Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Alekhine's defense, Modern variation, 4...Bg4

Alekhine's defense, Modern variation, 4...Bg4

I am nominating this page, and several others with it because they are little more than short guides to the game with barely any notability beyond some chess grandmaster playing it. I am not nominating the entirety of the Category:Chess openings (Or the subcategory for ECO openings) at this time, but I do think some action is needed on this subject and I have been concerned about it for a while. Mister.Manticore 20:21, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Additional pages nominated:

Keep Danish Gambit at least, since it seems to have notability as it references an entire book about it (and the German page lists one in German, by a different author, implying multiple independent sources exist). Not sure about others. Perhaps some that are variations can be merged into the parent opening articles. Rigadoun (talk) 20:51, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure the existence of the book has contributed effectively to the article. Is there anybody who owns a copy and can relate its contents to the rest of us? Mister.Manticore 21:11, 12 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I also feel obliged to note that my nomination is not disputing that these articles could be referenced, but rather that their content as such is not appropriate for an encyclopedia, since they are effectively guides to certain playstyles which are in violation of WP:NOT#IINFO criteria 4. The usage by certain grandmasters or history is minimal in comparison to the space devoted to covering the opening itself. Mister.Manticore 00:22, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Danish Gambit and Ruy Lopez, Marshall Counterattack. The Danish Gambit is a (fairly) major chess opening, often treated separately in opening references. The Danish Gambit article has been in good shape since 2005, including references and a history of the opening. The Marshall Attack is a very important variation of one of the Ruy Lopez, one of the most important chess openings. The Marshall Attack has an interesting history as recounted briefly in Ruy Lopez#Marshall Attack. Since this could be expanded fairly substantially and the Ruy Lopez article is already rather long, Ruy Lopez, Marshall Counterattack should be kept. I don't really care about the others (merge might be appropriate). Quale 01:48, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So, what's worth keeping about these two articles? Most of Danish Gambit is lengthy description of the opening, the bit about the history is minimal. It could be merged into a page describing notable chess openings with minimal trouble. Ruy Lopez, Marshall Counterattack is not much better. What could be added to it at all? What could be added to any of these chess openings even? Though I can accept that the opening may be notable, the article on Ruy Lopez is mostly recounting variations after variations, and that's with about a dozen other pages on variants for it. And most of them don't do anything but describe a series of moves. Possibly valuable if you're writing about chess, but how important is all of that for Wikipedia? Are they really desirable? Mister.Manticore 03:14, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that the Marshall Attack is a very important variation of the Ruy Lopez. But I think it is telling that the current coverage of it in the main Ruy Lopez article is better than the coverage in the individual article we have on the opening variation. Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:14, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Mister.Manticore, it's clear that you don't like articles on chess openings, but it isn't clear that there's really any point in trying to discuss it with you. I don't think that your ideas about which topics are encyclopedic or which articles are too technical have much in common with the consensus views on Wikipedia. This AFD discussion will provide you an opportunity to see how much community support your views have. Quale 15:57, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, just so you know, WP:NOT#IINFO does say "Instruction manuals. While Wikipedia has descriptions of people, places, and things, Wikipedia articles should not include instructions or advice (legal, medical, or otherwise), suggestions, or contain "how-to"s. This includes tutorials, walk-throughs, instruction manuals, video game guides, and recipes." and I think it's pretty obvious that most, if not all of the pages in the category for Chess openings do constitute how-tos. Given that, and the fact that after months of inaction, nothing was done or changed about these pages, I decided seeking a wider consensus through AfD was desirable. I neither like nor dislike the chess openings, I think they are difficult to understand and may be inappropriate for Wikipedia, but that is not a question of animosity. Your hostile attitude is not conducive to communication or development of consensus though. You have effectively just said "I'm not going to bother trying to convince you" . I suggest you review WP:NPA, and remember to comment on content, not the contributor. Mister.Manticore 16:07, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for demonstrating my point perfectly. I quite well aware of what WP:NOT says. The problem is that you don't seem to understand what WP:NOT means. Far below you say in response to yet another person who disagrees with you, "To get my support for the article ...". To be honest, I don't care to get your support for any chess articles, since winning your approval would make the articles worse (or go away completely) and would make Wikipedia as a whole worse too. The only thing of importance to me is what the Wikipedia community supports. So far this AFD seems to demonstrate a total rejection of your views by the Wikipedia community. Quale 03:14, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Strong Keep whats the point of mushing them together? This what a reference work is for. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 05:33, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:NOT#IINFO for a discussion of the various arguments that apply to Wikipedia not covering "everything" as well as numerous discussions to be found on AfD, but in short, it's because there isn't much to say in most of these openings except "move this piece here, move that here, person x does this" which in effect is not providing much in the way of general-purpose content. Mister.Manticore 13:18, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep all There is no shortage of specialized literature, and the technical analysis of the game play is appropriate. They are not how-to-do-it , no chess book beyond the most elementary is in that category.DGG 06:18, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, tell me how they're not how-to-it equivalents telling you how to play the opening, typical responses, and the like? And please, note, once again, I am not contesting that they can be referenced, I am contesting the nature of the content, not its ability to be attributed. Mister.Manticore 13:18, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep all - some are very notable (e.g. Marshall Counterattack is mentioned even in many introductory courses and has already a vast literature) but even the less important openings are verifiable and can be sourced. WP is not a paper encyclopedia, we have place enough. The nominator says somewhere, that the articles are stubs and were not changed for a long time - OK but this is not a deletion reason I think. It is a reason for improvement only.--Ioannes Pragensis 06:43, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, I am not so much concerned that they are stubs, so much I am concerned that they are substantially instructions to certain openings, and nobody has demonstrated any attempt to fix up or clean these pages despite my requests that something be done. While simply being a stub is not a problem, a complete lack of improvement over several months has convinced me that something needs to be done to bring the wider consensus into the picture. Mister.Manticore 13:18, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I think collecting these in a group nomination was ill-advised, because it is not at all obvious that all the articles should receive the same treatment. First off, that there is room for coverage of chess openings in Wikipedia can be illustrated that my paper encyclopedia ("Aschehougs konversasjonsleksikon") has a short article about the Caro-Kann Defense, although strangely, nothing on the other openings. Two of these articles, Staunton Gambit (a major variation of the Dutch Defense) and the Danish Gambit (pretty much an opening in itself) have plenty of content and should be kept as is. Two of the others, C93 (chess opening) and D59 (chess opening), just have the defining moves, and are just technical terms representing a classification system used by Encyclopedia of Chess Openings. Most chess players don't refer to openings by those codes in casual talk. We rarely talk about the "C93" opening, we just know it is a variation of the Ruy Lopez which has its own chapter in ECO. (Game collections sometimes use these codes so that referencing the myriad of opening literature is easier, on Wikipedia there is little need for that.) I think those can be deleted. (List of chess openings is a better place to define the moves of each code if we want that, but there is not a pressing need.) The others which are nominated are only a paragraph long and are best merged into the article on the opening which is easier on the reader. I merged a number of similar articles a month back. There are some chess opening variations which deserve separate articles, for example Sicilian Defence, Dragon Variation is a major variation in a giant of an opening. Tons and tons of literature has been produced about chess openings of all shapes and sizes so the articles which have some real content should be preserved in some form. Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:10, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I tried to pick a variety of pages so that I could get a picture of where folks drew the line as to what's a good chess opening article and what's not. I felt that would give folks a chance to examine the pages, and give me some feedback so I'd be able to at least be more selective when I went throught the category for another pass. However, I am still wanting to know exactly what real content there is. Could you relate to us exactly what the content of your paper encyclopedia has for that chess opening? Mister.Manticore 13:18, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It defines the moves, says it has a solid reputation, and mentions a few top players who have played it. Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:07, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So, the content is as minimal and spare as as the articles here? Oh well, then I'm still unconvinced of their value if that's all an article provides. Mister.Manticore 14:21, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep all. Even the minimal stubs, C93 and D59, are potentially subject to expansion, and Wikipedia is still not paper. Chess has an extensive enough literature to merit fairly deep coverage. - Smerdis of Tlön 16:22, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

