User talk:Quale

From ChubbyRook

Thanks for correcting my edits! I like chess very much too. What's your chess.com username? Mine is daveesh1208. — Preceding unsigned comment added by ChubbyRook (talk • contribs) 10:12, 25 May 2020 (UTC)

• Welcome, @ChubbyRook:. A lot of edits on Wikipedia aren't really about corrections in the real world sense, often it's just about the particular way that things are done here in the English Wikpedia. Wikipedia has a lot of guidelines about how to best build an online encyclopedia, and it can be difficult to understand all of those guidelines especially when you first start to edit. Unfortunately many of our chess articles are old and don't demonstrate best practices. We do try to follow the rules when adding new material to the pages or making edits with the goal that eventually all chess articles will be up to standards. If you have any questions about why I or anyone else has modified one of your edits, feel free to ask on the article talk page or by leaving a note on the user talk page as you did here. Also just because I modified an edit you made doesn't mean my edit was correct and yours was incorrect. I make mistakes on Wikipedia, and it's good when other editors correct me. And sometimes it isn't right or wrong, just a different opinion about what should be included in an article or how it should be worded. If you have a disagreement of that kind that you can't resolve with me or any other editor you can ask for the opinion of other people. One place to ask for that assistance is on the WikiProject Chess Talk page.

I'm not actually on chess.com or active in online chess at all. There are other chess editors here who are more active players than I am, and far stronger chess players that I am as well. You might meet some of them online, but I don't know any of their user names. Thanks for your work trying to improve Wikipedia's coverage of chess, and I hope you find editing Wikipedia to be enjoyable and worthwhile. Quale (talk) 02:45, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

• Thanks very much! I hope you also enjoy editing too :-)@Quale:

Amateur chess players?

At the beginning of the article about Charles Maurian, it says he was an "amateur chess player". So it looks awkward to be removing him from the category "Amateur chess players".

This is aside from the usual questions about what an "amateur" is. For example, did Maurian make money from chess? He was a column editor, and also, perhaps his New Orleans Chess Club prize was worth something. (But, hmm, the current Pittsburgh CC championship does not have a money prize.) Sports people have been stripped of "amateur" titles for having taken money for sports performance, but in chess, not so much.

Is this a new category? Bruce leverett (talk) 13:46, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bruce leverett: Thanks for the question. Category:Amateur chess players is old, dating from before 2011. Originally it was called "Famous amateur chess players", but it was moved to the current title in 2011. The reasons for the move were sound, I think, as putting "famous" in a category title is probably not a good practice.

I have attempted to use the category to keep pages like Humphrey Bogart, Stanley Kubrick, Howard Stern out of Category:American chess players where I really, really, really think those pages do not belong, and similarly for keeping Pope John Paul II out of whatever Category:Chess players by nationality category that he might be put in. The number of junk entries under Category:Chess players by nationality is really unlimited as anyone with any celebrity or even just a wikipedia page who ever played chess could go in those categories even though they might barely qualify as a chess hobbyist.

General wikipedia guidelines WP:CAT intends that categorization be used for "defining characteristics". Being a chess player is not a defining characteristic for Humphrey Bogart, Stanley Kubrick, Howard Stern, or Pope John Paul II. It is a defining characteristic for Charles Maurian, more on that below.

As you know, "amateur" doesn't have a lot of meaning in the chess world. FIDE gave up trying to classify players as amateurs or professionals decades ago.

Category:Chess players originally said "This category and its subcategories include notable chess players." To me that naturally meant that the people would have to be notable "as" chess players, not merely famous people who also happened to play chess. But obviously that working is ambiguous and could reasonably be interpreted to include anyone who ever picked up a pawn, so nine years ago I changed it to say "This category and its subcategories include people notable as chess players." in order to exclude computers and hobbyists.

To that end, years ago I added explanations to try to clarify this to the Category:Chess players

This category and its subcategories include people notable as chess players. (Category:Amateur chess players is the exception, since its members are notable for other things but have also attracted attention as chess amateurs. Amateur chess players are not categorized by nationality or put in any other chess players subcategory.)

and Category:Amateur chess players

This category is for people who were skilled but non-professional chess players and who are famous for some other reason.

Of course no one reads the category page text, and also this was something I did a decade ago and probably not everyone agrees with me that radio shock jocks do not belong in Category:American chess players. Really if you allow that, every biography of anyone who ever played chess could go in. I can't stomach that, but I'm willing to listen to anyone who thinks that that's the way it should be.

In the specific case of Charles Maurian, he is notable as a chess player and possibly encyclopedicly notable solely because he was a chess player and writer, so putting him in Category:American chess players instead is appropriate.

If Maurin is to be classified as an amateur player, how do you propose to divide the ~5000 chess biographies into amateurs and non-amateurs? I think it's insanity. Probably most of the chess players with wikipedia bios could reasonably be described as amateurs, even today. Quale (talk) 15:27, 5 May 2020 (UTC)

This looks like a coherent response to a classification problem. Of the four people you reclassified, it looks like Wreford-Brown might be borderline, but the other three are more notable as chess players than for other things they did. I am sure it has been tempting, over the years, for people to classify Humphrey Bogart, etc., as <nationality> chess players. Thanks for the explanation!

Getting back to the original question, perhaps if someone is really bothered by the paradox I brought up about Maurian, the solution would be to modify the article, and leave the classification alone. The word "amateur" doesn't look crucial or even very helpful in that sentence. But I will leave well enough alone, for now. Bruce leverett (talk) 00:31, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

@Bruce leverett: Just to show there are two sides to everything, at first glance one sensible criterion for whether to classify someone as an amateur chess player would be to look to see if there are any sources that say they are an amateur chess player. That is actually reasonable and normally all classifications should be done that way, based on exactly what sources say rather than Wikipedia editors attempting to interpret some set of disputable criteria as to what makes someone amateur or professional, Jewish or not, etc.

One reason why I think it is not a good idea to classify based on "what the sources say" about whether or not anyone is an amateur chess player is that most sources don't care to try to distinguish. Especially in the last 50 years, the term "amateur chess player" isn't really used, unless it's just intended to mean a not strong player. If the sources aren't interested in making that distinction then probably wikipedia shouldn't be either. Older sources would sometimes call players amateurs, typically 19th century, but I wonder if some of the desire to draw attention to that distinction was due to the low opinion given of professional sportsmen in the Victorian Era. This extended not only to gamblers earning a living with cards or dice or wagers on backgammon or chess, but also to professional athletes such as boxers and professional (American) football players or basketball players. It's hard to imagine now in an age of worship of professional athletes, but a century ago amateurism was lauded and professionals were not respected. So Morphy and Euwe were amateurs, but really so was Reshevsky for most of his career after he toured as a prodigy. Technically Capablanca was a diplomat so again an amateur, and even most of the Soviets nominally had other professions and could claim amateur status.

