User talk:Gregorytopov/Stanley Random Chess

Untitled

This article is clearly copied from here. However, the username of the user who created the article is the name of the person who purportedly wrote the page from which this article is copied... does that count as copyvio or can we keep it? Anyone know? Hbackman 01:24, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Regardless of its copyvio status, this is a poorly written article. It looks like an FAQ or advert. Placing a {{cleanup-date}} tag on it. I don't believe that simply having the same user name as the author of the page constitutes permission; perhaps we use {{attention}} this article too. Isopropyl 01:37, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Copyright violation isn't an issue here, since I am the original author who submitted this information to the chessvariants.org site, where it was approved for publication also. My permission is granted for free distribution of the content, and I'm freely allowing publication here on wikipedia and elsewhere. Feel free to improve the formatting or style or wording to make it more consistent with other wikipedia content. Gregorytopov 03:08, 23 March 2006 (UTC) Gregorytopov

Delete?

Okay, now that I've stripped out most of the utter nonsense, there isn't much left to this article. Does anyone know if this game has ever been played by anyone other than wiki editor User:Gregorytopov?

Now, wondering why I bothered to try to clean up an article that should probably be killed, I'm reminded of an excerpt from 1984:

We burn all evil and all illusion out of him; we bring him over to our side, not in appearance, but genuinely, heart and soul. We make him one of ourselves before we kill him. It is intolerable to us that an erroneous thought should exist anywhere in the world, however secret and powerless it may be.

...and the Vietnam oxymoron “We had to burn the village to save it.”

Oh well- sorry Topov, but that GeoCities website with the monkey was a pretty corny effort to generate supporting evidence for the popularity of the game. Didn't Stephen Glass use GeoCities for the same purpose?

- Eric 11:23, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Response. Thanks for cleaning up the article Eric. I'm new to Wikipedia, and decided to contribute the article after reading on the Wikipedia Chessmaster page that Stanley Random Chess was fictitious, which I knew to be false having played the game myself. I figured I would do the right thing and create an article on the game to correct the error, and add more content. For further verification, you can see that the game is active with over 100 current games in the last 10 days alone, and a current tournament between multiple players (registration as a guest may be necessary to view these pages). I'm not sure that the historical claims should be deleted, but perhaps a Wikipedia article on the game should clearly state that any claims about historical origins are exaggerated and intended to reflect humor rather than reality, even though the game itself is real. People looking for information on the game should be aware of the exaggerated historical claims, and the fact that while they are intended as humor in a Monty Python style fashion, the game itself is not a hoax. The same can be said about most commentary and analysis of the game, as described well in the discussion here by another player of the game, surfnsuds, under the heading "It's real, and it's fun to play". Thanks for your help! Gregorytopov 14:33, 23 March 2006 (UTC)Gregorytopov