Template talk:Infobox chess biography

Current rating?

Is it really a good idea to include the current rating in the template? Surely this is just creating a maintenance nightmare. Why not just settle for a link to the Fide rating card?Armfield 10:24, 6 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes agreed. They will keep being out of date. One option is to leave it blank with no Fide rating shown.

This is supposed to be autogenerated based on the FIDE ID - does anyone know how or when this works?Greenman (talk) 20:02, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

It is autogenerated, but I am not sure at what period. At very least, it does not necessarily update when FIDE updates. See Nakamura's page. At present, both the fideID and rating is included, so it produces a redundant listing. The rating is out of date, so I am not sure how it works. Pretentieux (talk) 21:37, 12 March 2016 (UTC)

The FideID field is not auto-generating the rating in all cases. See Kenny Solomon for example. Pasting in another valid FIDE ID immediately brings up the rating, but his is not working for some reason. Greenman (talk) 19:18, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

I have discovered how this works. See Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chess/Archive_21#Automatic_updated_FIDE_rating_in_infobox_.28by_bot.29 and Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chess#Automatic_rating_updates_in_infobox. Greenman (talk) 19:27, 13 September 2016 (UTC)

Header

Currently white. Tempted to made the colour #ffce9e (light square colour) as done with the chess opening. Although perhaps another colour for Bio's. Most choices would be better then white. ChessCreator (talk) 02:58, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

Now green bfe0bf. Discussion here ChessCreator (talk) 01:30, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Left wording onto two lines

Sometimes the eft wording goes onto two lines for no obvious reason. Example: Pal Benko,Koneru Humpy where it says Peak and then on next line Rating. ChessCreator (talk) 13:37, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

 Done ChessCreator (talk) 14:25, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

Full name or Birthname

Template asks for Birth name, yet then displays Full name. The two are not the same. Examples include females that marry Grace Alekhine for example. ChessCreator (talk) 13:43, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

5 years later and still this isn't fixed. Anyone know how? Adpete (talk) 01:54, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

That looks "too" easy. What exactly is the change desired? Ihardlythinkso (talk) 05:26, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

Most articles have worked around the bug, and put the subject's full name in the "birthname" field. So that we don't break everything, I think we want the "birthname" field to be renamed "fullname", and then a bot goes and changes "birthname" to "fullname" in all articles which use this template.

Of course we could just leave it alone. But I find myself continually reverting editors who put "birth_name = Garry Kimovich Weinstein" at the Garry Kasparov article. I guess we can live with that. But I think the RIGHT thing to do, is to fix it like I've described above. Adpete (talk) 06:06, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I believe I have a solution ...

First, I agree w/ you, the cleanest plan is what you described. (But for me, I don't know how to operate a bot, I wish I did, I'd love to learn if someone would guide me! Also, it raises an interesting Q to me: was the original intent for "birth_name" to mean full name? [In otherwords, the full name of whatever current name is used in the article, as opposed to "name given at birth" if different from the current name?] I'm guessing yes -- that "name given at birth" was never intended, and that it was an unfortunate misreading that has occurred after that, to cause the current issue.)

Second, I tested the following out in sandbox, and I think it is a good plan, if running the bot isn't practical ...

I can add "full_name" to the template, such that if it's specified when calling the template, it overrides either "birth_name" or "birthname". (So, whatever comes after "full_name =" will appear after Full name in the Infobox, and any value for "birth_name" or "birthname" will be ignored.) And if "full_name =" is not specified, then it would be the same as today, where value for "birth_name" or "birthname" shows after Full name in the Infobox.)

What do you think? Ihardlythinkso (talk) 16:11, 19 February 2013 (UTC)

I probably made the change sound more complex than it is ... It'd simply add a synonym parm ("full_name") to the two already there ("birth_name", "birthname"), taking precedence when specified. Ok, Ihardlythinkso (talk) 23:51, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for the delay in answering. I wasn't confused, I just couldn't make up my mind if I liked the idea, plus my attention got diverted. The plus is that it's easy. The minus is that we've still got 1000+ articles which use "birth_name". But since there's absolutely no harm in doing it (either way we've got to run the bot if we want to fix the birth_name entries), I'm happy for you or anyone else to do it. Adpete (talk) 00:20, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Ok, done. And I tried it out at Garry Kasparov (please inspect).