Really that's an argument to not have Category:Amateur chess players at all. Most sources don't make the amateur vs professional distinction for chess (where it has little meaning anyway), and it's very hard to claim that playing chess is a defining characteristic for most of the relatively few people who have been explicitly called amateurs. In my view the main purpose is pragmatic, as a kind of safety valve preventing those articles from going into other chess player categories. Given the really small number of articles in the amateurs category possibly I shouldn't be so up tight about the possibility that those articles would go in Fooian chess players, but apparently I am. Quale (talk) 03:23, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Also I should have said something about Charles Wreford-Brown. I agree that he is an arguable case, where it is reasonable to view him as a more of an amateur chess player than someone notable as a chess player. Certainly chess is not his claim to fame. For my point of view being present at the 1924 event that inaugurated FIDE and participating in a British Chess Championship is enough to claim notable as an English chess player status, but I understand the opposite argument. It is also true that in 1924 FIDE recognized a distinction between chess amateurs and professions, which I think they did not abandon until sometime in the 1930s. Quale (talk) 03:32, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

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Einar Þorvaldsson‎‎

What's up? I do not see a PROD notice on this article. Also, I would judge the guy to be notable, FWIW. Bruce leverett (talk) 14:49, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

• @Bruce leverett: Ouch, that was terrible. Thanks for keeping on eye on things. The prod notice is actually for Eyþór Arnarson. The subject had articles in other language wikis that were deleted, and the English page should be too. Einar Þorvaldsson is notable. I was working to get the page renamed to Einar Thorvaldsson per Wikipedia:WikiProject Iceland/Style advice, and clearly I got confused. Quale (talk) 16:00, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

That's progress, but Arnarson is not a chess player, at least the article doesn't mention chess. Bruce leverett (talk) 16:34, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

The page is in Category:Icelandic chess players which is the only reason i stumbled across it. Probably because of this sentence: "n 2004, Eyþór won the regional youth chess championship in Akureyri." I could simply remove it from the chess players cat and the index of chess articles, but I think the encyclopedia would be better if the article were removed. I'm leaving it in the index for now ecause that will make it easier to see what becomes of it. Quale (talk) 18:51, 9 May 2020 (UTC)

Oh I missed that sentence, sorry. Bruce leverett (talk) 02:29, 10 May 2020 (UTC)

Vice World Champion title

Please no WP:OWNBEHAVIOR, thanks in advance. »Vice World Champion« is an established title across sports: »The title of vice world champion is part of a long list of achievements from the Ukrainian-born Russian player.«[1] »German Domino Champion 2005 Adrian Lack won the Vice World Champion title.«[2] »As already mentioned above, he now won the Vice World Champion-title at the World Breeding Dressage Championships for Young Horses in Verden.« [3] — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A04:4540:6404:100:392B:82E8:8FCA:CBC1 (talk) 15:16, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

That is not a title in the world of chess. If you disagree, please cite an English-language source that says Zukertort was the "undisputed vice world champion". Quale (talk) 15:41, 10 June 2020 (UTC)

A vice world champion is a title as any other in sports competition, of which chess as a competitive sports is a part. I gave you an English-langugage source for Lagno, who is a chess player. If you disagree, show me a source that claims there is no such title, and I also look forward to hearing how one chess player can have a vice world champion title (Lagno), but another one can’t (Zukertort). FIDE regulations (13.2): Title of Vice World Champion [4]

Thanks for putting in research on this. Vice-champion is not a term that I recall commonly applied in chess, but searches do show it used rather frequently on sites associated with FIDE (e.g. Anna Muzychuk on the Women's Grand Prix site https://wgp2019.fide.com/profile/anna-muzychuk among others) and also on ChessBase News (Google search for site:en.chessbase.com vice champion). Personally I don't think that's the best way to describe Lagno or Anna Muzychuk, but that's a discussion for those articles. One thing that you have definitely taught me is that if someone uses the term "vice-champion" in articles such as Anna Muzychuk, I might not like it but I should be much more open to accepting it.

The problem in this case is claiming that Zukertort's situation is analogous to these modern players when it is not. The specific claim I removed was that Johannes Zukertort was "the first undisputed Vice-World Chess Champion". That claim needs a reference that specifically calls Zukertort "undisputed Vice-World Chess Champion". I'm pretty sure no such reliable source exists. The World Chess Championship 1886 is generally regarded as the first world chess championship match, but it isn't normally called an "undisputed" chess championship. That implies that there might have been earlier disputed chess championships, and there weren't. The 1886 match is often called the first "official" chess world championship, although "official" in this case doesn't mean the match was organized by any official sanctioning body. It is simply the first match that a preponderance of modern chess historians agree was the first true world championship match, and also the point at which FIDE (founded 38 years later in 1924) marks the beginning of the reign of Steinitz as the first world chess champion. Although there's a good chance that Zukertort was the second best player in the world in 1866, there is no way to know and in fact no attempt was made to ensure this before the match. Before 1948 the World Championship title was the possession of the champion, and he could select or reject any challenger he chose. The championship match purse had to be raised by the challenger. As you might expect there are some serious problems with this if your concern is that the championship match should feature the two strongest players in the world, as the champion had a strong incentive to choose weaker challengers who could raise larger purses. Despite this, there is general agreement that the world champions from Steinitz (1886) through Alekhine (died in 1946 while holding the title) were the strongest players. In 1948, FIDE took over ownership of the world championship title and began organizing qualifying tournaments. From that point forward there was a real effort to ensure the challenger was the most qualified player, although this did not happen during the years with a split title (1993–2005) when Kasparov left FIDE. You can read about this at Development of the World Chess Championship if you are interested. Quale (talk) 00:48, 12 June 2020 (UTC)

I am familiar with the World Championship history, but thank you for your effort. Given the reasons you mentioned one could as well argue that Steinitz, Lasker and Alekhine (who denied Capablanca a rematch) were among the strongest players, but not necessarily the strongest, as they picked their opponents. To prevent further debate, I’ll reword it into »official vice world champion«, as noted here [5]. Also, Sergey Karjakin literally has »Vice World Champion« as the first thing on his personal web page. We can think of it what we like, though in all fairness, I wouldn’t mind saying I lost a world championship match and became »vice world champion«. Anyway, thanks for keeping an open ear. On another note, I’d appreciate if you have a word with user:MaxBrowne2 or just have a look. Threats don’t sit well with me when all he does is push his personal opinion without providing facts to the opposite. Cheers.

There is discussion at WT:CHESS#Vice champion that you can join if you like. My reading of the tea leaves is that consensus is strongly against you and we will not use "vice-champion" to describe chess runners-up, but that's just my opinion. Quale (talk) 16:11, 13 June 2020 (UTC)

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Not enough signature

In your recent comment in Talk:Bobby Fischer, your signature didn't come out quite right (perhaps not enough tildes, or too many?). Could you fix that? It would help to better separate it from my own subsequent comment. Thanks. Bruce leverett (talk) 04:15, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

@Bruce leverett: Thanks, Bruce, I inadvertently used 5 tildes instead of 4. Quale (talk) 05:02, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

Awarded WFM title years

Hi Quale. In wikidata I am working on the list d:Wikidata:WikiProject Chess/Lists/WFM. Now, only six WFM title award years are missing. These are Petra Kisova, Kirsten van Münster, Eneida Perez, Laura Ross, Hazel Smith, and Ingrid Voigt. I would kindly ask you to look into Di Felices book and provide the respective years (either simply here so that I can fill them in, or you can also add them directly to the items). Thanks in advance. Steak (talk) 17:08, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

• @Steak: The chess lists in Wikidata look really nice, I'm impressed. The list of GMs seems to be missing about 40 entries, my best count is 1918 GM titles have been awarded to date.

