Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chess/Review

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Peer review

In Wikipedia:Peer review they say we should put an appropriate tag on the Talk page of the article currently being peer-reviewed. Do you think it would be appropriate for our informal reviews to follow this step ? SyG 06:57, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

• Yes and no :) Note that Peer review and A-class review are different things, see for instance how they do it at the Military history project Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Review. I do think some kind of notice should be put on the talk pages. For now, I simply added a little section. But yes, it would be nice to have some template for this. Voorlandt 08:26, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

Close the review process

The minimum duration of the review process is currently defined as 5 days. Given the limited (but growing!) number of participants in our chess project, it seems a bit short to me and I would like to suggest to increase it. What do you think ?SyG 09:10, 4 August 2007 (UTC)

• The number of participants is indeed not very large. A couple of regular contributors seem to be on holiday as well. How about 10 days-2 weeks? Voorlandt 09:41, 4 August 2007 (UTC)
  • I changed the duration of the review as "2 weeks after the last input has been made in the review". I mean, if the discussion is going on we do not want the review to be closed, do we ? SyG 09:28, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

It seems experience now shows it is a bit optimistic to expect "someone not involved in the review" to come here and close some reviews, so I would authorise anyone to close a review, provided the minimum duration criteria have been fulfilled. I will change the article that way, please feel free to revert if you think otherwise. SyG 09:28, 18 August 2007 (UTC)

A-class articles - a bit of criticism

I wonder why we set the criteria for A-class basically as "should ... largely satisfy the featured article criteria". In WP:ASSESS they demand a bit less than it. I suspect that we start here a "private" fork of WP:FAC process - why? In my opinion, standard A-class articles should be those clearly below FAC criteria but still very good and almost complete in all important parts.

Moreover, I am not happy with voting Support/Object here. Every member of the project is allowed to set the evaluations herself, and if someone else does not agree, he can change the assesment immediately, without voting. If a dispute arises, it can be solved normally on the talk pages.

I think that Review process should be rather a place where ideas can be exchanged about how to make an article better (instead of criticism without consequences) and it should be therefore started by a person who really wishes to work on the given article - otherwise many of the good tips will probably stay here unused for a long, long time. --Ioannes Pragensis 10:31, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

I nicked the formulation and the setup of the page from the wikiproject military history, where the reviewing seems to go really well. See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Review#A-Class_review and WP:MHA#Quality_scale. The A-class grade should not be awarded too lightly, as they are supposed to be of higher quality than the GA-articles. But I agree that it would be nice to have a more clear description. I think A-class should be awarded only after other (uninvolved) editors had a proper look at it. Just setting an article to A-class doesn't do much good, as it will probably go unnoticed. On the other hand putting it up for a review here can give valuable feedback to the involved editors. Having this formal review brings the article to the attention of a wider set of editors, who can help bring this up to the required standard. I totally agree that it is a great place to bring up ideas, and critism should be read as suggestions. However in the end I think it is good to have some sort of voting system, like most other wikiprojects (who have an A-class review department) do. See for instance Maths: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Mathematics/A-class_rating/2007, Military: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Military_history/Assessment/2007, Bio: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Biography/A-class_review. In any case, I would be very happy to see more activity on this page, which definitely can and should be improved. Do you know for instance a good set of criteria to distinguish A-class from B-class? Voorlandt 11:42, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

First thanks to Ioannes to give us an opportunity to discuss these important issues. Personnally I have the highest difficulties to understand the difference between FA-class, A-class and GA-class. So here is my current way of thinking:

1. FA-class articles satisfy all the WP:FACR, somehow perfection and gone through the process of FA-assessment.
2. A-class articles satisfy all FA-criteria except for very minor points, but have not gone through the process of FA-assessment.
3. GA-class articles are extremely good, but have (at least and at most) one major flaw regarding FA-criteria.
4. B-class articles are very good, but have several major flaws regarding FA-criteria.
5. Start-class articles are good.

