Talk:Howard Staunton/GA1

GA Review

I'll be reviewing this article. Just in the middle of reading it over for a second time, and I'll be posting my comments here. leafschik1967 (talk) 15:47, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

Hi, sorry I didn't catch you in time. Can you please hold off the review until about end-August? There's one important issue that isn't closed out. The Staunton-Morphy controversy (main article) needs some material about the immediate aftermath, say 1858-1860, and I'm still trying to find sources - then I can reduce the correspoding section in Howard Staunton. Alternatively you could review the rest of Howard Staunton but skip the "Assessment" section. Sorry if this has caused you any extra work. -- Philcha (talk) 07:49, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

I had just started reading over. One of my notes was that the section seemed awfully long for one with another article on it. I will make some preliminary notes on the other sections, but hold off on the full review until you let me know it is ready to go. leafschik1967 (talk) 18:17, 28 July 2008 (UTC)

If you mean the last 2 paras in section "Final stages of playing career", the problem is that omitting any of the events in the affair changes the balance of the account. This is one of the most contentious issues in chess history, and Americans are particularly liable to get all steamed up about it. If you can think of a way to shorten it without any omissions that would lead to outraged screams of "Whitewash!" I'd be very grateful. -- Philcha (talk) 15:19, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Review by Eubulides

1st set of comments by Eubulides

This is just the start of a review; I haven't yet had time to read the whole article but thought I'd drop some notes on what I've read so far. Here are the comments I have so far:

• Overall the article is a strong one, and I don't see problems in it reaching good article status. The main problems I have with it are an excess and duplication of material, rather than a deficit. There are also some POV problems that need to get fixed.

• The lead is way too long, by about a factor of two. It's five paragraphs long, but should be about three, or maybe four short paragraphs. Please see Princess Alice of Battenberg (which happens to be the featured article as I type this review) for an example length to shoot for. I'll hold off on a more-detailed review of the lead until after it gets slimmed down.

OTOH the leads at Dinosaur, Tyrannosaurus and Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event are more similar in length to Howard Staunton's than to Princess Alice of Battenberg's. The probl;em is that S. was an extremely active person and there's a lot to summarise. How do you like the slightly shorter version at User:Philcha/Sandbox#Possible_Lead_for_Howard_Staunton? -- Philcha (talk) 00:48, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

No, actually the word counts for the leads are as follows:

• 235 Princess Alice of Battenberg
• 352 Dinosaur
• 340 Tyrannosaurus
• 335 Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event
• 535 Howard Staunton

So Howard Staunton is out of line even by dinosaurian standards. Furthermore, Howard Staunton, like most biographies, can be summarized much more easily than paleontological topics. The sandbox is 457 words, which is still much too long. Let's put it this way: if Charles Dickens can be summarized in 173 words, surely one can summarize Staunton in 250 words or less. Eubulides (talk) 01:27, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I've squeezed the lead at User:Philcha/Sandbox#Possible_Lead_for_Howard_Staunton a bit. It already omits the "Staunton" chess set, and further cuts may endanger its adequacy as a summary. I don't think Charles Dickens' lead is a great example - I'm no Dickens scholar (I avoided putting much effort into Dickens at school, too many pages per exam mark), but my immediate reaction was "Where's Ellen Terry?" and then "What about the American tours?" Tyrannosaurus was a one-trick pony, death at first bite (a 4 word lead!). Both the main text and the lead of Cretaceous–Tertiary extinction event seriously underestimate the complexity of this extinction. In terms of breadth and duration of activities Winston Churchill is the most comparable GA bio I can think of right now, but the lead omits his years in the wilderness and his reactionary pronoucements durng the General Strike. -- Philcha (talk) 09:17, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree it is difficult to take Charles Dickens for an example, as it is nor FA-class neither GA-class. That being said, I have written a new possible Lead in my sandbox (see the v2 in User:SyG/Sandbox), much shorter (about 196 words only!). I tried to remove everything that was not of critical importance, particularly about the failed match against Morphy. Please you and Philcha have a look and tell me what you think. SyG (talk) 08:42, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Hi, SyG, I'm glad to see your previous efforts haven't worn you out. But I fear volcanic eruptions if the lead omits the controversy over S.'s Jekyll-and-Hyde personality and especially over the Morphy non-match - next to the chess set design, they're what S. is best known for. I also think "the international chess tournament he organised in 1851 greatly helped the development of chess in the United Kingdom" gets the balance slightly wrong, e.g I think Kasparov's "organized the first international chess tournament in history and was the first to try to set up an international chess organization" is closer to the target; and providing a means for settling claims to the top ranking was also historically important, as the concept had previously been vapour-ware. "was one of the world's two strongest players from 1843 to 1851" caused some debate in a previous version, because of Buckle, and "regarded as the world's strongest player" was the eventual compromise solution. Our chess bios of top players also generally outline how they ceased to be the top players. -- Philcha (talk) 09:55, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

New version at User:Philcha/Sandbox#Possible_Lead_for_Howard_Staunton - 388 words. What do you think? -- Philcha (talk) 15:12, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

This is a great effort, but 388 words is still way too long by Eubulides' standards, and some sentences are redundant. I have taken your version and tried to trim it down a bit, until 284 words. Please have a look at the v3 in User:SyG/Sandbox and tell me what you think. SyG (talk) 15:58, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

SyG, that is very good. I suggest 2 small changes:

• "From 1843 to 1851 he was the United Kingdom's strongest player" is a slightly more accurate summary of the sources.
• "... good working relationships with several strong players and influential chess enthusiasts..." - he needed the support of the enhusiasts to organise and fund the 1851 tournament. It also fits the contents of his last letter to von der Lasa, where he mourns the deaths of enthusiasts as well as masters.

What do you think? -- Philcha (talk) 16:40, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, after the long way we have come, I don't think adding a few words will make a difference. Please feel free to make the change in the article, and let's see what Eubulides thinks. SyG (talk) 17:50, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

← The change hasn't been made yet, but in looking at User:SyG/Sandbox #Possible Lead for Staunton (v3): 284 words I see some redundancies and fixes.

• "his two writing careers". Only one writing career has been mentioned so far. Some reordering is in order here.
• It says he was the world's strongest player and then later that he was the UK's strongest player from 1843 to 1951. The latter comment can be removed without losing any information.

It does lose information, but not significantly. von der Lasa was the other credible contender for "world's strongest player". On balance I agree with the deletion. -- Philcha (talk) 10:55, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

• "Staunton continued to write about chess and Shakespeare until his death." is not that important and can be removed.

I disagree. The evidence indicates S was a workaholic, and that he sincerley loved both chess and Shakespeare. In fact he was self-taught in Shakespeare, and chess-players of the time were largely self-taught. -- Philcha (talk) 10:55, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

• POV terms that should be removed/rewritten: "official standard" ("standard" suffices), ", and his work in this field is still well-regarded" (just remove it). "were respected for their quality and they" (reword as "were widely read", or simply remove), "It is often alleged that Staunton avoided playing Morphy in 1858 and" (reword to put the neutral stuff first and minimize the scope of the allegation, e.g., "Staunton did not agree to a match with Morphy in 1858; it is often alleged that he"), "Staunton has been a controversial figure since his own time, and his" (reword to "Staunton's": i.e., show, don't say).