Even though sometimes editors have supplied the real birth name to 'birth_name=' parm, as you mentioned in most cases that parm is supplied with the real full name, and as mentioned, it isn't known by me whether or not the real birth name info was ever intended or wanted. (If it was/is, then, for those articles where 'birth_name=' info is the real birth name, that could be displayed at this point too without a mix-up, by adding a new parm, e.g. 'birth_name_new=', and moving the info on per-article basis from 'birth_name' to the new parm, and display it as Birth name when the new parm is specified. But as mentioned I don't know if that was ever intended or is wanted.)

Until then I'll hold off updating either the template doc or putting a note at Talk:ProjChess. Ok, let me know what you think. Ihardlythinkso (talk) 17:51, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

• Can an extra field not be added for birth name so the template has the option of both full name and birth name? Hrodvarsson (talk) 21:10, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Signature

Signature, alt, caption fields needed! You can leave me a message in my talk page after replying! (personal reference, in case if I forget where I need this: Koneru Humpy) --Tito Dutta ✉ 21:51, 10 May 2012 (UTC)

Unsupported parms

Why are there parms in the doc (e.g. "ranking=") that are not supported by the template code? (Is there a backstory on that?) Thx. Ihardlythinkso (talk) 17:39, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Historic ratings

Should we use historic estimates of a player's rating or world ranking (e.g. chessmetrics, Arpad Elo's book) in the infobox? MaxBrowne (talk) 12:01, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

Title

Shouldn't "Title" be changed to "Title(s)", given that some female chess players have two titles (such as IM + WGM)? Toccata quarta (talk) 17:18, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Agree. And there are other examples too (like ICCF Grandmaster in addition to an OTB title, e.g. Hans Berliner). Ihardlythinkso (talk) 20:30, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Proper updates to ratings

Greetings. Certain pages do not seem to be reliably updating using the later categorization, such as Rauf Mamedov. Is there a reason why this is? --KoRoBeNiKi SSBWiki Rollback Moderator and chess specialist 16:51, 25 August 2015 (UTC)

Yes, I've noticed that sometimes the rating doesn't update quite correctly when the FideID option is used. For instance, Magnus Carlsen's November 2015 rating is said to be 2876. /wia /tlk /cntrb 13:16, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

The bot is broken, and has been for a while. I intend to update the rating data library manually every month from now on, so this shouldn't be a problem any more. :) Chessrat ^{(talk, contributions)} 16:36, 4 August 2016 (UTC)

Medal template

Can the infobox be modified to allow for the use of medal template for chess players who had podium finish in tournaments that awards medals (e.g. Wesley So's gold at the 2013 Summer Universiade).Hariboneagle927 (talk) 08:53, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Education

How would one add details of education e.g. an Alma mater of Jesus College, Cambridge for William Hartston? Thanks. Martinevans123 (talk) 10:51, 21 April 2018 (UTC)

Use as an embedded infobox

Jonesey95, I ran across Viktorija Čmilytė-Nielsen today that could also benefit if this template could be embedded into another infobox. I verified that |child= or |embed= do not exist here (not just undocumented). The parent here "officeholder" supports it with |module=. MB 19:16, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

 Done. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:42, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Jonesey95, Thanks for that. One more thing, an infobox should not have two images of the subject. This template pulls images from WD, so we need a para to override that for embedded usage, or maybe automatic override if used as a child. I'm not sure how this is handled in other templates. MB 16:54, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Like this? – Jonesey95 (talk) 17:08, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Jonesey95, No, not like that. I tried that myself. When I removed that (a 2020 photo) from the infobox, this photo from 2013 which is linked into WD displayed instead. But now it obviously doesn't. And I just tried the template non-embedded and the 2013 image still doesn't display. It sure seems like something strange is happening. MB 03:11, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