I am of course ready to discuss this, but in all cases I tend to consider that FA-class should be higher than A-class, and A-class should be higher than GA-class.

I agree with Ioannes that everyone is qualified to assess an article. However, I would restrict that to assessing an article as Stub-class, Start-class or B-class. I would consider that FA-class, A-class and GA-class all need some kind of review. I would even go as far as to say that if tomorrow someone alone tags an article as A-class, I would be ready to revert this assessment and listing the article here as a A-class candidate, for a more comprehensive review. I like the idea that no article can be assessed as A-class without the support of at least 3 wikipedians.

I agree with Ioannes that it is a bit of a shame that we may do constructive criticism here, but there is not always someone ready to take that criticism and transform it in improvements on the assessed article. I would reckon the improvement would be made by the person who has nominated the article for A-class review, and others who support the article.

The purpose of this page is also to gather interest of external persons on a specific article, in order to improve this article thanks to a fresh look. For example in this current page I have reviewed Bughouse Chess, Alexander Alekhine and Endgame tablebase, trying to give constructive criticism. But I would have never gone to the Talk page of those articles to discuss improvements, because these articles do not interest me at all. SyG 12:12, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

OK if you guys like to vote... I will surely not complain to Jimbo :-) But WP:ASSESS, the mother of all evaluations, says "Two levels, GA and FA, are not assessments that can be assigned simply by a project member. ... If these tags are desired, ..., it must be nominated (for GA or FA) and await comments." Which means that all other levels can be assigned without formal procedures, if I understand it well. It gives sense to me - because with our voting procedure, we (and projects with similar procedures) make the difference between A and FA almost negligible and therefore the A category almost obsolete (or useful only as a short stop just before FAC).

Nevertheless, it is good that someone cares to run a special chess review project, thank you, Voorlandt & comp.! Ioannes Pragensis 20:26, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

It is a bit of a mess, see for instance the discussion here Wikipedia_talk:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessment#The_A-class. Here it is suggested that bigger project have a review process for A-class, while smaller projects don't. Unfortunately we probably do belong to the latter category. If I understand you correctly Ioannes, you would rather see a page setup for peer review Wikipedia:Peer review (for the list of all projects having such a review see here Category:WikiProject_peer_reviews) These don't have a voting systems and are a place setup especially to get feedback from peer editors. Whatever format, having a review process with less than 5 editors participating, just isn't worth it. Voorlandt 20:51, 17 August 2007 (UTC)

Review of B-Class articles

Have today reviewed all existing B-Class articles, a total of 128. Have viewed and read them briefly(not to a deep level) including checking each talk page and made notes on obvious weak points. Here is a summary of the brief reviews.ChessCreator (talk) 01:04, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

THAT is really impressive. Good work! SyG (talk) 20:14, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Quick review as B+

B+, these listed in this section seem to have no serious issues so they are potentially worth investigating further for a review.

Wording to the right indicate a slight weakness if any was found. In this section the weakness would have been very slight.
Alexander Alekhine B+ Trivia section, FAILED recent review
Algebraic chess notation B+ Citations
Anatoly Karpov B+ Citations
Budapest Defence B+
Chaturanga B+ Citations
Chess opening B+ Citations
Chess piece point value B+ Reference method References good
Chess variant B+
Comparing top chess players throughout history B+
Emanuel Lasker B+
Garry Kasparov B+
Hexagonal chess B+ Lead
José Raúl Capablanca B+ Citations
Mikhail Botvinnik B+
Mikhail Tal B+ Bit missing
My 60 Memorable Games B+
Origins of chess B+
Paul Keres B+ Citations
Rules of chess B+ now GA
Swindle (chess) B+ Display
Veselin Topalov B+ Citations
Viktor Korchnoi B+ Citations
World Chess Championship B+
World Chess Championship 2006 B+
ChessCreator (talk) 01:04, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Chess piece point value (and some others) uses Harvard Referencing, which is much better than the footnote method. Also see Wikipedia:Harvard referencing and Wikipedia:Citing sources. Bubba73 (talk), 03:56, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. I didn't know it's name. Why is it 'better'?

