helpful. In general, there is quite a bit of uncited content scattered throughout the article, which is my major concern regarding the FA criteria. The other items will probably be easy enough to deal with in a summary article like this, with modest additions, but if the content isn't referenced we're not going to have much choice but to delist this down the line. Giants2008 (Talk) 00:09, 20 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

FARC section[edit]

Issues raised in the review section include sourcing and comprehensiveness. Nikkimaria (talk) 15:35, 1 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
User:Piotrus, do you have feedback on whether the issues have been addressed? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:28, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@SandyGeorgia: Sadly, I still see unreferenced parts, and the missing / indaequately covered content I mentioned above (military training, popular culture, online chess) haven't been touched upon, so despite the article being edited since those issues were raised on talk and here by several editors (whom I'll ping just in case they are not aware of this discussion and maybe one of them would commit to a major rewrite) nothing has been addressed. @MaxBrowne2, TimSmit, Intforce, Bruce leverett, and Quale:. I'll also ping major past contributors because who knows, some may be still active and willing to rescue this: @Ioannes Pragensis, Bubba73, Ihardlythinkso, and KAP03: --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 02:47, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I haven't even had the article on my watch list for many years. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 05:44, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delist. Unsourced paragraphs and statements. Five-paragraph lead, single sentence sections and gallery sections deprecated by manual of style. DrKay (talk) 22:27, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • @DrKay, Bubba73, Piotrus, and SandyGeorgia: I made a few bold moves, changed the intro, deleted a few sections. I hope that it helped to rise the quality a bit. Could you please look at it and tell me, what is to do now in order to keep the article in FA?Ioannes Pragensis (talk) 18:31, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • You CANNOT eliminate the absolutely essential rules of castling, pawn promotion, and en passant!!! Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 23:15, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I'd rather see it delisted than mutilated like this (and probably still delisted anyway). This is wholesale deletionism. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 00:02, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I agree. I'd rather have it say what it needs to say and not have it an incomplete FA. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:18, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • Compromise? If you can't have sections about the castling, pawn promotion, and en passant rules, promotion and en passant could be covered in the movement of the pawn and castling could be covered in the movement of the king, even though it also involves a rook. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 01:28, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
  • There have been some startling removals:
As mentioned above, there is no explanation of castling, en passant capture, or pawn promotion. Pawn promotion is even mentioned in the section about "Theory", but not defined.
There is nothing about the first move advantage.
There is nothing about zugzwang.
There is nothing about strategy or tactics.
The famous Réti endgame study has been removed. This is absolutely part of "chess canon"; not to mention that it is beautiful.
The reference to the mini-series "The Queen's Gambit", so recently added as a result of a semi-protected edit request, has been removed.
I can't imagine that this article could last very long without proper coverage of these topics. Bruce leverett (talk) 03:14, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
    • @Bruce leverett: Well, Bruce, there was really a lot of very important topics of the chess theory not covered even before my purge (eg. basics of the opening theory or how to mate with a Queen against bare King). It is impossible to mention everything given the limited space. But I have no slightest objection to describe two or three important topics as short examples in the Theory section. Regarding the Réti study, it is beautiful, but not understandable at the beginner level - you need at least some basic knowledge of the endgame theory to appreciate it, and the endgame theory is not explained there.Ioannes Pragensis (talk) 08:12, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I would not expect readers to be interested in, for instance, king-and-queen-versus-bare-king. But, like any introductory article, this should teach basic vocabulary, so that readers can return to their books or movies or whatever prompted them to look up Chess in Wikipedia, and comprehend better what they are seeing and hearing.
Of course there are many beautiful endgame studies and I did not mean to recommend for them to be included. But the concept of "chess problem" or "endgame study" is hard to comprehend without an example, and the Réti study was an excellent choice, because it is very simple, and because countless textbooks and articles have used it.
I see that your changes have been rolled back. I thought that you had done some good work, but I agree with User:MaxBrowne2 that there needs to be time for consensus if major changes are being made. Bruce leverett (talk) 15:18, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
It is better to have a good article (small "g") than have a bad article that passes the FA test. 07:02, 13 January 2021 (UTC)
I understand the reason for removal of under-referenced sections, but the best solution is to reference them. Either way this won't help address issues with lack of comprehensiveness (the article seems reasonably ok discussing key topics related to classic chess but fails badly when one tries to look at this from a broader perspective, like chess culture/chess and culture/etc.). I am happy to put my vote on hold if someone wants to expand this, but I want to stress that referencing existing content (and also standardizing the reference style and eliminating some low quality refs) won't be enough. --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here 07:35, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I understand that FA standards are more stringent now than they were when this article was originally passed. If this article gets delisted for now I can live with that. From my point of view we had a pretty decent article that was getting worked on by several editors and gradually improving. I'm ok with the gradualist rather than immediatist approach, we can discuss what needs trimming and what needs expanding. I certainly don't want a single editor cutting whole sections out, including important parts of the rules, in a rush to pass FA status. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 08:20, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
My point of view is that the article became a bit bloated, and sometimes unbalanced, during the past 10 or so years, and that its structure should be improved. I understand well that my emergency moves can be disputed, but this FA review is a good opportunity to make the important article better and change things that would be otherwise untouchable. I returned the chapters I deleted yesterday, perhaps we can find a compromise - but the purpose to make the article more readable and more useful for general public should be always kept in mind.Ioannes Pragensis (talk) 18:15, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I worked on some small parts of the article before it became a FA, but then I took it off my watch list, and haven't looked at it for years. It does seem a bit bloated now. As far as unreferenced paragraphs, I haven't looked through the whole article, but several of them are the paragraphs on the rules. However, other than some general text, all of it could easily be referenced to the FIDE rulebook (which is referenced in the introductory text). There are also a large number of other books that could be used for references, but the official FIDE rules do change change from time to time, making other books not up to date. Bubba73 You talkin' to me? 20:06, 13 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Delist. I don't think it’s worth greatly diminishing the article in order to keep it at FA (and it would likely fail comprehensiveness as a result if tried). What is most surprising to me about this is that we don't have an article titled Introduction to chess. That would likely be a far easier article to bring up to Featured Article status, and perhaps even be more useful to readers (if they were properly directed towards it). As it stands, the article really does have too many problems... A shame, but not surprising, given its age (it’s surprising that it lasted this long!). — ImaginesTigers (talk) 19:36, 15 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Piotrus: I tried to start a revrite of the article to try to repeat the salvation 10 years ago, but it looks like that it is currently owned by a gentleman who knows chess strategy well, but perhaps does not have the right feeling for the strategy of building a high quality article. I have many better things to do than to try to persuade him that all chess rules should ideally be described in one place or that the infobox should correspond with the text of the article. I am sorry. Ioannes Pragensis (talk) 17:41, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

That pretty much sums up my decades-long frustration with this article. Since "everyone's an expert on the internet", it seems impossible to keep this article at standard. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:49, 19 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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