What expansion would you suggest to those articles that would make them more than the how-to guides they are now? Mister.Manticore 16:30, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There's been some discussion on Talk:WP:NOT about how it applies to game rules, but as far as I can tell no real consensus has formed about them. For card games played with identical decks, describing the game means describing how to play it, and the same holds true for chess openings, I think. The only articles nominated in the group that have any support for deletion here are the stubs with very little "how to" information added to them. If they are expanded, they are mostly expanded with information useful to chessplayers. I think that life is too short for a war on "chess cruft", whatever that is. - Smerdis of Tlön 20:11, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, first off, I do not consider this a war on "chess cruft" and I strongly disagree with the use of that term. (both in general and as applied here). I have expressed my concerns with regards to the nature of these pages as specifically as I can, namely that they are instructions to certain playstyles, with only the barest modicum of reference to any other kind of content. I do not mind describing the rules to chess. It seems fundamentally obvious to me that a good article on chess will include coverage of those rules. I don't even mind talking about certain theories and even openings. I am concerned that there seems to be no work whatsoever done to limit the coverage to truly notable openings, and that there doesn't seem to be even a consideration that maybe, just maybe, there should be some sort of standard for chess openings to have articles. So far the inclusion has been open-ended, which creates a bad situation. Mister.Manticore 20:23, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and your link was broken, I hope you don't mind me fixing it. Mister.Manticore 20:23, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No problem. :) But I think you are mistaken about the depth of coverage available for chess. Somewhere around here I have a book on "Unorthodox Chess Openings." It covers just about every legal opening move for White that isn't a major one, most of the legal responses for Black, and in some depth. All of the ones it discusses have names. (My favourite is the American Attack in Alekhine's Defense, 1 e4 Nf6 2 e5 Ng8.) You can find published commentary and analysis for just about every legal opening in chess, in other words. IM Michael Basman is the guru here. This makes them all verifiable and reliably sourced, within the words of actual policy. They are also notable, within the meaning of the guideline: they are subjects of multiple, non-trivial, published works; the ECO is one, the book I have around here is another. In short: all chess openings are notable within the meaning of the only guideline that applies. What you are proposing is a new, exclusive notability guideline applied only to chess, and I don't think any such can be generated by analogy from existing ones. - Smerdis of Tlön 22:37, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Um, there seems to be a disconnect in our communications here. I am, once again, not arguing that the problem is simply lack of references, (though there are a large number of these pages that do lack references) but rather that the content is non-encyclopedic in nature. I'm sure many of these of these openings and variations can be referenced to some book somewhere. That doesn't change their content, which is frequently nothing more than a listing of the moves and the occasional mention of some player of it. That is not any kind of encyclopedic depth at all. Given that there doesn't seem to be any kind of standard as to including a chess opening or not, I consider this a problem, as it's very indiscriminate. And this is also not a standard exclusively applied to chess. Please review WP:NOT#IINFO which is policy, and which says "Wikipedia is not an indiscriminate collection of items of information. That something is 100% true does not automatically mean it is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia. While there is a continuing debate about the encyclopedic merits of several classes of entries, current consensus is that Wikipedia articles are not simply:" (and I refer you to entry four for instruction manuals, which is what I'm applying to this page. Mister.Manticore 23:02, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And if you can think of a similar subject which has pages on Wikipedia, I'll be quite willing to apply this same standard to them. the closest I can think of would be sports games (many of which are documented, the vast majority of which should not have articles) or TCG cards and combos (which in general only have articles based on their sets). Might also consider programming functions to be similar, since I have some books with them documented in it. I wouldn't imagine adding any of them to Wikipedia, even though they can all be documented. Mister.Manticore 23:02, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, and while this isn't exactly the "same" situation, you might want to look at this AfD: Matthew Fenton AFD. I am sure every single one of the three thousand or so servicemen killed in the current Iraq conflict can be verified.