If you remove the |image= parameter entirely, the WD image appears. If you leave it blank, the image does not show. It's poor coding of this infobox, but it works right until someone changes/fixes it. If someone decides to fix it, they should test for existence of a value in |image= and also test for |child=. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:06, 26 February 2021 (UTC)

Frietjes, could you improve the image handling here (specifically for the embedded usage)? After Jonesey added the unused para check, there are quite a few articles that are needing to be embedded into infobox person. Currently, I have to add a |image= with no value to prevent a second image. Thanks. MB 17:30, 3 March 2021 (UTC)

I fixed it. Thanks! Plastikspork _―Œ^(talk) 17:43, 5 March 2021 (UTC)

yearsactive

Jonesey95, the missing para check caught yearsactive in Garry Kasparov. Since it was already documented here and seems useful, do you want to add it? MB 17:30, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Where should it be inserted? You are welcome to copy the current template to the sandbox and modify it, if you are feeling bold. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:50, 27 February 2021 (UTC)

Jonesey95, I don't think I quite have the skill to add it myself yet. I think that where it is shown in the existing documentation (right before rating) is probably fine. MB 01:11, 28 February 2021 (UTC)

rating displays incorrectly

Abhimanyu Mishra
Country	United States
Born	(2009-02-05) February 5, 2009 New Jersey
Title	Grandmaster (2021)
FIDE rating	2616 (November 2024)

The rating, if automatically computed from the FideID field, displays incorrectly. e.g. Abhimanyu Mishra is currently (July 2021) rated 2504 as can be seen from his FIDE rating card, but the infobox displays him as rated 2424. He was rated 2424 in the May 2021 list, so I assume the template is looking up the May 2021 list instead of the current one. So it needs fixing. Adpete (talk) 05:38, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

{{Elo rating}} needs to be updated. It looks like Hrodvarsson and Chessrat have been diligently updating it most months since the bot stopped working back in 2015. – Jonesey95 (talk) 13:46, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

@Adpete: Don't remove the "FideID" parameter from articles, this increases the amount of manual updates required. Template:Elo rating is maintained simply by copying from de:Vorlage:Elo-Punkte, as an editor there updates the ratings. If the ratings are out of date on en-wiki, copy and paste from de-wiki, beginning at "<!--SUBSTER-Elo-Punkte-->" and ending at the second "<!--SUBSTER-Elo-Punkte-->". No knowledge of German is needed. This is not the best system, but DrTrigonBot is no longer active and no one has created a replacement in the past 6 years. Hrodvarsson (talk) 19:28, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

I have updated the template for July, but I am not as active on Wikipedia as I used to be so it would be good if someone else checked the template at the start of each month. Hrodvarsson (talk) 19:35, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

The bigger problem (I would call it a bug) is that the infobox attaches the current date to the old rating, i.e. it said "2424 (July 2021)" for Abhimanyu Mishra. This is really undesirable, because it gave the reader the impression that someone has gone in and checked the rating is up-to-date. If there is no update, it should stay with the old date, and say "2424 (May 2021)", so the reader understands it is an old rating. Is it possible to update the code to do this? Adpete (talk) 23:08, 4 July 2021 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that I already fixed it, but we'll have to wait until August to find out. The template is properly showing July 2021 right now, because the ratings in the template were updated in July. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:11, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

I assume you mean this edit [1]. Thank you, that looks like it would fix it. Adpete (talk) 01:27, 5 July 2021 (UTC)

There was a remaining problem (the time stamp displayed was the revision date of the article itself, not of the rating template), but this has been resolved; see Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#How_to_get_the_REVISIONMONTH_of_a_different_page_from_the_page_being_displayed.

Does "country" refer to federation, citizenship or residence?