"official standard" is correct, as Standards of Chess Equipment and tournament venue for FIDE Tournaments says, "Recommended for use in FIDE competitions are pieces of new Staunton style". So it's not just a de facto standard. -- Philcha (talk) 10:55, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

• Mentioning his 1847 book after mentioning his "chess articles and books" is redundant; this can be compressed and combined.

The 1847 book enjoyed amazing longevity - it was in print in 2003. How about:

His chess articles and books encouraged the development of chess in the United Kingdom, and His 1847 book The Chess-Player's Handbook was a reference for decades.

-- Philcha (talk) 10:55, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

• "in the organisation of the 1851 chess tournament" is redundant with "was the principal organizer of the first international chess tournament in 1851".

I disagree. The first mention is about the impact on the development of chess. The 2nd is about his personality. -- Philcha (talk) 10:55, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

• "had just" and "both" can be removed.

I agree about "had just".

OTOH I think "both" is good English prose technique because it alerts the reader to the fact that there are 2 points coming. I'm aware that your main Wikipedia interest is medical research, and that makes you an untypical reader with a well-developed tolerance for the highly compressed text of scientific journals - I constantly struggle with the same problem in paleontology articles, where I frequently revise my text in order to simplify it for non-specialists. -- Philcha (talk) 10:55, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

• "making available the time for a match" -> "making time available"

Eubulides (talk) 23:45, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I agree, since S. actually had a 3-part problem: publishing deadlines for Shakespeare; time to get match-sharp; playing the match.

User:SyG/Sandbox v4 handle sthe Morphy issue very neatly. -- Philcha (talk) 10:55, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

All right, I have changed the v3 to take into account Phicha's and Eubulides' comments, giving birth to the v4 at User:SyG/Sandbox, now only 259 words. New comments are welcome! SyG (talk) 07:05, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks. Looks good to me. Eubulides (talk) 07:14, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

See above - I think most of the changes are good, but a few are questionable. -- Philcha (talk) 11:07, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

OK, I will wait for Philcha and Eubulides to agree on the objections made by Philcha above, before I create a v5. SyG (talk) 16:15, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

• Similarly, Howard Staunton #London International Tournament and Howard Staunton #The Staunton-Morphy controversy are too long as summaries of their subarticles. Again, I'll hold off reviewing them. Please see Parapsychology, the most recent featured article with subarticles, for an example on how to summarize subarticles.

• Re Howard Staunton #London International Tournament, how do you like User:Philcha/Sandbox#.22London_International_Tournament.2C_1851.22_for_Howard_Staunton_-_version_2? The problem is that several points need to be made about Staunton's role: seizing the opportunity; managerial skills and ability to recruit world-wide support (a big achievement when communications and financial sevices were primitive); determination and resourcefulness in handling the shortage of entrants; political squabbles in UK chess elite; the tournament book. -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Have you had a chance to read User:Philcha/Sandbox#.22London_International_Tournament.2C_1851.22_for_Howard_Staunton_-_version_2? -- Philcha (talk) 11:07, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

• In Howard Staunton #The Staunton-Morphy controversy the problem is that omitting any of the incidents / phases alters the balance of the blame-game that's still being played by commentators. Americans, indoctrinated to hate Staunton, are particularly likely to scream "Whitewash!" if any detail is omitted. Apart from Murray's comments, which I'd like to consolidate per your suggestion below, this is a really barebones summary of what happened. The wording of Staunton's initial responses is crucial. If you can suggest ways to shorten it that are not likely to provoke screams of partisan outrage, I'd be grateful. -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Here is a proposal, possibly extreme, for the Howard Staunton #The Staunton-Morphy controversy. Firstly, replace the first paragraph by the following one:

Staunton has been a controversial figure ever since his own time. Well-known chess writers like Fred Reinfeld, Israel "Al" Horowitz and Reuben Fine consider the failed match Staunton-Morphy as evidence of Staunton's coward and hypocritical nature. However, in the words of chess journalist Mark Weeks, "Staunton represents a unique challenge to chess history. Many players immediately associate his name with Paul Morphy, as in “Staunton ducked a match with Morphy”. ... This is extremely unfair, as it concentrates the focus on Staunton to a relatively minor, factually controversial incident, while it ignores his significant achievements."

Then wipe out ALL the section Howard Staunton #The Staunton-Morphy controversy. If readers want to know more, they can always go to the subarticle or to the "Latter life" section. SyG (talk) 10:38, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Interesting idea. Howver I think the priorities run the other way: summarise the blow-by-blow account as much as possible, but include enough analysis to force readers to reconsider the affair. Philcha (talk) 16:40, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

The possibly-extreme proposal would be an improvement over what's there now. It's not Wikipedia's job to force readers to reconsider anything; the article should neutrally summarize the controversy. Eubulides (talk) 23:45, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I would tend to agree with Eubulides: when there is a controversy, Wikipedia's job is just to summarise it, not to give an analysis that would be WP:OR or WP:SYNTH. In our case, I think the whole affair could be summarise in a sentence like "On the controversy of the failed match, some authors consider Staunton <negative stuff>, while other authors consider Staunton <positive stuff>". Any detail is best put in the subarticle. SyG (talk) 07:17, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Eubulides has perfectly captured my problem with this section. It is written as a piece of advocacy ("to force readers to reconsider the affair"), not in an NPOV manner. Krakatoa (talk) 07:26, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Nonsense. See the Mark Weeks quote - and he's an American. For the record my impression is that S. was an over-achiever who was hard to get along with and had a very itchy trigger-finger - in fact almost a caricature type A personality, including the heart trouble - and, whatever his original intentions, he badly mishandled the Morphy affair. I saw a quote somewhere that Cochrane, who helped S. a lot, said he found it easier to work with S. when there were a few oceans between them - how I wish I'd at least pasted the url into the Talk page. Until a few months ago my image of Staunton was shaped by Fine's The World's Great Chess Games. I started researching this article in order to provide some background for Wilhelm Steinitz and Adolf Anderssen, and that's when I found WP:RS evidence that challenged the preconceptions I'd acquired from Fine. I don't mind what conclusion readers reach, as long as they reach it after looking at the evidence. -- Philcha (talk) 10:16, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

← I have written an attempt to sum up the impact of the Staunton-Morphy affair on the perception of Staunton's personality by chess historians. Please have a look at User:SyG/Sandbox#Summary of the Staunton-Morphy controversy for the "Personality" part. As the article is now way too long, my primary goals were both to keep it short and to keep it neutral. SyG (talk) 14:12, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, SyG, but I've been working on The Staunton-Morphy controversy to try to get the facts straight, and found it's even more complex than I realised. For example (just a very few!): the full text of Staunton's article April 1858 about the challenge in the Illustrated London News (April 1858) seems less easy to interpret as a polite refusal than the excerpts Murray presents in his [1908 pair of articles for the BCM; irrespective of whether "Anti-book" was Staunton, the notorious "Anti-book" letter was accurate about Morphy's lack of funds and seconds, per the Maurian-Fiske correspondence (Charles A. Maurian (27 July 1858), (letter to) D. W. Fiske, Esq., retrieved 2008-08-16;Charles A. Maurian (29 July 1858), (letter to) D. W. Fiske, Esq., retrieved 2008-08-16) and Morphy's letter of Oct 7, 1858 telling the St. George's Chess Club that he'd deposited the money and asking them to appoint seconds; Lyttelton's letter Nov 3 to Morphy also comments, "I am not aware, indeed (nor do I perceive that you have said it), that you left America solely with the view of playing Mr. Staunton. It would, no doubt, make the case stronger, but it seems to me as unlikely as that you should have come, as has been already stated (anonymously, and certainly not with Mr. Staunton's concurrence), in order to attend the Birmingham Tournament". I'm beginning to wonder if there are any objective chess historians. If not, summarising their views just becomes a shouting contest that might actually mislead readers. Give me a couple of days to finish the account at The Staunton-Morphy controversy; it'll be too long initially, but it will show what a tangled mess the whole affair was. -- Philcha (talk) 15:13, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

• There is too much coverage of the Staunton-Morphy controversy in Howard Staunton #Final stages of playing career. This coverage should be moved to Howard Staunton #The Staunton-Morphy controversy or to The Staunton-Morphy controversy, as the Final stages section is overlong.