In working through verifying the GM list against Di Felice I've found a small number of players where I think Di Felice lists the wrong GM title year, in those cases typically Di Felice lists the year before the official FIDE award. No source is infallible and since we've fixed dozens of mistakes we made in the list of GMs I'm sure there are still quite a few errors left. I do consider Di Felice to be very reliable, and often it's the best source I have. This is what Di Felice says about those WFMs:

Player	WFM Year	Comment
Petra Kišová	1990	later Petra Poláková
Kirsten van Münster	2004
Eneida Pérez	2003
Laura Ross	2002
Hazel Smith	2004
Ingrid Voigt	2002

I'm working on adding birthplaces to List of chess grandmasters using Di Felice and FIDE title applications as the sources. I'm only about a third of the way through the list so far and have a few more weeks of work to do since I don't feel like working on it every day: User:Quale/List of chess grandmasters - WIP. You probably have a lot of birthplace information in wikidata, so when I finish my first pass through the list I should find a way to compare it to wikidata. Probably that would find some errors I might have made as well as hints about some players that don't have birthplaces recorded in Di Felice or in their title applications. Quale (talk) 02:54, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi Quale, thanks for your fast answer. Regarding the total number of GMs, I noticed that in your list also honorary GMs are contained. In wikidata they are listed separately, which reduces the discrepancy to around 9. This is due to some missing GMs from the current year. The other issue regarding the awarded years, I think this is due to the fact that some sources list the year when the title was achieved, while others list the year when the title was officially awared. For example for Vladimir Liberzon, he earned the title in 1965, but was awarded it in 1966. A more recent example would be Sergey Karjakin, where many sources state he got the title in 2002, when he fulfilled his last norm. But actually he was awarded the title only in 2003. Steak (talk) 06:24, 17 July 2020 (UTC)

Right. FIDE actually mentions the "title earned year" vs "title awarded year" difference in its handbook. Wikipedia wants to use title earned date only for chess prodigy when calculating the youngest to achieve a title, and for that you actually need the exact date when the final norm was achieved. A chess bio page might also list the year or date of the final norm, but otherwise pages use the awarded year. Regarding honorary GMs, I think for a time we put them in a separate table in List of chess grandmasters. But the distinction is a bit muddy, and I was never confident we had identified all the honorary GMs. There are also some other cases where the honorary nature of the title is disputed, as with Penrose, although all the sources I've seen except for Barden say his title was honorary. (But I consider Barden to be a highly reliable source, so I don't discount what he says about this.) And finally, FIDE has eliminated honorary title awards, so the distinction won't exist from that point on. Quale (talk) 17:49, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

When there is agreement that we only take the "awarded" year in the GM list, than the discrepancies that you mention largely vanish. For example Vladimir Liberzon was awared the title in 1966, so Di Felice is correct and the FIDE Golden Book (1965) is wrong. Same for Lubomir Kavalek. Another case: Jure Borišek got the title at the FIDE Congress in November 2008. I guess that the FIDE Database Admins needed some time to update the profiles with the new title, and therefor it happened that his title was noted with 2009. Borisek is also noted in the January 2009 Elo list as "g". Di Felice is therefore correct with stating 2008. Steak (talk) 17:53, 25 July 2020 (UTC)

@Steak: Actually I think Liberzon was awarded the GM title in 1965 since that's what Elo says on page 182 of The Rating of Chessplayers Past & Present. There's no guarantee that Elo is right, but Elo, FIDE Golden Book, The Oxford Companion to Chess, Golombek and Gaige all say 1965. Not all of those sources are independent, and since it is either 1965 or it isn't it doesn't really make sense for me to say "it seems more likely to be 1965". But it seems to me to be more likely that it is 1965 and that this is a small error in Di Felice. There are others, I've found incorrect birthplaces and birthdays in Di Felice as well, but these errors are rare. (Di Felice is probably more reliable than List of chess grandmasters is, but it's easier for us to fix mistakes in a wiki than it is in a dead tree so there's still a chance to get better.) Borisek is another interesting case. There must be thousands of mistakes in FIDE's database. In 2011 FIDE even showed the wrong GM year for Viswanathan Anand which I thought was rather remarkable since Anand was the world champion. I emailed FIDE and they fixed that particular error. The FIDE Golden Book shows Borisek's title year as 2009 also, but it's hard to know how to square that with the FIDE press release that says the title was awarded in November 2008. Quale (talk) 01:31, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Actually this issue is even there for most recent GM approvals: Lukasz Jarmula was appointed GM in the 2020 FIDE Congress (1. - 6. December), but his FIDE profile says "GM 2021". For myself, I came now to the conclusion that the FIDE profile can be used only as rough indicator of the title year, but not as a reliable source. Steak (talk) 16:53, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

General comments made along FEN article talk

I do personally not agree with the way you argue about this topic. I have argued why I find the mentioned two rules of interest on its own. There was an agreement to add this to the page for threefold repetition and fifty-move rule. As such, I adapted the articles where the threefold repetition and fifty-move rule are mentioned, as I have argued. This is something I like to do, for I find it useful and something I can do. And I checked for chess-related articles containing threefold repetition and fifty-move rule, for I find it necessary, as argued, that the fivefold repetition rule and seventy-five-move rule are mentioned along as mentioned. What is the problem with that? I have argued for it and find it necessary. If somebody does not like it, he or she can react accordingly on the edit. To none of these edits, there was a reaction, so I assume it's ok. The FEN page, by the way, I came across for personal interest regarding FEN.

However, the way you address these changes, I find disrespectful. You can speak this out directly, if you don't like, then I can adequately respond. The statement for example "You're vastly overstating the importance of these obscure rules with little practical importance." is just your point of view, that is fine, but you are elevating it to the general point of view. For what reason you specify these rules as "obscure"? For what reason you conclude "little practical importance"? This is rather an argument by intimidation than by argument on the matter. For if your statement as a general statement is correct, then one would have to say that FIDE added "obscure" rules, which I do not assume.

Also the comment "They should be mentioned where they need to be mentioned, but not shoehorned into every article on chess that you can" I find disrespectful. Yes, I try to work in the two rules where I find it appropriate, and for the mentioned arguing, I find it appropriate almost everywhere, where the other two rules are mentioned. Stating "shoehorned into every article on chess" suggests that this is done without any reflection. For that, please provide the list of articles, where this was "shoehorned" and does not deserve the mentioning? You are underlying a general negative point of view to such edits, which I find destructive in the way mentioned. The FEN article is the first article where one can argue at all, per my point of view. For the outcome of the argument, I am not sure. But to produce such statements as mentioned on this occasion, I find a general discredit of my work done. You can criticize or even revert every single edit, that is your right, but not without argument. And that should be done appropriately, and in a way, I can properly respond, not "just" by the side, when I add half a sentence to the FEN article.