The infobox for Paul Truong specifies the country as United States. I'm wondering whether to change this to Cambodia, since Truong transferred to the Cambodian federation in 2014. The transfer record specifies his citizenship as "USA" (and notes that he had never participated in a FIDE event under the US flag). "Country" sounds more like citizenship or residence to me, but the infobox for Alireza Firouzja specifies the country as "FIDE" for December 2019 – July 2021, which is of course the federation he was playing for and not a citizenship or residence status. Any guidance on this? Joriki (talk) 11:05, 18 July 2021 (UTC)

I don't know if we have this written down anywhere, so I'm not being authoritative, but I think "country" refers to the flag the person is playing under. We sometimes give more than one, e.g. Alexander Beliavsky. Glenn Flear is still listed as England, though he lives abroad, and I think there are quite a few players whose citizenship is different from their FIDE allegiance. Bruce leverett (talk) 14:36, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

how to resolve rating ties for rankings

For the ranking and peakranking entries, it matters how ties in the FIDE ratings are resolved. Unfortunately, FIDE publishes contradictory ranking tables, so we can't just say "we follow how FIDE resolves them". There are two types of top 100 lists: those published at https://ratings.fide.com/toplist.phtml (hereinafter "type 1") and those published at https://ratings.fide.com/top_lists.phtml (and equivalently at https://ratings.fide.com/rankings.phtml) (hereinafter "type 2"). For a comprehensive compilation of the discrepancies between them, see this email I wrote to FIDE.

Quantitatively by far the most relevant of these discrepancies is that the two types of lists resolve ties in the ratings differently. Both types break ties between players with the same rating by using the number of games played in the rating period. But whereas the type 1 lists order players with the same rating and the same game count alphabetically (by last name), I couldn't identify any consistent pattern in how the type 2 lists resolve these remaining ties. This difference results in very many discrepancies in the rankings. (To give just one example, for the current rating period of July 2021, the type 1 list (here) lists Michael Adams as No. 26 and Andrey Esipenko as No. 27, and the type 2 list (here) has them the other way around.)

To add to the confusion, on https://ratings.fide.com/top_lists.phtml and https://ratings.fide.com themselves, if you don't select a rating period from the dropdown menu, you actually get the current type 1 list (the one at https://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=men) in the style of the type 2 lists, not the type 2 list that you get by selecting "RATINGS: LATEST" in the dropdown menu on https://ratings.fide.com/top_lists.phtml.

The problem gets worse if we include the older FIDE lists hosted at OlimpBase (click on "Elo lists 1971-2001" in the right-hand sidebar) that are not on the FIDE website. In the ranking lists, ties are broken according to the game counts (once these were available, starting in July 1985); players with the same rating and the same game count are listed as tied for the same rank. But in the lists for individual players, the game counts are ignored, and all players with the same rating are listed as tied for the same rank. For example, in July 1985, Jan Timman and Alexander Beliavsky both had a FIDE rating of 2640. (The ratings were rounded to the nearest multiple of 5 at the time, so ties were much more frequent.) In the ranking, Timman is listed as No. 3 and Beliavsky as No. 4, since Timman played more games in the rating period. But in the individual rating lists for Timman and for Beliavsky, they are both listed as tied for No. 3 in July 1985. However, this is perhaps not a serious problem for our purposes, as these rankings anyway seem to be postprocessing by OlimpBase and not part of the data originally published by FIDE.

Absent a consistent convention used by FIDE to resolve the rating ties, it's not clear how we should determine rankings. There seem to be three options:

• We could break ties as the type 1 lists do it: first by game count, then by alphabet. This would be my least favourite option, since it's not consistently applied by FIDE and anyway seems arbitrary and unfair.

• We could break ties by game counts only. The advantage is that all the published lists use at least the game count to break ties, so this would make the rankings as consistent with the published lists as possible, given their inconsistencies.