I'd like to do that, but my impression is that Wikipedia policy is averse to "see below" - otherwise I'd consolidate all the details and the 2 long paras in the chronological summary to e.g "The major issue of Staunton's career in 1858 was Paul Morphy's unsuccessful attempt to arrange a match against him, an episode which is controversial even now. This complex matter is reviewed below." (with internal link) -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I was hoping for a response to this suggestion. -- Philcha (talk) 16:40, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Its true that "(see [[#The Staunton-Morphy controversy|The Staunton-Morphy controversy]] below)" is frowned on, but sometimes it's better than the alternatives. It's certainly better than a lot of duplication. Eubulides (talk) 23:45, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I'll write 2 chunks at my sandbox and then link to them here. (1) short account of events with a "see below"; (2) historical analysis. -- Philcha (talk) 11:07, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

• There is also some repetition between Howard Staunton #Assessment and Howard Staunton #The Staunton-Morphy controversy. This repetition should be removed one way or another.

Removed last sentence form Howard Staunton #Assessment. -- Philcha (talk) 09:17, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• In the first two images the subject faces the reader's left, and these two images should therefore be on the right as per Wikipedia style guidelines. See WP:MOS #Images.

Are you referring to the head in the infobox and the pic of Staunton seated in Howard Staunton #Staunton's life? If so, do you mean "faces the reader's right ... should therefore be on the left"? If so the infobox is a real problem. In addition as a reader I'm averse to images on the left, as they make the text harder to read by varying the positions of the starts of lines. AFAIK these are the only decent pics of Staunton available in Wikipedia. The only decent solution I can see is to upload mirror images and use these. What do you think? -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

The first image should stay on the right because it is a common structure for all chess infoboxes (unless someone finds another image of Staunton in which he looks at the other side), and also because this is a requirement of WP:MOS #Images: "Start an article with a right-aligned lead image.". The second image, well, I have moved it on the left. SyG (talk) 12:34, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks, you convinced me here. I struck it out. Eubulides (talk) 23:45, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• In two places the article claims says that Staunton was born in April 1810, but the cited source says only "1810". Please change the text to say just "1810", unless there's a solid source saying "April".

Done -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• The cited source does not support the following claim:

One of chess historian Edward Winter's sources is sceptical about several of the "facts" about Staunton's life.

The source merely checks some of the facts; it doesn't express skepticism. I suggest removing the claim.

Last sentence:

The obituary in The Times, 30 June 1874, page 8, quoted a press release from the Athenaeum which appears to be the source for several of the “facts” about his life, e.g. that he attended Oxford without taking a degree and that he once played Lorenzo to Kean’s Shylock.

To me the quotes round “facts” express scepticism and "a press release from the Athenaeum which appears to be the source" looks like what we would call a WP:RS issue. -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I dunno, is it really notable that one of Edward Winter's sources is skeptical? Why not just say that the details of Staunton's early life are not known? Eubulides (talk) 23:45, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Done I have removed the sentence. SyG (talk) 10:00, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I think removing the sentence was a bad move. Chess history / biography is very prone to urban myths. For example popular chess writers generally recount uncritically the story that Tsar Nicholas II conferred the title of "grandmaster" on the top 5 at the 1915 St. Petersburg chess tournament, but chess historian Edward Winter has cast doubt on this. The same applies to a lot of S.'s early life: a source that Winter trusts (an amateur genealogist) expresses doubts, and [Murray's account]] says "What I have to tell has been gleaned from various obituary notices and from the 'Dictionary of National Biography'", i.e. he found no reliable sources from the early 19th century. I think it's fairer to warn readers that this period of S.'s life is uncertain. OTOH "the details of Staunton's early life are not known" would be going too far. -- Philcha (talk) 11:36, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Then let's look at it from a different angle. Is there a good, reliable, authoritative source backing the "facts" about Staunton's life ? If yes, they should obviously be in the article. If no, we should delete them altogether. Reading the current version of the article, everything is expressed as hard facts except the Lorenzo part, that is already frowned upon with the formulation "Staunton often used to tell...". If this formulation is still too affirmative, we can directly delete the statement. SyG (talk) 16:31, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

AFAIK there's no good, reliable, authoritative source backing the "facts" about Staunton's early life, unfortunately. "... summarized the information that he found, and its sources" is an attmept to abbreviate Murray's "What I have to tell has been gleaned from various obituary notices and from the 'Dictionary of National Biography'", the tone of which appears to express a lack of confidence in the sources. Perhaps "... summarized the information that he found from various obituary notices and from the 'Dictionary of National Biography'" would be better.

I think it would be a mistake to delete Murray's summary, since the gap would soon be filled by a well-meaning casual editor who read one of the less careful histories and took it as gospel. I'm not being paranoid, it happens about once a week on some dinosaur articles. -- Philcha (talk) 17:04, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I am a bit uneasy about that:

• we are interpreting the tone of Murray as expressing a lack of confidence. That is subjective, another editor could see only "factualness" in the same sentence.
• the article should be about Staunton, not about the work of Murray. Most readers do not care where Murray found its facts. And for the few that do care, they will read the original source (Murray's text) anyway.
• To be extremely cautious, we do not know where Murray found the facts. He says he took them from 'Dictionary of National Biography', but you and I have not checked that. So the most we could state is something like "Murray says he found the information in ..."

All in all we can always describe Murray's sources, but in a footnote, not in the main text. SyG (talk) 18:15, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

How about

The chess historian H.J.R. Murray summarized the information that he "gleaned" and its sources: .... (ref to Murray article cited everywhere)(ref to note on Murray's souces)

Hopefully that's short enough, meets your concerns, but "gleaned" (with quotes) still invites readers to make up their own minds about what Murray thought of the infomration. -- Philcha (talk) 15:13, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

• Please combine multiple citations (that are not shared) into a single citation with bullets. For example, instead of this:

Most modern commentators consider Staunton to be the de facto World Champion after his match victory over Saint-Amant, although that title did not yet officially exist.

use this:

Most modern commentators consider Staunton to be the de facto world champion after his match victory over Saint-Amant, although that title did not yet officially exist.

Done You're quite right, I usually do this once I'm sure I don't want to name and re-use any of them. Thanks! Done - I think ...

... with a few deliberate exceptions:

• I've left the refs after "almost a hundred pages of analysis of the endgame" separate, as the 2nd is pretty long.
• those relating to the Staunton-Morphy controversy, as we're contemplating a re-organisation of that content.
• including those about the historical accuracy of popular writers, as one ref is general and the other specifically about accounts of Staunton. -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• The following claim is not supported by the cited sources. The cited sources are simply individual modern commentators. Change "Most" to "Several", or find a source that says "Most".