Besides to mention, during this argument, timely other important things have been overlooked. When I looked at the FEN page, someone has just introduced a grave error on the page, changing move c5 to c6 in the example, so invalidating the FEN. I could not expect such a change, so unaware of it, seeing the incorrect FEN, I corrected the FEN. Nobody became aware of the error introduced by the author, nor by the correction to the FEN by me, which in fact was not necessary, as the problem was before. The attention you put on the half-sentence for the seventy-five move rule, I would have preferred to have for the mentioned introduced error. Dlbbld (talk) 12:01, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

@Dlbbld: I appreciate greatly that you can have a calm and measured discussion with someone (in this case me) who you feel has been disrespectful to you. It is greatly to your credit that you do not return an injury you feel by attempting to strike back at the other party. I respect your opinion about the status of the new draw rules, but I don't agree with it. I do think you improved the encyclopedia by including the newer draw rules in the appropriate places, and that's good. Quale (talk) 01:36, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for taking this into consideration. I am fine with the reply, and for me, the matter as such is settled in a good way. Dlbbld (talk) 21:49, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

threefold/fivefold repetition again (groan)

Was this really what you had in mind when you suggested sections for the fivefold and seventy five move rules? Because I think it looks ridiculous, divorcing the fivefold repetition rule entirely from the threefold rule like this, and even putting the section after a section on repetition rules in other board games. (I don't think that section should really be in the article but that's a different issue). This is getting very tiring. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 07:24, 29 July 2020 (UTC)

I would say that's pretty close to what I imagined. It was four relatively brief sentences, which doesn't seem out of place to me. The first sentence explains when the new rule was introduced, the second sentence explains how it is similar to the older rule. The third and fourth sentences explain the rule and how it is different than the old rule. I'll say more on the talk page. Quale (talk) 00:21, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Regarding your revert

You reverted my change on chess saying that it was better before. It's not about whether you think it looks better, it's about the grammatocal correctness. I will undo your revert if you don't object. Sincerely, CompassOwl (talk to me!) 01:12, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

@CompassOwl: I reverted your change because the sentence was not grammatically incorrect and your change made it worse. First, placement of commas isn't grammar, it's punctuation. Punctuation serves to make writing easier to understand. Any inviolate punctuation rule you think exists that demands that a sentence be made less clear is not in fact an inviolate rule, and it is a mistake to apply it where it does not help. " In casual games, it is common to announce "check" when putting the opponent's king in check, but this is not required by the rules of chess and is not usually done in tournaments." is not a good way to punctuate this sentence. By breaking between "in casual games" and "it is common to announce check", the meaning of the sentence is obscured. It is not common to announce check in chess, it is common only in casual games, and I suspect there are many casual games in which check is not announced as well. "In casual games" and "it is common to announce check" must remain together or the correct meaning is obscured. And there is no need for that comma, the sentence reads fine without it. In fact, when read aloud there would be no pause at the point where you added that comma. The sentence was correct as originally written. Quale (talk) 01:38, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Okay, I admit the second comma was unecessary. But my first change was removing of an unecessaey comma in a compound sentence. I still think I'm correct on that one. CompassOwl (talk to me!) 11:16, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

@CompassOwl: I know this is a very late reply and maybe too late to matter, but I wanted to tell you that although on July 30 I was pretty certain I was right, I am unsure now. Your edit might be better or just as good as what was there before. I should not have claimed that there is no pause between those clauses when read aloud since I think that someone could very well insert a brief pause there. And although it's important that punctuation not obscure meaning, it's also true that the standard rules of punctuation developed because they generally improve clarity. I think that sometimes those rules can be ignored, but I didn't say that usually they should be followed and a good reason is required to deviate. In July I thought the reasons were good, but now I'm not sure whether the reasons I gave were good enough to not punctuate in the standard prescribed manner. Anyway, if you still have interest in trying to improve the punctuation of that sentence, I will leave it to your best judgment. I apologize for overstating my certainty that the previous punctuation was better. Quale (talk) 03:09, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Ardiansyah

Haji is not a name, but a honorific title for someone who made the pilgrimage to Mekka and who completed the Hajj. http://indonesiabase.com/ardiansyah-1951-2017/ https://www.kompasiana.com/raidersmarpaung/5d29c9b6097f3644d378b793/the-dream-team?page=all — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A04:4540:6404:FC00:D438:EFC4:CE0E:B5A7 (talk) 11:53, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

• Thanks for that explanation. Early FIDE records had "Ardiansyah, Haji", but later FIDE used "Ardiansyah, H.", possibly for the reason you note. Quale (talk) 03:12, 3 September 2020 (UTC)

Undid revision

Why don't you split the article for Cambodian chess? Shouldn't it be split into 2 articles? It is actually the sensitive conflict between 2 countries for claiming its origin. Thanks a lot ♥ Anuwater (talk) 04:59, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

@Anuwater: Thanks for coming here to discuss this. I think splitting the article would be good. I don't remember the history of this redirect; maybe I never knew it. It seems it's a little complicated, see Ouk-Khmer (Hill's version). Anyway, I don't think I have enough expertise in this area to split the articles correctly myself, but you're welcome to give it a try. The only thing I wanted to ensure is that the information is not lost, which is why I don't think it's satisfactory to delete the section without making sure the excised material finds a home somewhere else first. Quale (talk) 08:31, 11 November 2020 (UTC)

Can I still keep one of the edits that you reverted?

I agree with the rest of your reverts; however, I still am strong on keeping one. In the Stalemate section of the King article, there is a hyperlink that lasts five words (Stalemate). This differs from how this is handled in a previous part of the article ([[|Placement and Movement]]); where instead of a seven-word hyperlink, there is in parentheses: see opposition. I am new to Wikipedia, is there any reason the five-word hyperlink should be kept? Alshfik (talk) 17:36, 22 November 2020 (UTC)

@Alshfik: Welcome to Wikipedia, and I am glad that my revert did not discourage you too greatly. Thanks for asking about that here. I think you could be right that it would be better to link in a short parenthetical rather than a long phrase. I agree that linking long phrases to what are actually short terms is usually not a good idea. Go ahead and make that part of your change again, and thanks for your contributions to improve the encyclopedia. Quale (talk) 05:08, 23 November 2020 (UTC)

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Chess player biographies

Hi Quale. A while back, you posted User talk:Marchjuly/Archives/2020/May#John Paul Gomez on my user talk page about an article I created about John Paul Gomez. Recently, I've been getting lots of notifications about that article being added as a link to new articles about other Filipino chess players being created or expanded upon by an editor named Obetpaguia. Most of the articles appear OK (at least they do to me), but there's some odd formatting and using of bullet lists/table as well some puffery and WP:NOTEVERYTHING type of detail. I've tried to clean up a few things myself, but perhaps they would benefit from a review by someone more versed in chess player biographies such as yourself or some other members of WP:CHESS. In addition, this editor seems to have recently been focusing on chess related content and seems to know a lot about the subject; so, perhaps they might be a good person to try and get involved in WP:CHESS. -- Marchjuly (talk) 12:10, 26 December 2020 (UTC)