• We could not break ties at all and go by rating alone. The advantage is that there's no obscure and arbitrary convention involved; we'd just be reporting the ranking of players according to their FIDE ratings, which is probably what most people would expect when they see a "(peak) ranking" under a "FIDE rating" that doesn't mention game counts. This would be my favourite option.

This is not just a theoretical discussion; the current state of the articles is inconsistent and requires a decision. For instance, the article on Sam Shankland currently uses the first option (his peak ranking is listed as "No. 24 (February 2019)", which is his ranking on the type 1 list for February 2019 that lists him alphabetically after Jan-Krzysztof Duda, whereas the type 2 list for February 2019 has him on No. 23); the article on Jaan Ehlvest currently uses the third option (his peak ranking is listed as "No. 5 (January 1991)", consistent with the ranking entries on his individual player page, whereas the ranking list for January 1991 has him on No. 7 because two other players have the same rating and a higher game count).

It seems that generally editors have tended to prefer the type 1 lists over the type 2 lists; e.g. the article on Igors Rausis gives a peak rating of "No. 49 (January 2020)", which is consistent with the type 1 lists, whereas the type 2 lists (e.g. the one for January 2020) don't list him at all (see item 3 in the email); and the article on Nijat Abasov gives a peak rating of "No. 67 (February 2020)", which is consistent with the type 1 list for February 2020, whereas the type 2 list for February 2020 has him on No. 66, in this case not because of different handling of rating ties but because Igors Rausis is missing above him (see above).

Another question is whether any remaining ties should be marked; e.g., if two players are tied for No. 12, should the rank for each be specified as "No. 12", or as something like "tied for No. 12"? My slight preference would be to just write "No. 12".

I'd be interested in other views on these issues.

Joriki (talk) 07:13, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Two more things:

The FIDE rating regulations contain some provisions on the publication of the rating lists, but they don't specify how rating ties are to be resolved.

And I noticed that the "Rating" label in the infobox links to the type 1 lists at http://ratings.fide.com/toplist.phtml, which fits with my impression above that editors seem to tend to prefer the type 1 lists.

Joriki (talk) 18:13, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

I see that both for type 1 and type 2, FIDE does not explicitly specify tied rankings; for instance, with Aronian and Mamedyarov both rated 2782, Aronian is ranked 5 and Mamedyarov is ranked 6, rather than both of them being ranked "5-6". I do not know why they do it this way; it seems strange to me, but what do I know. Since they don't explicitly specify ties, probably we should not either, but I have no answers for the rest of your questions. Bruce leverett (talk) 14:46, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

template documentation should be updated with respect to full_name / birth_name / birthname

There's an eight-year-old discussion above that resulted in the current setup, where full_name, birth_name and birthname are three synonmous parameters (in that order of priority). The discussion ended with "Until then I'll hold off updating either the template doc or putting a note at Talk:ProjChess". It seems that the "until then" hasn't occurred yet: The documentation lists "full_name" as a parameter in the blank syntax but then uses "birthname" in the example usage, which is a bit confusing. I suspect that since the parameters have been synonymous for eight years now, few will expect there to be a semantic distinction between them. I would suggest to use "full_name" (the version with the highest priority) in the example usage, but I don't want to upset things since I might not understand the intricacies of the past usage of these parameters. Joriki (talk) 09:09, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

Which month should be used for an extended peak?

There doesn't seem to be a consistent convention yet for which month to specify for a peak rating or ranking that was sustained over multiple months. My subjective impression is that usually the first month in which the peak was reached is used, and that makes sense to me, as it provides information on how quickly the player reached the peak; but I've also seen entries that used later months (and sometimes changed them to use the first month). I think a policy for this should be agreed on and documented in the template documentation. Joriki (talk) 14:19, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

I've been using first month to date as well, and would support this as a policy.Greenman (talk) 22:07, 25 July 2021 (UTC)

I agree with first month. Bruce leverett (talk) 14:49, 26 July 2021 (UTC)

should we use wikidata in the infobox?