Most modern commentators consider Staunton to be the de facto World Champion after his match victory over Saint-Amant

Done "Several ..." -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• Two footnotes say "St. Amant" whereas the text says "Saint-Amant". Please be consistent. I assume "Saint-Amant" is more correct.

Done -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• The following sentence seems to be continuing part of an argument and has a mild POV flavor. Please remove it and simply supply the Fine and Horowitz citations along with the rest.

Even Reuben Fine and I.A. Horowitz, both harsh critics of Staunton, agree.

Done -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• Every use of "Unfortunately", "Fortunate", etc., should be removed, as they introduce POV. The article should not be rooting for Staunton.

Done, I think. -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• Remove all uses of the word "very". None of them are needed, most of them get in the way, and some of them are needless POV.

Done w a few deliberate exceptions:

• "The match against Harrwitz was set up in a very unusual way" - AFAIK unique, but that would be unverifiable.
• "pointing out that the pieces were easily identifiable, very stable, ..." paraphrasing the source, which makes a big point of this. Sources suggest previous designs were a real pain.
• "Staunton's analysis of the very rare rook versus three minor pieces endgame" (in a ref) - very few players ever see one. -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• "World Champion" should be "world champion" (3 times), for consistency with the rest of the article, and to avoid needless capitalization.

Elsewhere chess articles usually capitalise, mainly for winners of a contest formally defined for (a version of) the world championship. My inclination would be to use lower case for Staunton, as he was only a de facto world champion. But we also have quotes from formal World Champions. What do you think? -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia uses World Champion, and it is also capitalised in World Chess Championship. So this is an established practice. SyG (talk) 13:10, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks, I struck that. Eubulides (talk) 23:45, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• The article says twice that Captain Evans invented the Evans Gambit. Once is enough.

Done Removed 2nd, in Howard Staunton #Personality. -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• The article contains the following quote twice. Once is enough. "He can hardly be blamed if the struggles and privations of his youth warped his character so that he became a jealous, suspicious, and vitriolic man."

I've just done a text search and found only one. -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I struck that. Dunno why I saw two, but it doesn't matter now. Eubulides (talk) 23:45, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• The following phrase is redundant and can be removed, as it is in the next sentence too. "(seven wins, no draws, and no losses)"

The only thing like this that I can find is re the match against Daniel Harrwitz in Howard Staunton #Chess writer and promoter. The problem is that some sources give only the 7-0 win in the "evens" games, while others give all 3 "sections" of the match. I've tried to minimise the potential confusion by being explicit. -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Done I have removed the sentence, as the next sentence contains enough information for the reader to figure out. SyG (talk) 13:15, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• Every instance of a hyphen that is surrounded by spaces (" - ") should be replaced as per style guidelines; see WP:HYPHEN.

Used space ndash space, as I hate ndash w/o spaces - looks too much like hyphen. Exceptions:

• where I've copied and pasted a book / article / web page title, since changing would make it harder for readers to Google.
• where explaining that - is shorthand for "loss". -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• Likewise for em dashes; there should be no spaces around them. See WP:DASH.

Done Changed to space ndash space. -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• The following sentence is out of place in the Chess writer and promoter section. Also, it claims that Frances was a widow, a claim not supported by the cited source:

On July 23, 1849 Staunton married Frances Carpenter Nethersole, a widow who had had eight children by a previous marriage.

"However, a further fact derived from that website which I have not seen noted is that Frances Carpenter and William Dickenson Nethersole had no fewer than eight children baptized at St Clement Danes between 1826 and 1842." -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I've seen no other sources for S.'s personal life, so I think the best option is chronological. -- Philcha (talk) 09:17, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• The quote doesn't necessarily mean Frances was a widow; she could have been divorced, or her marriage could have been annulled.

Bill Wall's Chess Master Profiles - Staunton -- Philcha (talk) 11:20, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

• Chronological is fine, but then the section headers should reflect the chronological contents, e.g., they can use dates.

Eubulides (talk) 23:45, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Done I think the new source provided by Philcha above indicates she was a widow, so I have added the source at the end of the sentence and let the statement. I have also moved the wedding to the next subsection, and I have retitled subsections to enhance their chronological aspect. SyG (talk) 16:39, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

• The following paragraph seems out of place for Final stages of playing career. It does not talk about his playing career.

In the mid-1850s Staunton obtained a contract with the publishers Routledge to edit the text of Shakespeare. This edition appeared in parts from 1857 to 1860, and Staunton's work was praised by experts.

Contract deadlines explain why Staunton was too busy to play Morphy - see his comment ""been compelled, by laborious literary occupation, to abandon the practice of chess, beyond the indulgence of an occasional game". -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Again, perhaps the simplest fix is to change the section header to reflect the section's contents more accurately. Eubulides (talk) 23:45, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm. In this instance the Shakespeare contract is one of the factors in the winding down of S'. playing career, as S. himself wrote. -- Philcha (talk) 11:20, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Done I have retitled the subsection to reflect also the work on Shakespeare. SyG (talk) 16:48, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

• Please follow WP:ELLIPSIS in ellipsis style. In particular there should be no space between a period and an immediately following ellipsis.

Done -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• The following text belongs in the footnote, not in the main text:

(Bledow died in 1846; it is not known why publication was delayed)

I'd agree except for one thing - this ref is used 4 times, for different aspects of S.'s career. I'm not sure it would help readers to create a separate version just to accommodate the delay. OTOH if the delay is omitted, someone who looks up Ludwig Bledow will think there's a discrepancy. -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

The letter itself is already cited. How about putting this parenthesized detail in that citation, and then citing the letter directly here? Eubulides (talk) 23:45, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I may be having a mental lapse, but I can't visualise what you have in mind. Can you epxlain a little more, please? -- Philcha (talk) 11:45, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Done I have let the reference in the existing footnote, and I have created a supplementary footnote to mention the discrepancy about dates. SyG (talk) 17:13, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

• Howard Staunton #Assessment contains a double-quote inside a double-quote.

Done I have changed it to single quotes, per Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Quotation_marks. SyG (talk) 13:29, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• Howard Staunton #Personality does too.

I tried to changed inner ones to smart quotes but they render the same in ? Arial - “...” I don't like using single quotes because they're fragile, especially in wiki mark-up - one possessive or contraction or "O'Hare" could turn half the page into italics. What do you suggest? -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Done I have changed it to single quotes, per Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Quotation_marks. I am now ready to crash the whole Wikipedia into italics and to suffer the anger of the gods for my recklessness. SyG (talk) 13:29, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• The phrase ", both in general and specifically" in Howard Staunton #Assessment smacks of POV and OR and should be removed. There is no need here to attack the general reputations of Reinfeld, Horowitz and Fine. This phrase is repeated in Howard Staunton #The Staunton-Morphy controversy.

Re the repetition, we're looking at how to consolidate. I wrote "both in general and specifically"" because Kingston's comment is general while Diggle's relates specifically to Staunton. -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• Image:And00278.png does not display in my browser (Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.8.1.16) Gecko/2008070200 Iceweasel/2.0.0.16 (Debian-2.0.0.16-0etch1)). All I see is the text "Anderssen, tournament winner". I do see all the other images. Please fix the problem with this image, whatever it is.