• @Marchjuly: Thanks for the heads up. I think that's a good idea as the chess project can always use more knowledgeable help. I'm not sure the chess editor community has been very effective at welcoming new editors, but every time is certainly an opportunity to get better at it. 05:32, 5 January 2021 (UTC)
  • Obetpaguia, perhaps in hindsight, might not have turned out to be as good of a potential collaborator as I initially may have thought as I explained in WT:CHESS#Filipino chess player bios. The account has been indefinitely blocked for repeated copyvios: it seems they were copying and pasting entire articles or parts of articles about tournament results, etc. into some of the bios they were improving. I caught a few of these and tried to explain why they shouldn't be doing this, but the warnings apparently go back as far as 2009. After checking their contributions history, it also seems that they pretty much never responded to anyone's talk pages posts, even ones left on their user talk page, since they started editing back in 2006; so, they were perhaps more of a "lone wolf" type of editor than someone interested in genuine collaboration. -- Marchjuly (talk) 06:29, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
    • @Marchjuly: Hmm, that's too bad. In my laziness I didn't do anything to approach Obetpaguia, and it's unfortunate that it has caused extra work cleaning up copy vios. Copyright is something that some editors seem unable to understand, or perhaps they are just unwilling. Thanks for giving me this follow-up notice. 06:38, 8 January 2021 (UTC)
      • Would you mind taking a look at Rico Mascariñas? It was one of the articles that greatly expanded upon by Obetpaguia. It survived an AfD discussion, but there still are some issues which need to be resolved. There seems to be an excessive amount of detail with respect to some of the tournament results that were added. (for example, dates and venue names). I'm also not certain about the bolding of some of the tournament names. There's also some puffery ("greatest moment", "brainchild", "outstanding", "posted an impressive", etc.) that doesn't seem to be very NPOVish. Another example is Enrico Sevillano, particularly the Enrico Sevillano#Other significant tournaments section. While some of these tournaments might be worth mention, some like US Amateur Team West probably no so much. Moreover, mentioning specific opponents by name when they don's seem to be Wikipedia notable on their own seems like a bit of unintentional WP:Namechecking. Obetpaguia did similar things in other Filipino bios and I tried to keep up and clean things up as it was being added, but I was never quite sure whether I was going too far in the other direction. I tried asking about stuff like this at WT:CHESS#Filipino chess player bios, but never got a response. There's no deadline regarding this for sure, but Obetpaguia being blocked might make this a good opportunity for some editors familiar with chess player bios to go back and look over the articles that were exapanded and assess whether anything needs to be cleaned up. -- Marchjuly (talk) 00:50, 15 January 2021 (UTC)

Awarded IM title years

Hi Quale, I have been crawling through the International Masters awarded up to the year 1989. I have almost completed the corrections and additions of the title holders and title years, but a few title years I am still missing, and I would kindly ask you to look them up in Di Felices 'Chess International Titleholders'. Here is a table with some remarks where you can fill the years:

Player		IM year	Di Felice
Moubarak Rian/Ryan		1985	Rian, Kacem, aka Rian, Mohamed Moubarak (MAR) b. 1959
K. Ryan	maybe identical to Moubarak Rian?		bingo, probably Kacem Rian
A. Saed/Syed/Saeed	should be around 1983; might also be written "Saeed Abdul Razak" or "Saeed Abdulrazak"		couldn't find a good match for this
Andras Meszaros		1988	Mészáros, András (HUN) b. 26 Aug 1956 Budapest, FM 1983, IM 1988
G. Perkhov	only source is ru:Международный_мастер (Г. Перхов in 1989), found nothing else online		can't find anything on this one
Stojan Ivanov	only source is ru:Международный_мастер (Стоян Иванов (Болгария) in 1988), found no IM with this name online	1988	Ivanov, Stoian (BUL) b. 9 Mar 1948, IM 1988

Thanks in advance! -- Steak (talk) 10:33, 12 January 2021 (UTC)

@Steak: I filled in above what I found in Di Felice. I couldn't find anything on Perkhov. I also didn't find anything for A. Saed, Syed or Abdul Razak. We do have a couple near misses to A. Saeed:

• Saeed, Nasser Ahmed (UAE). b. 15 Dec 1965. FM 1983, IM 1984
• Saeed, Saeed-Ahmed (UAE). b. 28 Nov 1967. IM 1982

An exhaustive search of the A entries might turn something up, but there are 22 pages and I didn't do it.

Also, may I ask what you are crawling to compile your title data? The rating lists are an obvious data source, but FIDE didn't include titles in the lists from 1975 to 1991 or so (I'd have to check to get that exactly correct, but that's roughly the range). It seems you have more interesting sources. Quale (talk) 03:10, 14 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for searching the years!

Actually I am compiling the data from various sources, since I noticed that every source has its weaknesses. The most recent source that I used for crawling the IM titles was the russian list ru:Международный_мастер (with the help of google translate). From there, a few IMs emerged that did not have an entry so far in wikidata. This list is also missing quite a lot of players (between 1981 and 1989, around 40 players are missing in the list). Strangely, there are two players that I could not find anywhere else (the Perkhov guy and another one), so I presume these are wrong entries. Can you do one more thing and check in Di Felice, if there is an entry under "R" like "Razak" (prenames Saeed / Abdul or so, see above) ( if you didn't do it yet)? Steak (talk) 18:40, 18 January 2021 (UTC)

I think I did check for Razak, but to make sure I looked again. Didn't find anything. If you could contact Di Felice then he might be able to check his data since I assume he has this in a database of some sort. Unfortunately I don't have any contact information or leads on how you could do that. Quale (talk) 04:14, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Thanks for re-checking. I don't have contact data of Di Felice either, and I did not find it online. Steak (talk) 21:58, 19 January 2021 (UTC)

Chess Diagrams

Hi! I think that the diagrams are highly valuable for beginners because they can memorize them fast. Removing them decreases the value of the entry where the visual help is mandatory. Please do not delete the diagrams. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mycoandres (talk • contribs) 13:41, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

@Mycoandres: Hi. I think some of the diagrams you have added are very useful, but adding many diagrams for obscure and unimportant variations or subvariations just one or two moves deeper than their parent can clutter the articles more than they help. I kept the two diagrams at English Opening showing major divisions of the opening that I thought improved the article, and removed those diagrams that I thought did not. I think other editors have expressed a similar opinion about adding many diagrams to other articles on chess openings. I hope that when several editors express an opinion that you will consider whether there is merit to their views, even if you don't agree. It could be that in a different place, perhaps a website that was teaching chess to beginners, a very large number of diagrams would be appropriate. I think we need to strike a balance at Wikipedia since it is an encyclopedia, and not a tutorial or game guide. Quale (talk) 05:14, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