My initial impression is that the Harvard Referencing is far worse as the reference display is distracting to the text. I also found it confusing as the following numbers don't make sense. Worse still is that when you click a reference you can't tell which one it was referring to and you have no traceback to the place you where reading. A particular problem with long wikipedia documents and display on a screen as opposed to a book.

It's interesting that some citations on Harvard Referencing is done with the footnote method. ChessCreator (talk) 11:24, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Harvard referencing uses the author and year. The next number is an optional page number. In the references, items are listed in order by author's last name, and then by date if there are more than one by the same author. Harvard referencing is part of APA style.

This is the best method for the reader because it tells you - right there - who said it and when, which is often important. Also, if there are several references, the reader can immediately tell if this is from the same source as previous references. Also, this immediately shows that it is a citation rather than an informative note. (With a footnote, you can't tell if the footnote is a citation or contains other information without going to the footnote. This is irritating for the reader.) And if the reader is familiar with the literature, you often know what it is without looking. For instance, if you see (de Firmian 1999) you automatically know what that is.

This method is better for the editors too. It cuts down on redundancy if the same work is referenced often. It is easier for an editor to edit the references if they are in the reference section rather than scattered throughout the text of the article. It is easier for editors to edit the text of articles because you don't have the full text of the reference interrupting the flow of the article. It is better than the footnote method for a dynamic text such as these articles because if you use an Ibid footnote, and then insert another reference, that invalidates the Ibid, and that either makes more work for the editor or makes the reference wrong.

So Harvard referencing is better for readers and better for editors - it is a win-win situation for Wikipedia. Bubba73 (talk), 18:09, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Also see Citation#Citation styles, and Harvard referencing is the one recomended by the British Standards Institution. Bubba73 (talk), 18:31, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Thank you for the informative explanation. I will look upon Harvard Referencing, in a new light. ChessCreator (talk) 20:41, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

You're welcome. Keep up the good work you are doing. Bubba73 (talk), 00:11, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Quick review as B