Displays OK for me in:

• A version of K-meleon that I can't remember updating

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070727 K-Meleon/1.1.2

• The latest Windows Firefox:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.16) Gecko/20080702 Firefox/2.0.0.16

• Opera (Win) 9.24

Opera/9.24 (Windows NT 5.1; U; en)

• Even IE 7 *(Win XP SP 2)

It was uploaded 20:04, 12 June 2006 by Lorenzoalali. Are you sure the problem's not your browser? -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I have raised the issue to the author of the image, but he is French so he will probably just fly away. Maybe a solution would be to stop using frivolous OS like Linux and discover some real professional OS like Windows. (WARNING! troll detected) SyG (talk) 13:54, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Have you rechecked? Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Edits_before_10:45_am_EST_today_do_not_appear_in_any_user.27s_contributions.3F suggests there have been server problems. Yesterday I uploaded a couple of images and had to wait a few minutes before one of them started displaying. You might have been a victim of a random server glitch, e.g. one server down and remaining servers can't handle all the traffic, and time out some of the requests.

Another possibility - I got browsershots.org to show the image page [1] as seen by Iceweasel 2. When I got the result, the image was OK but the tech summary said

Browser: Iceweasel 2.0.0.16

Engine: Gecko 20080702

Javascript: 1.7

Java: enabled

Flash: disabled

Operating system: Debian 4.0 (Etch)

Iceweasel is supposed to be just Firefox rebranded, but Debian does its own build and there's no guarantee it's identical. If not identical, then it's not as tested by Mozilla and you may have a problem.

If you have the same browser and renderer code as I do, the next suspect is the OS. Your user string says "Debian-2.0.0.16-0etch1" while browsershots.org used "Debian 4.0 (Etch)" for the simulation. Are you using a fully up-to-date version of your OS? Do you load it shrink-wrapped or build / compile any of it yourself? -- Philcha (talk) 21:17, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• I am running Debian stable x86, and I'm fully up-to-date (I just now checked). The image page itself (Image:And00278.png) does display correctly, with a 202x274 image. The image also displays correctly in Adolf Anderssen.
• I just now checked Howard Staunton, and it appears that the problem is that I am getting the image at [2], and that this image is corrupted: neither the Gimp nor ImageMagick will render it. I guess the problem is that my image preference size is 200px? If so, you should be able to reproduce the problem by logging in, visiting Special:Preferences, clicking on "Files" and selecting a thumbnail size of 200px. Then visit Howard Staunton and do a shift-reload to clear out your browser cache on that page.

Eubulides (talk) 23:45, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

I think you've just identified the source of the problem. I reproduced the problem as you suggested - and then reset my prefs to a default image width of 180px and the image re-appeared. If you look at the image page there's a red link to Commons. Some person on Commons deleted it because there was an equivalent under another name. I've tried to re-up and left a stern message. But when I tried to re-up, Commons claimed it already had And00278.png! It lies - when I set default image width to 200px (again!) I got zilch. I dunno what to do about this, apart from strangle with a coarse rope the person who proposed Commons before thinking past the end of his keyboard. -- Philcha (talk) 01:27, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

 Fixed No, no, Commons is a good thing in general. Anyway, I fixed it at Commons, using a hack. Eubulides (talk) 01:46, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Very neat! -- Philcha (talk) 10:16, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

• "the one who would Morphy's name immortal" is not grammatical

Done "... would make ..." - thanks! -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• The following pages should be wikilinked to, but aren't:
  • Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle - Done thanks, I didn't realise he was in. -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)
  • The Illustrated London News Done - oops, it was the first occurrence! -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• There's no need for wikilinks to:
  • England
  • French
  • Paris
  • Brussels
  • heart disease
  • Please don't wikilink dates like "June 22, 1874". Just say "June 22, 1874" instead. The style guidelines have changed recently in this area. See MOS:UNLINKYEARS.

Wikipedia:Build the web links e.g. "Africa". Has this policy been over-ridden? -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

In the Africa example, the subject is the Sahara, where Africa is relevant and should be wikilinked. In Harold Staunton, French isn't that relevant or unusual and should not be wikilinked. Admittedly this is often a judgement call. For more on this subject, please see WP:OVERLINK #What generally should not be linked. Eubulides (talk) 07:14, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Suits me, too many articles have the blue pox. Thanks for the clarification. Done except in lead, which we can clean up when we put in an agreed version. -- Philcha (talk) 11:54, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Done Re dates, yippee! I never saw any point in w-linking dates unless already notable, e.g 1492 or 1066. Gleefully done. -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• The following wikilink is to a disambiguation page, and should point to a particular page instead:
  • Quarto

Done Thanks! -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• Please use a consistent date style; the article should not use both the style "June 22, 1874" and the style "6 October 1885".

Where's the 2nd format? -- Philcha (talk) 09:17, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Done I found it and corrected it. SyG (talk) 14:12, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Eubulides (talk) 23:40, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

2nd set of comments by Eubulides

Here are some more bullets:

• There is not enough coverage of his work on Shakespeare. Howard Staunton #His other writings has just one sentence.

We asked Wikiproject Shakespeare to contribute, and got no response. The source cited is the only one I could find. -- Philcha (talk) 11:17, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Unfortunately the source does not justify the claim that Staunton is still respected. It contains only a quote from some undated review sometime. I did a bit of searching of my own, and I suspect Staunton is almost unknown as a Shakespeare scholar now. Go to scholar.google.com and type the query "Howard-Staunton Shakespeare". The claims that he's still respected should be removed. He edited a lot of Shakespeare in his day, but Shakespeare editors get no respect.... Eubulides (talk) 01:43, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I read elsewhere (another lost url!) that a few years earlier another editor butchered the Bard with speculative amendments. Thomas Bowdler's expurgated version ca 1818 was so notorious that it entered the language. In 1681 Nahum Tate even gave King Lear a happy ending. Staunton pulled strongly in the other direction, authenticity. The only date I could get for the DNB was sometime around 1910. However the cited source treats the DNB as RS on this matter and is itself recommended in some university study guides, e.g. Western Connecticut State University, English 339: Introduction to Shakespeare. In the absence of contributions from Wikipedia:WikiProject_Shakespeare, that's as good as it gets. Re "Shakespeare editors get no respect", I have a degree in Latin and Greek and am well aware that reliable textual criticism is the foundation of good scholarship, although, like foundations, often ignored until there's a problem. Many annotated Shakespeare editions used in schools spend a surprising amount of space on textual issues.

Bottom line: it should stay. -- Philcha (talk) 12:13, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

• Howard Staunton #Playing strength and style twice gives Morphy's opinion that Staunton lacked imagination. Once is enough.

Done merged the 2nd into the 1st. -- Philcha (talk) 11:17, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• The article twice mentions that Staunton offered to pay Andersson's travel expenses. Once is enough.

How about the following: -- Philcha (talk) 11:17, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Staunton showed excellent management skills in building the team to organize the London International tournament of 1851, and determination and resourcefulness in overcoming the difficulties of getting enough competitors.

I assume that's replacing one of the two mentions? OK, but let's not go overboard on repeating stories about his excellent management skills. Eubulides (talk) 01:43, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Done in 1st sentence of 2nd last para in Howard_Staunton#Personality. -- Philcha (talk) 17:15, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

• The article twice mentions that Popert and Cochrane helped him to prepare for his 2nd match with Saint-Amant. Once is enough.