@Quale: Thank you for your comments. My replies: They are not obscure and unimportant variations because they are mentioned in the article a long time ago. I mean, if the editors keep that information it is because it is valuable and not obscure. I also thought that adding more diagrams is more worthy than few and I think that it would be better for other chess articles. I realize that is the majority opinion, however, it does not mean that it is correct and should be deeply revisited. As you said I do not agree with the main opinion, but I really appreciate differences of opinions and also Wikipedia, that is why I do not reverse the changes. Wikipedia can include more information and is not limited to printing pages. I agree, however, that an adequate article size should be reached; but I think that this article could be expanded and if adding diagrams does not expand it, I really do not know what could do it. Finally, The "game guide" clause maybe only applies to videogames, and as Wikipedia is an encyclopedia it should contain visual aids for all the readers. Mycoandres (talk) 06:07, 22 January 2021 (UTC)Mycoandres

That's fair. The diagrams I removed in English Opening were more for the second reason I mentioned, and I probably shouldn't have said anything about obscure variations which applied better to diagrams you added in other chess opening articles. In English Opening you added a diagram for the Symmetrical Defense, which was good and helpful, and then four more diagrams showing 2.Nf3 Nc6, 2.Nf3 e6, 2.Nf3 d6 and 2.Nf3 g6. My opinion is that those diagrams which were only a single Black move different from each other and only one full move advanced from the Symmetrical Defense diagram were less helpful. But that's my opinion and not an objective fact, and there are other opinions. Quale (talk) 06:49, 22 January 2021 (UTC)

Two Knights Defence

Hello
I notice you’ve removed all the bolding from the article; can I ask why? It seemed logical to bold the main variations (and most of them were targets of redirects anyway). I did a couple more for consistency; why take them all out? Regards, Moonraker12 (talk) 16:58, 11 July 2021 (UTC) (PS: I get the feeling you prefer discussions here rather than on the article talk pages: If that isn't so, please let me know and i'll re-post it there.)

PPS: Also, (I'm curious) when did the format of the section headings change? Previously they read Move, then Title (if any); viz.4.Ng5, ‘4...d5: Main line’, etc. now, with a lot of/some them not having a title, it appears disjointed. (‘Traxler counterattack: 4...Bc5’, but ‘4...Nxe4’) Moonraker12 (talk) 16:59, 11 July 2021 (UTC)

@Moonraker12: That's a good question. When I saw the use of bold face in Slav Defense (before I removed it) I thought that was awful and I wondered how we got there. A little while later I realized that I had actually used bold face for variation names in a restructuring of Ruy Lopez I did around 2009, so I was actually part of the problem, not the solution.

Bold face emphasis has important uses, and one of them in Wikipedia is to mark the article title or subject in the lede sentence. Many subjects have alternative names and when Wikipedia redirects those alternative names to the page it is customary to bold those alternative names the first time they appear in the text. One could reasonably say that Fritz Variation or Ulvested's Variation are or could be redirected to the Two Knight's Defense page and their first mention should be in bold face per standard wikipedia practice. It's possible that I'm wrong and the bold face should remain in the article in some or all of those cases.

But in many contexts the variation name is already in bold in a section header, and bolding it a second time in the article body feels like overkill. That doesn't show up in the Two Knights Defense article as it is now, but it touches on your question about changes in the section headings. Unfortunately I don't know when the section headings changed or why. You would have to look at article history to find out. (If article history shows that I made the section heading changes then I apologize. I'm sure I wouldn't make a change unless I thought it was an improvement, but that doesn't mean I was correct.)

But bolding the variation name on first use only if it doesn't appear in already in emphasis because it's in a section title seems odd and inconsistent. it also doesn't work very well with variations that don't have a common name and that are usually described by a move (e.g. the 4...a6 Variation). Still worse are the WP:SUBMARINE links to player bios as part of variation names, and this looks especially bad when bolded. For example, Kieseritzky Attack is bad, although it's only slightly less bad without the bold (Kieseritzky Attack). I didn't fix that in the article, but I might at some future time because I think that's bad practice.

The kicker was really Semi-Slav Defense with over 210 uses of bold face. Many of those were bold-faced moves which generally shouldn't be done, but the variation names were bolded as well. (Some articles use bold face in games scores to distinguish the game line (moves in bold) from analysis (not bolded). That can be OK, but the scheme for bolding or not bolding moves in the Semi-Slav article was really a mystery to me.)

Since chess opening names are always capitalized, I think that should be sufficient emphasis in most contexts. Overuse of bold in articles like Semi-Slav looks really unnatural. The effect in articles such as Two Knights Defense and Ruy Lopez was not so bad, but I think that this is an area that should be consistent. Instead of trying to draw a line somewhere between the uses of bold face in Two Knights as being OK and Semi-Slav as not being OK it seems to me to be better to simply follow normal English typography and not bold all those variation names. As I said they are in caps which already provides emphasis, often they are already in emphasis in a section header, and generally the variation names are really not so important.

Anyway, those are opinions and not objective proof that we shouldn't use bold for first mention of variation names. And I've been editing chess articles here for a long time and it only occurred to me yesterday that I think that use of bold was in fact overuse, and I had done it myself that way for years probably without giving it much thought. If you find my argument unconvincing feel free to revert my changes to Two Knights Defense (but please not to Semi-Slav, that was wretched). Or solicit opinions from other editors on the article talk page or perhaps better at WT:CHESS. I'm pretty sure that more than one other person will think that I'm wrong about this.

Thanks for a polite request for an explanation for my edit. I hope this reply was useful even if you don't agree with my thoughts on this point. Quale (talk) 05:46, 12 July 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for replying so comprehensively; I can only apologize for the lateness of this response.

I can see your reasoning, and appreciate your concerns: I’m inclined to think there is some happy medium between 210 bolded items and none at all, but I don’t altogether know what that would be. As you say it is probably a matter for a wider discussion; something I’ll have to have a think about. I haven’t looked at a chess book for a while now, so I don’t remember what the usual format there would be is, and I’m not that familiar with all the pages we have here, so I don’t want to be treading on any toes.