Wikidata has FIDE IDs for lots of players, under property P1440. It also has image, date of birth, country for sport and title of chess person properties. Such data can be used in Wikipedia, in particular in infoboxes – see Wikipedia:Wikidata#Infoboxes. I'd suggest that we set this infobox up to use this data in case the corresponding parameter isn't set, and to only use the infobox parameters if the wikidata needa to be overridden for some reason. I'd be happy to change the template accordingly (there are enough examples to learn from here) – just wanted to ask first whether there are any reasons against doing this (e.g. lack of reliability).

Template:FIDE already uses the FIDE ID from wikidata if no ID is specified. At one point the ID parameter for this template was systematically removed in the course of migrating this information to wikidata (see here). There are also tracking categories for discrepancies between its parameter and the wikidata ID. So there are currently three different places for specifying FIDE IDs: the FideID parameter of the infobox template, the ID parameter of the {{FIDE}} template, and wikidata. Currently there's at least one article with different parameters in the infobox and the {{FIDE}} template: Tamás Bánusz. (There's no tracking category for this discrepancy, so there might be more.) Currently, the {{FIDE}} template is being used in the external links sections of some players but not of others, which seems arbitrary. I think it would be better to have a link to the FIDE profile in the infobox if the FIDE ID is known. (There would have to be a parameter to turn that off, since FIDE doesn't have profile pages for all players with a FIDE ID.)

Joriki (talk) 04:39, 27 July 2021 (UTC)

rankings for top 100 now inserted automatically

I created a new Template:Elo_ranking that works much like Template:Elo_rating. It contains the top 100 rankings from https://ratings.fide.com/top.phtml?list=men. I edited the infobox template to use it where possible. Joriki (talk) 21:03, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Changing the "Peak rating" link

I think the "Peak rating" parameter should be linked to List of chess players by peak FIDE rating rather than Elo rating system, which is already linked in "FIDE rating". It's redundant to have both linked to the same article. I'll be bold and change it, but I'm happy to discuss opposing views. Wretchskull (talk) 11:05, 29 April 2023 (UTC)

Name in native language. Edit request on 4 April 2024

We should consider to add native_name parameter. The implementation could be the same as in Template:Infobox sportsperson + Wikidata:P:P1559.

Reasoning: There is already bunch of articles misusing name parameter for that purpose:

1. Garry Kasparov
2. Anatoly Karpov
3. Ju Wenjun
4. Ruslan Ponomariov

full_name misuse:

1. Levon Babujian
2. Shakhriyar Mamedyarov
3. Vladislav Tkachiev

Nyuhn (talk) 20:01, 4 April 2024 (UTC)

 Not done: it's not clear what changes you want to be made. Please mention the specific changes in a "change X to Y" format and provide a reliable source if appropriate. --Ferien (talk) 22:28, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Parameter

I think it would make more sense if |Country= was replaced with |Federation= as there are other players who play (or played) under the FIDE flag especially after the commencement of Russia–Ukraine War, Ian Nepo for an example. FIDE is not a country and for it to be displayed on the country parameter is kind of sus. Some played under the FIDE flag when they were switching federations, Alireza Firouzja for an example. Thoughts? dxneo (talk) 10:47, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

Readers who are unfamiliar with the chess milieu, as most Wikipedia readers are, will not know what to make of "Federation".

Note that there are hundreds if not thousands of chess biography articles, so any change to this infobox template must be made in a compatible way. Bruce leverett (talk) 13:37, 9 August 2024 (UTC)

I have came across BOTs with the ability to perform such changes and it wouldn't be first time such a change has been made. I am also not that much of a chess fan but I just read about Carlsen—Niemann fued few hours ago. I heard Magnus talking about Nepo then I quickly looked him up and how the SCC is going, and that's how I noticed this thing on Alireza's profile and other chess players. There's |Born= for their birth countries, but using |Country= for a FIDE flag is definitely not the way to go. dxneo (talk) 14:01, 9 August 2024 (UTC)