💡📝Charles Gilman wrote on Wed, Feb 9, 2011 06:58 AM UTC:
I certainly don't write with the intention of being ignored. Indeed I positively invite feedback, on both the piece pages and the variants, and certainly hope that someone who enjoy implementing variants takes them up. If I don't implement them myself it is only because I'm such a perfectionist and don't have nearly enough time online to test the implementations to ensure that I don't make a real clanger of a mistake. Some of my variantys have been implemented too - even I'm a Wazir... which I consider the poorest of my surviving variants. Note that word surviving: the two worst that I ever posted, Heroic Round Chess and Voyager, have bitten the dust, although unfortunately the indexing still shows them, and many more even worse ideas of mine never even reached the stage of getting a page.
Incidentally, my welcoming of feedback is, I feel, another thing that distinguishes us, particularly when it comes to gaps in your own scholarship. For example, on the Alfil page, 'Golombek also points out that the English word elephant was also borrowed from another language. Although I can't document the connection, elephant does sound similar to alfil. Perhaps it has its roots in the name for a Chess piece.' starts off scholarly enough but then deteriorates into wild and uninformed speculation. Yet when an informed person informed you otherwise you ignored the help. True, I didn't cite a specific source, but any dictionary of Classical Greek would confirm it. If that's a bit too exotic, even a Latin dictionary would at least confirm that the roots of the word elephant go back long before Shatranj. When someone suggests an improvement on any of my contributions I give it consideration, make the change if inspired to, and even if I don't take the change on board I explain why and try to do so civilly.
It would be interesting to hear from a newcomer whether they do get the wrong idea that you describe. I have certainly attempted to highlight any established usages. I've been trying to get away from duplicating information on every page in favour of concentrating general information on the overview page. I'll certainly consider some rewriting of the intros, but I certainly wouldn't put in some gaudy monstrosity that takes over eighty characters to get to the first word and is at odds with my own relatively austere style.
Regarding your second comment, most of the issues that you raise are out of my control. What image is used for the Piececlopedia and which for piece articles is a matter for the editors. It can't help that piece articles are shown in such close association with the Piececlopedia. Better would be one paragraph marked something like 'Piececlopedia: a piece-by-piece reference on the use and naming of pieces used in historic and regional forms of Chess' and a separate one marked something like 'General piece articles: thoughts by individual Chess variant enthusiasts on groups of pieces in and for Chess and Chess variants', each paragraph with its own image writ large. As I say, though, that's a collective decision for the editors. As you are so keen to remind me, I no longer have editor status, and as it happens I wouldn't have time at present to make use of it if I still did.
Your X-men reference is entirely lost on me, as I do not follow the series. For example, to me Wolverine means this.
Incidentally, my welcoming of feedback is, I feel, another thing that distinguishes us, particularly when it comes to gaps in your own scholarship. For example, on the Alfil page, 'Golombek also points out that the English word elephant was also borrowed from another language. Although I can't document the connection, elephant does sound similar to alfil. Perhaps it has its roots in the name for a Chess piece.' starts off scholarly enough but then deteriorates into wild and uninformed speculation. Yet when an informed person informed you otherwise you ignored the help. True, I didn't cite a specific source, but any dictionary of Classical Greek would confirm it. If that's a bit too exotic, even a Latin dictionary would at least confirm that the roots of the word elephant go back long before Shatranj. When someone suggests an improvement on any of my contributions I give it consideration, make the change if inspired to, and even if I don't take the change on board I explain why and try to do so civilly.
It would be interesting to hear from a newcomer whether they do get the wrong idea that you describe. I have certainly attempted to highlight any established usages. I've been trying to get away from duplicating information on every page in favour of concentrating general information on the overview page. I'll certainly consider some rewriting of the intros, but I certainly wouldn't put in some gaudy monstrosity that takes over eighty characters to get to the first word and is at odds with my own relatively austere style.
Regarding your second comment, most of the issues that you raise are out of my control. What image is used for the Piececlopedia and which for piece articles is a matter for the editors. It can't help that piece articles are shown in such close association with the Piececlopedia. Better would be one paragraph marked something like 'Piececlopedia: a piece-by-piece reference on the use and naming of pieces used in historic and regional forms of Chess' and a separate one marked something like 'General piece articles: thoughts by individual Chess variant enthusiasts on groups of pieces in and for Chess and Chess variants', each paragraph with its own image writ large. As I say, though, that's a collective decision for the editors. As you are so keen to remind me, I no longer have editor status, and as it happens I wouldn't have time at present to make use of it if I still did.
Your X-men reference is entirely lost on me, as I do not follow the series. For example, to me Wolverine means this.