I am also fairly sure this can be applied as far back as World War II, or even World War I in some cases. Maybe further. I would not support articles on them even with that being verified. Mister.Manticore 23:23, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep all on procedural grounds. I think the group nomination is too broad. Some of these I think are keeps; others are too narrow to make an independent article. Please renominate as necessary. -- BPMullins | Talk 16:25, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

On what procedural grounds are you referring to? While certainly there can be problems with mass nominations, this is less than a dozen articles, all on the same subject, each of which can be reviewed and considered together. If necessary, I can nominate individually, but I am not seeing your problem as being very clear. Is there some reason you can't comment on the individual pages here? Was it too many? Would 5 or 6 be a better number? Mister.Manticore 16:30, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep on procedural grounds, and too broad a collection of articles. An AFD nomination should not include the baby along with the bathwater. Nominate selectively. Edison 22:33, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Exactly why is this too broad a collection of articles? What would constitute a more selective nomination? Mister.Manticore 23:02, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I would suggest that these articles aren't really instructional; they are, rather, technical descriptions of the game of chess. The Wikipedia articles about Monopoly and poker both contain technical explanations of how the games are played. If these games warrant such descriptions, than chess—with its long, storied history and complex strategies—certainly does as well, especially since chess strategy has been a subject of study for a long time. (On a side note: it would, perhaps, be advisable to put all of the chess openings in one article and redirect searches of the individual openings to it.)Fixer1234 23:26, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

First, I hope you don't mind that I moved your reply to the end here, since your comment was in the middle of a thread there, and I think it'll be easier to read if moved to the end. Mister.Manticore 23:45, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Anyway, while monopoly and poker do contain technical explanations of how the games are played, they don't contain descriptions of every game. Even poker only has one page for the various hands in the game. There's a few other pages like Dead Man's Hand and List of slang names for poker hands but in comparison, there's over 100 articles on chess openings. I have no objection to Chess opening being an article. I'm a bit concerned that List of chess openings is nothing but a directory, but while I think that might belong properly elsewhere, I'm not terribly worried about that. My concern that these "technical descriptions of the game of chess" constitute the how-tos or instruction manuals is another issue though, and while Chess, like many things is the subject of a great deal of study, not all things that are studied or referenced deserve individual articles. If all that an article has is a bare description of the moves, and maybe a brief mention that some grandmaster played it, is it really appropriate to have an article? Mister.Manticore 23:45, 13 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The point that I am making (and one I don't mean too press to strongly—I'm not emotionally tied to these articles) is that chess is somewhat more technically complex than poker--an adequate description of the game would require such lengthy description. I see your point, however, regarding the volume of information on the subject—some of the openings may not be as important as others. Perhaps the best option is to pending a closer review as is suggested by someone below. It is also worth noting that the deleted material need not simply disappear. This seems to be a great subject for a wikibook. Perhaps a general (but detailed) article on chess openings could be maintained on Wikipeida along with article about the most important of the openings (the sort that are used in analogies in political science and economics classes), while the rest of the material is turned into a Wikibook on playing chess. Just an idea. (The comment move is no problem, btw. I'm still somewhat new at this stuff.) Fixer1234 00:57, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I don't see what's stopping people from giving it a closer review right now. There's only nine articles, which I thought was a reasonable number for people to look over, being large enough to offer a fair variety of different pages in the category, but specific enough that it wasn't too much of a burden to examine them all. Apparently it's too many though. Could you give me an idea how many would be acceptable for you to review, or is it going to be necessary to nominate them individually? I can do it, but I'm reluctant to do so since that can create more problems. (trust me, it's annoying to have to comment in so many different places.) Mister.Manticore 01:13, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