Also, I checked in the edit history for the headings; it seems that up until January 2015 it just had algebraic notation, with names added in parenthesis thereafter: The parentheses were removed in April 2018 and the order changed in March the following year. As the editor who made the changes isn’t around any more, I can’t ask him, but would you have any objection to my restoring the previous arrangement (with or without parentheses)? Regards, Moonraker12 (talk) 17:31, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

A thorny question

I was interested to notice (above) that you have been changing Icelandic names using the thorn to a simple Th, per the Wikipedia:WikiProject Iceland/Style advice (and also that you noticed that I had noticed; Thanks!) I didn't know it said that: I'd assumed, as they were in general use, that it was deemed OK. I confess it irritates me a bit when editors here refuse to write in English (simple errors I can live with, but wilful disregard, and the stroppy defence of it, get up my nose) so I was interested that there was such a guideline. Do you know of anything covering other non-English letters, like the eszett, or the dyet, or much of the Vietnamese alphabet? Moonraker12 (talk) 17:37, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

@Moonraker12: Hi, Moonraker12. Thanks for your work improving articles, especially chess articles. The style guide for Iceland is the only one I know of covering non-Latin letters. There's probably something somewhere, we could look through the MOS to see what we can find. I know that Cyrillic isn't generally used for article titles, but that's about it. Quale (talk) 06:37, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

It was just a thought. I know the WP:ENGLISH section on modified letters says we should "follow the general usage in reliable sources", but that seems widely ignored; I’ve never seen an English language source using (for example) the eszett in running text (ie. not italicized as part of a foreign term) yet they crop up in articles all the time. Similarly I can’t think of a source that uses Eastern European or Vietnamese letters, yet here they are. I’d kind of hoped there would be a guideline tucked away somewhere that specifically ruled them out. Ah well...Moonraker12 (talk) 23:38, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

I have noticed particularly Vietnamese names which normally I would expect to appear in a more anglicized form, but generally they don't provide as much of a challenge as Icelandic thorn since it isn't hard to guess just by looking that a rough equivalent of Ngô Đình Khả could be Ngo Dinh Kha and similarly with your other examples. The appropriate transliterations of runes seems more mysterious if you aren't familiar with them as I don't think there are any strong visual hints, and I usually have to look it up since I don't remember. I think that's the rationale behind avoiding thorn and runes for example. Quale (talk) 03:24, 20 July 2021 (UTC)

That's fair enough; If I come across anything I can always let you know; Regards, Moonraker12 (talk) 19:53, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

King (Chess)

Do you believe it is fine to use content from the Portuguese article on King (chess)? MaxBrowne2 and I are on a disagreement. Thank you for your advice, Alshfik (talk) 10:52, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

• @Alshfik: Sorry for the delay responding to your question. In brief, it is definitely fine to use content from other wikipedias in the English wikipedia as long as the content satisfies the requirements of policy and guidelines. That doesn't mean that all content from other encyclopedias should be added to the English wikipedia. Here are some thoughts.
  1. All content must meet English wikipedia policy, especially WP:V. Keep in mind that other wikipedias have their own policies which might be more lax or more strict or just different than the ones adopted by the English wikipedia. In particular verifiability on the English wikipedia doesn't recognize any wikipedia as a WP:RS reliable source, so content will need to have a source other than simply appearing in a wikipedia.
  2. Editors might choose not to use some content in an article even if it doesn't violate policy, usually simply because they don't think it improves the article or the encyclopedia. So after the requirements of policy are met, I think the most important question when considering any edit is, "does this edit improve the article and the encyclopedia?"
  3. In this case I saw the first try of edits to King (chess) and reverted them primarily because I thought the language was not formal enough for an encyclopedia. I thought it was fine for a magazine, blog or book, but not really appropriate in Wikipedia. Writing in the English wikipedia can tend to be overly dry, I think, so I appreciate the attempt to make the prose a little more lively. The first draft I thought went too far in that direction.
  4. After you adjusted the language Max still reverted your addition. I must admit I didn't examine your second edit closely enough to form an opinion whether I thought the added material improved the article or not. I will take a closer look if you want to discuss your proposed additions on the talk page at Talk:King (chess). When you've been reverted I think it can be a good approach to explain your intended edit on the talk page, including any sources for the new claims and briefly explaining why you think the edit would improve the article. This is a bother, but collaborative work can require more persistence at times.

This is mostly just my opinion, but I hope you find it of some value to understand how I look at this kind of thing. Quale (talk) 04:53, 27 August 2021 (UTC)

• @Alshfik: Thank you. I will try my best to be somewhat active but I will have less time due to school starting.

Splitting articles

You may be interested in the discussion on Wikipedia_talk:Article_size. You are not the only ones with this problem.VarmtheHawk (talk) 22:30, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

@VarmtheHawk: Thanks. I'm already more involved in this crap than I care to be and real world concerns are taking precedence in my life at the moment, but I am interested in taking a look. Quale (talk) 06:33, 21 October 2021 (UTC)

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Invitation to reach consensus on Russian flag

Hi, Quale ! I'd like to invite you to take part in this discussion since it seems you were involved:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:World_Chess_Championship_2021#Wikipedia_bias_against_Russian_sportspeople_and_its_own_rules_violation — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:1C0:CB01:2660:A056:F425:465E:703F (talk) 01:11, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

WP:CHESSNOTATION

Thanks for the reference to WP:CHESSNOTATION. Sorry I didn't see that earlier! Holy (talk) 22:51, 9 January 2022 (UTC)

List of chess grandmasters

Yes, Szachy w Polsce is a chess website independent from the Polish Chess Federation. Its author (creator? owner?) is Przemysław Jahr (bottom right-hand corner here: http://www.szachypolskie.pl ). For more information, you may use a machine translator (for example, this one) to translate the main page (from the first link). Kamdenek (talk) 13:16, 28 February 2022 (UTC)

May 2022

Hello, I'm EVhotrodder. I wanted to let you know that one or more of your recent contributions to Deep Blue (chess computer) have been undone because they did not appear constructive. If you would like to experiment, please use your sandbox. If you have any questions, you can ask for assistance at the Teahouse. Thanks. EVhotrodder (talk) 07:20, 8 May 2022 (UTC)

Invitation to the Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ulvi Bajarani discussion

Dear Quale!

I'd like to invite you to take part in this discussion:

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Ulvi Bajarani

Ulvi95 (talk) 20:34, 10 May 2022 (UTC)

Tykhon Cherniaiev

Tykhon Cherniaiev is a two-time World Champion, so there is no need to delete important player information. As for the flags, they are allowed. But if you don't like flags so much, here are a few more pages to fix, please be consistent in your intentions: https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A0%D0%B0%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%88%D0%B1%D0%B0%D0%B1%D1%83_%D0%9F%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B3%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B4%D1%85%D0%B0 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%8F%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BD,_%D0%A1%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B3%D0%B5%D0%B9_%D0%90%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%BA%D1%81%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B4%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87 https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%83%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B0,_%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B1%D0%B8%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE There are a lot of them, but you are frankly interested in this particular page. You are prejudiced. Serg0072005 (talk) 19:52, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

@Serg0072005: No. I don't edit on the Russian Wikipedia, and the rules and guidelines that govern the English Wikipedia and the Russian Wikipedia are different. MOS:INFOBOXFLAGS is the rule that flags are not used in infoboxes on en.wikipedia.org, the rule on ru.wikipedia.org might be different. Also no important player information is being deleted. Cherniaiev's successes at the World Youth Championship are in the body of the article where they belong. The {{infobox chess biography}} parameter worldchampion is for players who have held the World Chess Championship, not one of the many age-restricted titles. Players who win the age-restricted titles have the details of their victories recorded in the article body. If you think the worldchampion parameter should be used in a different way, feel free to suggest this at the WT:CHESS chess project talk page to see if you can gain a consensus. All that said, thanks for your work to improve the Tykhon Cherniaiev article. Quale (talk) 22:34, 8 August 2022 (UTC)

Elipsis

First of all, thanks a lot for pointing that out to me. Tbh, I was really not aware of that! Do you happen to know why they don't want us to use the precomposed elipsis, although it is included in the symbol list? Hildeoc (talk) 21:27, 10 August 2022 (UTC)

@Hildeoc: Good question about the prohibition against precomposed ellipsis. Sometimes, although rarely, WP:MOS will include a brief rationale for style rule. More often you might have to plumb through possibly ancient talk page discussion to try to determine the reasons for a MOS prescription. (You can also ask on the relevant MOS talk page in case someone there knows.) There are hundreds if not thousands of rules in the MOS and dozens and dozens more in WP policy and guidelines such as WP:V, WP:RS, WP:NOR, etc. The enormous number of rules is serious barrier for new editors, and even people who have been around for a while can't be expected to know them all. I'm certain I unknowingly break WP guidelines from time to time.