Done I have removed the first mention of Popert and Cochrane, leaving them in the section "Assessment". SyG (talk) 15:18, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• The article twice mentions that Captain Evans was his second and helped to organize the 1845 telegraphic match. Once is enough.

I find these points more difficult. "Staunton also maintained good working relationships with important players and enthusiasts" on its own (apart from the refs) woud be insufficient. After that the problem is that different people helped S. in different combinations of ways. Any suggestions? -- Philcha (talk) 11:17, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Done I have removed the mention of Evans as a possible second for the match against Saint-Amant. That was not of absolute importance anyway, as he could not attend in the end. SyG (talk) 15:13, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• The article twice says that Chess: Theory and Practice was up-to-date well after his death. Once is enough.

Done Removed 1st instance, merged into 2nd. -- Philcha (talk) 11:17, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• Watch out for commas and periods after citation; they should be before. Some examples:

after losing their play-off for third place at the 1851 London International tournament,

Done -- Philcha (talk) 11:17, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

and to proposals or arguments that he considered ill-founded or malicious..

Done -- Philcha (talk) 11:17, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• There is unnecessary white space before Howard Staunton #Influence on chess.

Done Removed. -- Philcha (talk) 11:17, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• The phrase "after Staunton's death in Korchnoi-Känel, Biel 1979" makes it sound like Staunton died in 1979.

Done Rephrased. -- Philcha (talk) 11:17, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• Ponziani Opening is wikilinked twice in the same sentence. Once is enough.

Done -- Philcha (talk) 11:17, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• Howard Staunton#Notable games links directly offsite. The offsite links should be in citations, instead of being in the main text.

This is the format used in all chess master bios. Moving the links to refs would just add unnecessary clicks for readers. We also discussed using "cite web" format but decided against: some bot or a change in the "cite web" template might start complaining about lack of accessdates; but we don't want "retrieved on ..." in all these links. -- Philcha (talk) 11:17, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Done Let's do it half-way. I have added the template "cite web". But I agree with Philcha the links should remain in the main text and not show the useless "accessdate" thing. SyG (talk) 15:05, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• In Howard Staunton #Match results, please use a minus sign to denote minus, not hyphen.

What's the mark-up for minus sign. Having a software background, I'm used to the same key being used for both minus and hyphen. -- Philcha (talk) 11:17, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Done, I hope. SyG (talk) 14:55, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

• The Notes for the 1843 Cochrane match are too long and spread out the table so much that it's unreadable; perhaps they should be put into a footnote at the bottom of the table.

Done -- Philcha (talk) 11:17, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

More later. Eubulides (talk) 02:54, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Lead image

The lead image Image:Staunton2.jpg is of dubious provenance. Free equivalents are available, and should be used. I searched around the net, found such an image, and put it into Wikipedia Commons. Can you please switch to Image:Howard-Staunton-ILN-detail-1.jpeg? Thanks. Eubulides (talk) 22:51, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Done I have done the change, but I am not completely happy with it because the new image does not seem to support size fine-tuning (or at least I was not able to make it work). SyG (talk) 07:36, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Nice find, Eubulides.

SyG, it looks good in my browser. What problems have you found? -- Philcha (talk) 09:52, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes it looks fine, but I wanted to reduce the size and I could not. In other words, in the infobox I tried to specify a fixed size (via "px") and it did not work, contrary to the previous image. SyG (talk) 10:02, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

It resized OK for me. Perhaps you had a typo. I only narrowed it slightly, as any smaller than 265px makes it narrower than the space in the infobox. -- Philcha (talk) 17:43, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Mmm, yes, it works for me as well now. I saw Eubulides reloaded the image on Commons this afternoon. I have resized the image to 200px, to give it the same size as Alexander Alekhine, which is a Good Article :-) SyG (talk) 17:50, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Section headers

• The word Staunton should be avoided in section headers when possible. For example, Staunton's life should be just Life. See WP:HEAD.

• The article could use a new section Bibliography, listing his important published works. See WP:LAYOUT. Here is a first cut as to what should go there, but more is needed:

• Howard Staunton (1847). The Chess-player's Handbook: A Popular and Scientific Introduction to the Game of Chess, Exemplified in Games Actually Played by the Greatest Masters and Illustrated by Numerous Diagrams of Original and Remarkable Positions. London: Henry G. Bohn. OCLC 9171272.
• William Shakespeare (1858–1860). Plays. edited by Howard Staunton, the illustrations by John Gilbert, engraved by the Brothers Dalziel. London: George Routledge & Co. OCLC 50447723.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date format (link)
• Howard Staunton (1865). The Great Schools of England: An Account of the Foundation, Endowments, and Discipline of the Chief Seminaries of Learning in England. London: Sampson Low, Son, and Marston. OCLC 4143800.

Done I have added a new section Bibliography with all the books from Staunton. SyG (talk) 09:53, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

• The section header Assessment is poorly chosen, and it's odd to see that it has some chess-related stuff here but not others. I suggest the following top-level section headers:

• Life
• Chess (including chess pieces, Staunton-Morphy, playing strength and style)
• Writings (chess-related and other writings)
• Personality
• Influence (including Staunton Memorial Tournament)
• Playing statistics (including notable games, tournament, match results)
• Bibliography
• Notes and references (see WP:LAYOUT #Standard appendices)
• Further reading
• External links

Eubulides (talk) 07:14, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

I think this is one case where it helps to be familiar with other chess player bio articles. The structure used in most of the "big name" articles seems (so far) to work pretty well, and has the advantage of being being a standard structure, although in specific cases there might be good arguments for other structures. The top players up to and including Mikhail Botvinnik were part-timers by modern standards, and usually there were causal links between chess and non-chess aspects. With Staunton the interleaving of competition and writing is significant, especially for the Morphy affair ("laborious literary labours ... the indulgence of an occasional game"). It's even more significant for Wilhelm Steinitz, who took several breaks from competition to concentrate on developing and defending his theories via chess journalism, then returned to competition either to test his theories or to put upstarts in their place. Alexander Alekhine, a minor Russian aristocrat, was imprisoned by the Bolsheviks just after World War I and by many accounts was going to be shot, but his chess fame saved his life and got him a job with Comintern - which he then used to defect from the USSR and compete against the world's best while the Soviet Union was still in turmoil, a move which put him on the road to the world championship.

I suspect that the very theme-based structure you proposed works far better for players with tidy, fairly constant lives / careers than for those with turbulent or variable ones. "Assessment" works well because it provides a grouping for the standard "Playing strength and style" and "Influence on the game", the semi-standard "Personality" (some players had none that you'd notice) and for player-specific content such as Lasker's significant contributions in maths and Botvinnik's in engineering and computing, charges of anti-Semitism against Alekhine and of political string-pulling against Botvinnik, the contribution of Lasker's controversial world championship match conditions to the development of the post-WWW II world championship system, etc.

It might be useful for you to look at these player bios. Then if you can suggest a fairly standard framework that works better for these cases than the present one, that will be a big step forward. -- Philcha (talk) 09:49, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

On the other hand, no chess bio has ever done it to FA-class (I would not count The Turk as a bio), so it is hard to advocate the system is working that fine. Here is a slightly amended proposal for a clearer structure:

• Life
• Personality
• Influence (including Staunton Memorial Tournament)
• Playing statistics (including notable games, tournament, match results)
• Bibliography
• Notes and references (see WP:LAYOUT #Standard appendices)
• Further reading
• External links

What do you think ? SyG (talk) 18:57, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

OTOH Alexander Alekhine uses the structure I described and was recently promoted to GA - with considerable help from SyG.

