Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of Ethnic Chess Openings

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was NO CONSENSUS TO DELETE and MOVE to List of chess openings named after places (Although the Slav openings don't meet that critera, but life isn't perfect). Based mainly on strength of argument, I think the Delete argument has the upper hand but only by a small amount, thus no real consensus. Herostratus 20:45, 26 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

List of Ethnic Chess Openings

I am a bit cautious about nominating this list, because the author is one of our most prolific chess contributors who has made a number of very valuable and highly respectable contributions, yet I fear that the presence of this list is not justified. The list is of "ethnic" chess openings, in the context of the list it means chess openings named after a country or region. Typically chess openings are either descriptive (e.g. Four Knights Game), named after places (e.g. Vienna Game) or players (Alekhine's Defense). From a chessical point of view, what an opening is named after has no bearing on the qualities of the opening. There is for instance no similarity between the Scotch Game and English Opening even though they're on the same island (the openings differ already on move 1, one is a classical open game the other is more modern flank opening). Some etymological explanation behind each opening name is of course of historic interest, but such information is already covered in the various chess opening articles. In addition, the term "ethnic chess opening" appears to be a neologism, the hits at Google are either to Wikipedia or its mirrors. I'm afraid that this method of categorising the openings appears to run afoul of violating the no original research policy since it "defines new terms". Sjakkalle (Check!) 12:24, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Delete as per nom. How about creating a category of "chess openings named after a place" (somebody can probably phrase that better) and putting all the included articles (plus others if they are found) into that? --John24601 12:34, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per nominator's well-stated reasoning. Our current level of chess coverage is excessive anyway for a general-interest encyclopedia, and no other board game even has close to that level of "cruft". Any effort to put even a small dent in it is okay by me. Andrew Lenahan - Starblind 12:56, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Well in the defense of chess articles (I created a number of these myself), chess is perhaps the most studied of all board games as well and there are literally thousands of chess books on the market. It is only natural that it's this board game that winds up with the most coverage on Wikipedia. Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:49, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  - FWIW, I agree. Chess isn't a fad that will be gone in a few years... :) Cburnett 16:31, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep unless you are going to nominate each of the articles too. I see no reason to keep the articles, but not the list. Cburnett 13:56, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The individual articles can contain a wealth of information, but the list doesn't have any value. Surely a category would be better? --John24601 14:01, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The list contains the opening moves. A category can never list that information. Nor can a category detail the origin of the name, something I think should be expanded in the article and included with each (even if it seems obvious). And, insofar as the nominator's WP:NOR issue you will see that some have references (e.g., Baltic Defense, Slav Defense, Hungarian Defense) so I don't see how they are original research. Heck, I think it'd be neat to include the setup after the opening is done. Cburnett 14:27, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, I am not in any way arguing for deletion of the chess opening articles, or calling those original research in any way. (Heck, I created several of them so why would I want to delete them? And besides my paper encyclopedia even has a short entry on the Caro-Kann) The thing which concerned me was this list, and the way it sorts out the "ethnic" openings from "non-ethnic" openings, it is the term "Ethnic Chess Opening" which I deem as a neologism and which concerned me, terms like "Baltic Defense" or "Hungarian Defense" are most definitely not neologisms. Sjakkalle (Check!) 14:45, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

So the issue is a proper name, not its content? Cburnett 14:59, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

No, it's OR by synthesis. From WP:OR "Editors often make the mistake of thinking that if A is published by a reliable source, and B is published by a reliable source, then A and B can be joined together in an article in order to advance position C. However, this would be an example of a new synthesis of published material serving to advance a position, and as such it would constitute original research.[2] "A and B, therefore C" is acceptable only if a reliable source has published this argument in relation to the topic of the article." Unless the sources identify openings by "ethnicity" then documenting that the members of the class exist does not mean that asserting that the class exists is not OR. Pete.Hurd 16:27, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that somehow this list takes existing A, existing B and joins them, but I do not think it really comes to "advance position C". In my view there is no clearly identified C that could be labelled as OR. It's just a list! I would advise to Rename (or, second-best-choice, transform into a category) SyG 10:36, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I suggest that the "C" is that there exists, outside of wikipedia, the concept of a set of things known as "ethnic chess opening"s Pete.Hurd 19:02, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Torn - this reads like a legitimate article, but is completely unsourced. WilyD 14:50, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
- Look at the articles themselves, most are sourced. The sources could be duplicated on this list page quite easily. Cburnett 14:59, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep, an interesting and verifiable list. I'd be inclined to move this to List of chess openings named after places; there should also be a list of chess openings named after people. Needs to include the French Attack line in Alekhine's Defense (1. e4 Nf6 2. e5 Ng8). - Smerdis of Tlön 15:27, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Rename, because it is a list of chess openings that are named after some geographic location. In most cases, the opening was pioneered there, but play is not limited to those locations. I see them as more "geographical" than "ethnic". Bubba73 (talk), 16:12, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete and create a category that encompasses this topic. It's interesting, certainly, but a category should do the same job of providing people with links to all these pages. Tony Fox (arf!) 21:27, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Interesting and far less offensive than the title suggests. TonyTheTiger 01:06, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Moves would not be selected based on 'ethnic' reasons. If the articles it links to are in the category of chess moves/openings then this list serves no purpose at all.--155.144.251.120 03:04, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete It's slightly trivial, because there's no actual significance to being a chess opening named for a region. We already have a perfectly good List of chess openings (well, I assume it's good, though never having played the game, I wouldn't know), but this is just grouping some in a trivial manner. GassyGuy 05:54, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: If the vote is to keep, I would suggest the article not stay at its current name as it is improperly capitalized (should be "List of ethnic chess openings"). If changed to something more correct, then that's fine with me. Cburnett 15:33, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Comment: Agree with Cburnett that if kept, a redirect to a better name would be appropriate. Newyorkbrad 16:12, 18 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete. It simply escapes me why people think a list should be kept just because the items in the list are worthy. I have played chess for almost ten years, and I have spent literally thousands of hours reading about it. There is no such concept in all of chess literature as an "ethnic" chess opening. Take my word for it, or go read everything I've read. The term simply does not exist and never has existed. If you folks feel the information must be kept, rename the article to "List of Chess Openings named after a location." However, I'm happy to suffice with the information in Chess opening and List of chess openings. YechielMan 17:19, 19 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete OR (see my comment above for supporting argument) Pete.Hurd 04:52, 20 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]
Delete per YechielMan. --Ryan Delaney ^talk 18:59, 23 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.