Two opposing arguments are commonly given for particular style rules, and there's really no consistency. One common reason given to not use things such as the precomposed ellipsis is that they are too hard for editors to type or enter. The opposing reason for some style requirements is because it looks better. So MOS requires a dash or minus instead of a hyphen where appropriate even though many editors find ndash and mdash hard to type. It isn't clear why the ellipsis is treated differently. MOS preference for straight quotes instead of curly quotes is another example—straight quotes are easier to type, but many people think curly quotes look better. Quale (talk) 02:11, 11 August 2022 (UTC)

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Thanks for the thanks!

I actually did some work on Bogo's article today. I entertained some thoughts on improving it even further (after all, I like playing his opening) – but I don't have much experience writing biographies on WP or the right kinds of sources, and I feel like his would definitely not be an easy one to write correctly (Edward Winter asks on his site Has any chess writer ever published a rigorous, extensive study of Bogoljubow’s conduct during the Third Reich?, and if there hasn't, then the end result might well be a gloriously controversial and quite possibly mistaken WP:SYNTH).

That said, our Bogo-Indian article is really tiny and has a ton of room for improvement, so I might try that if time permits. (But emphasis on the "might".) Double sharp (talk) 13:22, 20 December 2022 (UTC)

Semi-Slav page

Hi Quale, I made a new topic in the Talk Page for the Semi-Slav concerning my edit which was reverted. RainyDayCafe (talk) 17:29, 31 December 2022 (UTC)

@RainyDayCafe: Thanks for your explanation on talk and for improving the accuracy of the article. I have reverted myself to restore your edit. Quale (talk) 15:31, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

List of chess players by peak FIDE rating

Hi, Quale, I've noticed you reverted my edit to the above page regarding Garry Kasparov's "country" column. I added Croatia, as he's been a Croatian citizen since 2014, and he is still playing competitive chess (more info here: Garry Kasparov, subsection: "Return from Chess Retirement"). In your reversal, you wrote: "no, he's not", but this seems to contradict the information on the above entry on Kasparov. Can you please elaborate on why the addition of Croatia to the list of his countries seems incorrect/inaccurate to you? Cheers. PeterRet (talk) 22:32, 24 February 2023 (UTC)

PeterRet: Sure, thanks for asking. FIDE ratings are, of course, administered by FIDE. Every chess player with a FIDE rating is affiliated with one of the national chess federations. FIDE maintains this registration for every player. You can look up the FIDE player registration on the FIDE website. There's a link in the infobox on Garry Kasparov: https://ratings.fide.com/profile/4100018. As you can see on that page, Kasparov is registered with the Chess Federation of Russia. Kasparov has always been associated with USSR or Russia, and he has never been registered with FIDE for any other country including Croatia. Quale (talk) 02:04, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Many thanks for the reply. In that case, I'd say the infobox data in the Garry Kasparov article needs to be adjusted, because now it says:

Country: Russia (1992–2005), Croatia (after 2016).

The gap in the timeline between 2005 and 2016 means this can't be understood as his country of citizenship (I don't think his Russian citizenship has ever been revoked, plus he's been a Croatian citizen since 2014), and it should therefore be construed as the country he has represented in a given time period. There's also this article [[6]], which seems to claim that he in fact did represent both Russia and Croatia in at least one tournament back in 2017. PeterRet (talk) 20:28, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Not according to FIDE, and in an article List of chess players by peak FIDE rating only the FIDE federation matters. The infobox on Garry Kasparov serves multiple duty since Kasparov has notability outside of chess now (although ultimately this derives from his chess career), but as a chess player he has been officially recognized since 1992 only as a member of the Russian federation. I think Kasparov did ask to represent both Russia and Croatia at one event, but from FIDE's perspective you can't do that. Rather Kasparov can do what he wants, but FIDE recognizes him as representing only Russia when he plays rated chess games. I should also note that Kasparov retired from competitive chess years ago. A quick look suggests that he hasn't played any FIDE rated games at normal time controls since 2005 and subsequently played only two blitz events in 2017 and 2021.Quale (talk) 21:30, 25 February 2023 (UTC)

Fraudulent edit(s) by fake Krakatoa?

Hi, Quale. Hope you are well. As you know, I do very little work on Wikipedia these days. I happened to look at the article on Francisco Lupi yesterday. I noticed that it claimed that he finished second at London-B (1946). He actually finished dead last. https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chess.pl?tid=81950 I wondered who had committed this fraud on Wikipedia, and accordingly looked at the edit history. To my shock, it seems to indicate that Krakatoa made this edit! The offending edit was made on April 5, 2021. I am therefore afraid that my account was compromised. Any edits made by "Krakatoa" from at least April 5, 2021 to March 5, 2023 (and also edits from an unknown period of time before that) should be regarded as suspect.

I have now corrected the article. It has other lightly-sourced and unsourced claims about Lupi. The account of him narrowly losing a match to Alekhine (+1 =1 -2) is correct. That is essentially the only thing he is remembered for. I have also changed my password, to something that should be very hard to hack. I thought I should let you know this. Best regards, Krakatoa (talk) 01:42, 6 March 2023 (UTC)

@Krakatoa: Thanks for reaching out. I'm sorry that your account was hijacked, but glad that you have regained control. I have noticed that you haven't been as active on Wikipedia, but there's always the opportunity to return in the future. You wrote my favorite chess articles (First move advantage in chess and George H. D. Gossip) and even if you never do similar work again, we will still be able to enjoy your contributions. I also haven't really been doing much here for several years, but I like to think that I might do more somewhere down the line. Quale (talk) 04:05, 9 March 2023 (UTC)

Thanks, Quale. Yes, I have largely moved on. Still make the occasional edit, but haven't written an article here for some time. Krakatoa (talk) 18:00, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

End of Warring on 2KD - Apology

I apologize for the unnecessary edit warring on 2KD, I have changed the page to before the edit wars, I apologize for wasting a lot of time. Jishiboka1 (talk) 05:43, 16 March 2023 (UTC)

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Lisa Lane Hickey birthdate

I believe 1933 is the correct year (see my talk page contribution at her article).71.105.190.227 (talk) 18:55, 27 March 2024 (UTC)