The structure SyG proposes is very similar to the one I've described, except for the grouping of Personality, Influence and player-specific discussion under Assessment. I'd prefer to push the result tables further down, to just above Notes and References and cetainly below bibliography, because I suspect relatively few readers will want to plod through the tables, which can be quite long (especially for post-WWW II champions). -- Philcha (talk) 23:12, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Responses to 1st set of comments

Sorry these are not inline, but we just had an edit conflict. -- Philcha (talk) 03:39, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

That's OK, I folded them back into the original, to avoid duplication. Eubulides (talk) 05:14, 15 August 2008 (UTC)

Summary of major issues

Let me try to summarize the major issues I see with this article.

• Issues affecting good article status

• The lead image should be changed to Image:Howard-Staunton-ILN-detail-1.jpeg (or something better, of course).

• The sectioning is a bit off. Please see #Section headers for suggestions.

• Some POV issues, noted above.

• Some relatively-minor content issues, noted above.

• The lead is way too long, noted above.

• Other issues. These issues don't need to be resolved to attain good article status, but definitely need work.

• The article is too long. WP:LENGTH #A rule of thumb says that articles of this length "almost certainly should be divided". (Yay! It's much easier to discard stuff than to write new stuff!...) The article is currently 110,581 bytes, which compares to the 58,524 bytes of Peterloo Massacre (the current featured article) or the 35,282 bytes of Princess Alice of Battenberg (the most-recent featured biography). It's not at all unreasonable to ask that the article be trimmed down by a factor of two, with much of the material moved to subarticles (if it isn't there already).

In particular, the following summaries need to be trimmed down quite a bit (the lead is already noted above):

• Howard Staunton #London International Tournament, 1851

• Howard Staunton #The Staunton-Morphy controversy

and the following sections need to be trimmed down, or moved into subarticles, or at least broken into subsections:

• Howard Staunton #Final stages of playing career

• Howard Staunton #Personality

• Howard Staunton #Influence on chess

• The article has too much duplication, in particular Howard Staunton #Final stages of playing career vs Howard Staunton #The Staunton-Morphy controversy.

• One way to avoid duplication would be to redo the section headers, as suggested in #Section headers, move text to the appropriate section, and merge it. (There are other possibilities; this is just a suggestion.)

For now, I'll mark the article's status as being on hold. I assume the "easy" stuff can be done in a week; if not, please let me know. Eubulides (talk) 07:14, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

References

(These cites prevent dangling references above: )

Eubulides (talk) 23:40, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

Comment by Krakatoa

As I've said before, the section on the Staunton-Morphy controversy is POV. As Eubulides said (I'm paraphrasing), the section ought to set out the various writers' perspectives on the controversy in a neutral manner. It plainly does not. The section says nothing about what the views expressed by Edge, Fine, Reinfeld, and Horowitz actually are. It just says that doubts have been raised about Edge, Fine, Reinfeld, and Horowitz's veracity, reliability, etc. (and therefore, apparently, their views are so worthless that we're not going to tell you what they are). I have rarely seen so partisan a presentation in any Wikipedia article, let alone one nominated for GA status. Krakatoa (talk) 01:06, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

As I've said before, the issue is whether they actually reliable on this point. Fine, Reinfeld, and Horowitz have been criticised for inaccuracy by 2 chess historians, Kingston & Diggle. The excerpts I've seen from Edge's writings, all correspondence, IIRC do not actually express opinions. However 3 chess historians have expressed strong doubts about Edge's reliability, the 2 who used Edge's book as a source admitted his strong anti-Staunton bias, and one of these, Sergeant, does express doubts at one point. Edge's correspondence with Fiske (cited) is also relevant. If you can produce citations from writers who actually research chess history - in support of Edge, Fine, Reinfeld, and / or Horowitz; or on any other aspect of this affair - these should be incorporated. Last time we discussed this you objected to my considering some sources more worthy of attention than others. I admit that this raises issues, but the same point is made rather more strongly at Edward Winter's Historical Havoc - for example,

"... On the other hand, some lower-rung Category B writers produced, once upon a time, material of substance. Fred Reinfeld did some good books in the 1930s. The young Larry Evans worked hard on self-published monographs of minority interest, giving no indication of how he would end up ... people’s acquaintance with history usually comes from reading lower Category B books ... Whatever decent research is carried out, the overall quality of history in the most widely-read books barely improves, with little trace of any trickle-down effect ... Time and again Category B books make do, for safety’s sake, with repeating historical common knowledge, or what is believed to be such on the say-so of a 1950s potboiler cheaply reprinted by Dover ... It is unwise for the ‘non-playing’ historian to publish his own analysis, although he may be a useful compiler. Similarly, players who are unversed in, and indifferent to, chess history should not touch it."

One of the difficulties of Wikipedia articles is that one often has to be selective - in many high-profile cases if one quoted or summarised every writer who meets the formal WP:RS criteria, the resulting article might be megabytes long.

Last time we discussed this issue (11:09, 30 June 2008) I proposed that we should work together to see if we could produce an agreed version:

In the sort term (before a separate article on the Staunton-Morphy controversy is complete) we need to agree what should go into Howard Staunton. I suggest you do as I did in response to some of SyG's comments above - draft a new version on a sub-page and publish it for comment / contributions. I'm not terribly concerned that it should exonerate Staunton, provided that it points out: the unreliability of popular accounts; that the there are good sources for more than 1 interpretation of Stauntons' actions; that immediately before and shortly after (Chess Priaxis, 1860) S was enthusiastic about Morphy's play; that chess journalism was bare-knuckle in those days.

Your immediate response was (20:46, 30 June 2008):

I've dumped my unabridged notes about batgirl's (or whoever's) account of the Staunton-Morphy dispute into [3]. Have at it (you or anyone else who's interested). But I really don't have an infinite amount of time to spend on this. I also think that we have to find out who batgirl's source(s) is/are, or use other sources. As I've suggested before, I don't think batgirl, on her own, can be considered a reliable source.

However you did no further work on this. In fact as far as I can see - please correct me if I'm wrong - you have made no further contribution to articles or discussions that deal with the Staunton-Morphy affair until now.

Note the final sentences of my response to your last comment (07:26, 16 August 2008):

I started researching this article in order to provide some background for Wilhelm Steinitz and Adolf Anderssen, and that's when I found WP:RS evidence that challenged the preconceptions I'd acquired from Fine. I don't mind what conclusion readers reach, as long as they reach it after looking at the evidence.

-- Philcha (talk) 07:10, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

In setting forth criticisms of Edge, you somehow omit the following from Winter:

Time and again, in C.N. and elsewhere, commentators have returned to the question of Edge’s truthfulness. The word 'liar' has been applied to him by a small number of (English, notably) authors, but what is the precise basis? That he was anti-Staunton is incontestable, but was being anti-Staunton a sign of mendacity, prejudice or, for that matter, clear-sightedness? Nor can it be denied that Edge’s prose was racy and anecdotal, yet that does not necessarily entail dishonesty. Edge unquestionably made factual mistakes and misjudgements, but if that sufficed to prove him a liar the queue in the chess world to cast the first stone would be short indeed. Can four or five thumping examples, absolutely clear-cut, of Edge’s alleged mendacity be set out on a single page of paper or screen (as they so easily could be regarding many other chess players and writers, past and present)? [This question was asked in 2000. The requested examples have not yet been forthcoming.]