And while Chess is certainly a sport with exhaustive analysis and detail, that doesn't give it a free pass for every possible article on a subject somebody can cover in their book. If somebody wanted to transwiki all or most of these pages to a specific wikibook for chess openings, I'd be fine with that. Chess opening is already on Wikipedia, and I have no inherent objection to it. It might need some work, but in principle I accept that it belongs. I don't object to this being covered at all, it's neither false nor libelous. It is, however, of dubious encyclopedic worth when a page is nothing more than instructions on a given opening with maybe, maybe, an offhand remark about somebody playing it. Mister.Manticore 01:13, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep All pending a closer review. While there are certainly opening articles that could profitably be merged, nominating what appear to be a selection of random pages for AfD seems like a dubious idea at best. What rationale was there for picking these eight out of all the chess opening articles? Also, I have to disagree with the "How-to" claim - how else can you define a chess opening other than by listing the moves unique to it? Since when has definition and analysis been a "how-to"? Yet even an encyclopedic and well-written page like Sicilian Defence now has a how-to tag plastered over it. Well, it did until I just removed it. EliminatorJR ^Talk 00:10, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I picked them because they represented a variety of the pages in the category, which while they are not all completely the same, are not significantly different from each other, and I felt that a review of the various pages would be more helpful in establishing a baseline so that on further passes through the category I would have more of an idea about what should be kept and what should be considered for deletion. And I don't have a problem with articles on notable chess openings including descriptions of the moves. My problem is that so many of these articles don't get to anything beyond that, and I don't see much chance of that happening either. I don't see that Wikipedia is about teaching people how to play chess and that's the only thing I can get from these pages. Mister.Manticore 00:21, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, those are the articles that I suggested could profitably be merged; however deleting them seems illogical, like deleting an article on a single episode of Star Trek and leaving all the other intact. I notice you've put the how-to tag back on Sicilian Defence; well, I'm not getting into an edit war there, but I'd be interested to see what you would do to that article in order to cure this - how about doing it in userspace? I've also put forward an idea at the talk page. EliminatorJR ^Talk 12:00, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I thought this was clear from my nomination, but based on the results of this discussion, I intended to go through the category and propose further openings for deletion. There are 196 articles in the category. Proposing them all at once would have been a bad idea, but to go through that number of pages, I felt the need for some criteria to have before trying an extensive review. This is not the equivalent of Star Trek episodes, but more the equivalent of Star Trek characters or space ships. Captain Kirk has an article. There is a category for ships named the Enterprise. Category:Enterprise ships (Star Trek). That's a valid choice. So is the Excelsior. But many other Star Trek ships are only in List of Starfleet starships ordered by class. (in fact, there were several recent AFDs on that). Now it might be reasonable to create redirects for most of the chess openings to say List of chess openings but given the large numbers, I am not sure of that.

But the problem is still knowing when to do that, and when to leave the article as it stands. This is not always obvious from the article itself. Thus this proposal. Mister.Manticore 14:16, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

See this example merge page for irregular openings in my userspace. I think we're actually on the same page here, except that I believe merging rather than deletion is the way to go. Note that the suggested merge page only describes the openings briefly, in order to distinguish them. EliminatorJR ^Talk 16:55, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, I don't think we're on quite the same page. We might be getting closer together though. I hope we're at least reading the same book. To get my support for the article, it would need to focus more on what makes the subject of irregular chess openings meaningful, and less on covering various opening descriptions with maybe a few brief hints that somebody somewhere played it. Great stuff for a Wikibook on Chess perhaps. For an encyclopedia? I'm afraid not. (I'll leave aside the problem with a lack of references since the page is incomplete). Mister.Manticore 17:52, 14 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Keep per Edison. Ezratrumpet 01:10, 15 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]