B quality documents. These all have some problem or weakness which suggests in it's current state it's not worth taking further.
19th Chess Olympiad B Lead
36th Chess Olympiad B Lead , No photo
37th Chess Olympiad B Lead
Adolf Anderssen B Citations
Advanced Chess B Citation? , No photo
Alan Kotok B More detail in some areas
Aleister Crowley B Relevance to chess
Alexei Shirov B Citations , Bit missing/short sections
Babson task B Citations
Bishop (chess) B Citations
Bobby Fischer B Controversial , Citations
Boris Spassky B Citations
Carl Schlechter B Bit missing/short sections , Citations
Chebyshev distance B Bit missing/short sections
Check (chess) B citations , Bit missing/short sections
Chess World Cup 2007 B No photo
Chess endgame B Reference method References are good
Chess piece B Citations Citations OK
Chess problem B Citations
Chess960 B Citations
China national chess team results B Lead , To big
Computer chess B Citations
Correspondence chess B Citations
Corresponding squares B Citations Citations are good
David Bronstein B Citations
Deep Blue - Kasparov, 1996, Game 1 B Citations
Dunsany's chess B Bit missing/short sections
Emil Sutovsky B No photo , Citations
FIDE World Chess Championship 2004 B Citations
Fairy chess piece B Citations , Layout
Fortress (chess) B Citations Citations are good
Grand Chess B Citations
Göttingen manuscript B No photo , Bit missing/short sections
Halosar Trap B Lead , Bit missing/short sections
Harriet Hunt B Citations
Harry Golombek B Bit missing/short sections
Herman Steiner B No photo , Citations
Hou Yifan B Bit missing/short sections
Howard Staunton B Citations
Igor Vasilyevich Ivanov B Lead , Citations
Immortal game B Citations , Bit missing/short sections
Isaac Lipnitsky B Citations , No photo
Johann Berger B Bit missing/short sections
Johann Nepomuk Mälzel B Citations
John L. Watson B Bit missing/short sections
John W. Collins B Bit missing/short sections , Citations
Joke chess problem B Citations , Bit missing/short sections
Kaissa B Citations
Kevin Spraggett B Citations
Kira Zvorykina B No photo , Citations
Kiril Georgiev B Bit missing/short sections , Citations
Leonid Kubbel B Bit missing/short sections
Lev Aronin B No photo , Citations
Libro de los juegos B Bit missing/short sections
List of chess openings B Bit missing/short sections , Citations
List of chess terms B Citations
List of chess topics B List , Bit missing/short sections
List of chess world championship matches B List , Bit missing/short sections
List of mathematicians who studied chess B List , Bit missing/short sections
List of people who have beaten Bobby Fischer in chess B List , Citations
List of strong chess tournaments B List , Citations
Los Alamos chess B Bit missing/short sections
Mac Hack B Bit missing/short sections
Magical objects in Harry Potter B Citations , To Big
Marcel Duchamp B Bit missing/short sections
Mikhail Chigorin B Citations
Mikhail Gurevich (chess player) B Bit missing/short sections
Mutilated chessboard problem B Bit missing/short sections
Nigel Short B Citations
Nimzo-Indian Defence B Citations
Norwegian Chess Championship B No photo
Pascal Charbonneau B No photo , Citations
Queen versus pawn endgame B Layout , Citations Citations are good, Layout OK
Rashid Nezhmetdinov B No photo , Citations
Robert Hübner B Bit missing/short sections , Citations
Rook and pawn versus rook endgame B Citations Citations are good
Round-robin tournament B Citations
Seirawan chess B Bit missing/short sections
Semyon Furman B No photo , Citations
Shatranj B Citations
Shogi B Citations
Sicilian Defence B Bit missing/short sections
Smothered mate B Layout
Stalemate B Layout , Citations Citations are good
Staunton chess set B Citations
Tassilo von Heydebrand und der Lasa B Bit missing/short sections
Taxicab geometry B Bit missing/short sections , Citations
Thomas Bowdler B Citations
Viacheslav Ragozin B Citations , Bit missing/short sections
Vladimir Nabokov B Citations , Bit missing/short sections
Wilhelm Steinitz B Bit missing/short sections
William Ewart Napier B Citations
World Chess Championship 1963 B No photo
World Chess Championship 1972 B Citations
World Chess Live B Citations
World Chess Network B Citations
Xiangqi B Bit missing/short sections , Citations
Xie Jun B No photo , Bit missing/short sections
Zillions of Games B Citations
Zugzwang B Layout , Citations Citations are good
ChessCreator (talk) 01:04, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Quick review as B-

Possibly not worthy of it's B class status.
Alexander Konstantinopolsky No photo, Citations
Alexander Kotov Citations, Bit missing/short sections
Dunst Opening Bit missing/short sections, Citations
Elephant Trap Citations, Bit missing/short sections
ChessCreator (talk) 01:04, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Endgame tablebase

(The following was moved from Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chess/FAQ/Assessment to merge discussion about reviews into one place ChessCreator (talk) 14:53, 20 March 2008 (UTC))

FYI, Endgame tablebase has been a featured article candidate since late March. youngvalter 19:48, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Another article that I think is really good is chess opening. Bubba73 22:10, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Endgame tablebase FAC review ended — the result was not to promote it. It is still a good article candidate but I don't think much feedback can be expected from there. Maybe we can list it for peer review later, but I'd give it at least a couple of months, as right now I am, frankly, rather fed up with the article. ;) ZeroOne 09:24, 5 May 2007 (UTC)

Tried to add rules of chess

I tried to add rules of chess on the main review page, using the format of the other nominated article, but it didn't work correctly. Can someone fix it or tell me how to fix it? Bubba73 (talk), 00:13, 28 August 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, the nomination process is messy at the moment, I have to understand how to simplify it. Anyway, I have sorted things out now. SyG (talk) 17:42, 31 August 2008 (UTC)