[www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/edge.html] So, eight years after Winter wrote this piece, evidently no one has come up with one "thumping example" of Edge's mendacity, let alone four or five? But the smears you quote, the first of which is from that renowned authority "A review of his book in the USA", are somehow reliable?

Incidentally, one of your chess historian-critics of Edge is Kenneth Whyld. Edward Winter, whom I believe would generally be considered the world's foremost chess historian, wrote of Whyld in the last sentence of his afterword to the above-cited article, "By that time we had, in any case, all but given up with K.W., on account of his persistent muddling and distortion of many matters, quite apart from the Edge-Fiske letter." [www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/edge.html] Much of Winter's article concerns how Whyld, seizing upon Edge's description of himself as a "lover" of Morphy in the above letter, suggested that the two had a homosexual relationship - despite Whyld having admitted in correspondence with Winter that the word "lover", at the time Edge wrote, did not necessarily imply a sexual relationship.

Your writing about Staunton-Morphy, including your deletions and edits of parts I have written, has consistently sanitized it to remove bits impugning Staunton. I added a sentence or two about the scurrilous "Anti-book" letter published by Staunton and widely presumed to have been written by him. After someone, I assume you, edited it to make it less unflattering to Staunton, I added "falsely" to this sentence: "Just after the tournament a letter signed by "Anti-book" appeared in Staunton's column in the Illustrated London News, falsely alleging that Morphy did not actually have the money for his share of the stakes." Now "falsely" has disappeared, I assume at your hand. Do you seriously think that "falsely" is not correct? Edge wrote of his astonishment at the Anti-book letter, and that "Without mentioning Englishmen, there were Americans in London and Paris who asserted that Morphy could be backed against Mr. Staunton for [10,000 pounds -- i.e. ten to twenty times the proposed stakes], and the money be raised within twenty-four hours." Edge, The Exploits & Triumphs in Europe of Paul Morphy the Chess Champion, p. 93. I know it is Edge, whom you hate, writing this, but do you really doubt it?

Since you apparently only consider chess historians reliable sources about the Staunton-Morphy affair (unless a non-chess historian says something you like, as "A review of his book in the USA" did), the following quote by chess historian Dale Brandreth (co-author, with David Hooper, of The Unknown Capablanca) may be of interest to you:

" ... the fact is that the British have always had their "thing" about Morphy. They just can’t seem to accept that Staunton was an unmitigated bastard in his treatment of Morphy because he knew damned well he could never have made any decent showing against him in a match." (again from [www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/edge.html], quoting Brandreth on page 141 of the July 1985 APCT News Bulletin)

Which "Brits" deny that Morphy was much stronger than Staunton was in 1858? If someone said Morphy was stronger than anyone between 1840 and the mid-1870s version of Steinitz, it wouldn't be sensible to argue. After the mid-1870s increasing theoretical knowledge makes comparisons dubious.

"unmitigated bastard". The sources I posted just after the edit conflict suggest it was little more complicated.

Why didn't you also quote the preceding para of Winter's [www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/edge.html Edge, Morphy and Staunton]? "Coles, for his part, reiterated to us in a letter dated 11 March 1978 that Lawson suffered from the Morphy-Edge syndrome, ‘like most American writers on Morphy’s relations with Staunton’.

Better still would have been to quote Winter's remarks following these 2 paras: "The issue of national bias does, unfortunately, require consideration in the Staunton-Morphy affair."

Disclosure: I'm a Scot. --- Philcha (talk) 20:14, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

The following lengthy section that I wrote (it appears in versions a month ago) has disappeared, I assume at your hand:

Modern reputation

Despite his many contributions to the game, Staunton remains controversial. His unspectacular style of play, his combative personality and writings, and the widespread perception that he treated Morphy shabbily have combined to make him an unpopular, even reviled, figure to many. The British International Master William Hartston wrote that Staunton's many achievements were all done "with the full weight of an arrogant and pompous nature which has scarcely been matched in the history of the game."[81] Hartston wrote of Staunton's avoidance of a match with Morphy, "Sadly, this blemish on Staunton the man also did considerable harm to the reputation among later generations of Staunton the chess player."[82] The American International Master I.A. Horowitz was particularly scathing, writing that "it is just too incredible that anyone seemingly so weak as [Staunton] could have achieved such success and exerted so much influence for so long", and that his real forte was journalism "because only in that field could he exercise to the full the genius for self-aggrandizement and bombast for which he is today chiefly remembered."[83] Saidy and Lessing, somewhat more sympathetic, wrote that, "He can hardly be blamed if the struggles and privations of his youth warped his character so that he became a jealous, suspicious, and vitriolic man."[84] Fred Reinfeld, an American chess author, asserted that he had not bothered to include a single Staunton game in his compendium A Treasury of British Chess Masterpieces because "it takes too much time to find a game by him which one can enjoy."[85]

However, modern chess historians have severely criticized the "prolific" chess writers, including Reinfeld, Horowitz and Fine,[53][61] for lack of historical accuracy,[53] particularly as concerning the Staunton-Morphy controversy.[61] Other modern witers have given Staunton more credit. Former World Champion Garry Kasparov wrote, "The scale of his chess activity is impressive!" Kasparov explained that Staunton "by the early 1840s was superior to all his rivals"; he "founded and edited the magazine Chess Player's Chronicle (1841-54), wrote a chess column in the Illustrated London News (1845-1874), studied opening theory ... , published four remarkable books ... . He endorsed the famous 'Staunton pieces', which for a century and a half now have been used throughout the world, organized the first international chess tournament in history and was the first to try to set up an international chess organization..."[86] Kasparov concluded that "Staunton was not properly recognised by either his contemporaries, or chess historians."[87]

Kasparov ended his discussion of Steinitz by quoting the assessment of former World Champion Bobby Fischer, today generally regarded (like Kasparov) as one of the greatest players ever. Eight years before becoming World Champion, Fischer wrote in a 1964 article that Staunton was one of the ten greatest players in history. Fischer explained, "Staunton was the most profound opening analyst of all time. He was more theorist than player, but nonetheless he was the strongest player of his day. Playing over his games, I discover that they are completely modern; where Morphy and Steinitz rejected the fianchetto, Staunton embraced it. In addition, he understood all of the positional concepts which modern players hold dear, and thus—with Steinitz—must be considered the first modern player."[88]

You also deleted, without admitting that you were doing so, my lengthy quote from Bobby Fischer's article in Chessworld (January-February 1964). I bought Chessworld on eBay just so that I could cite Fischer's article, I did so, and then you deleted it without having the integrity to admit that you were doing so. And now you want me to write spend hours more writing material so you can bowdlerize and/or delete it?! Get real. Krakatoa (talk) 17:31, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

---

Oops, an edit conflict.

---

So why did both Sergeant and Lawson comment on Edge's snti-Staunton bias? You have not come up with one "thumping example" of mendacity on my part, but you're screaming blue murder. Perhaps the modern word for what we're both concerned about is "spin". -- Philcha (talk) 19:25, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Your writing about Staunton-Morphy, including your deletions and edits of parts I have written, has consistently sanitized it to remove bits impugning Staunton. I added a sentence or two about the scurrilous "Anti-book" letter published by Staunton and widely presumed to have been written by him. After someone, I assume you, edited it to make it less unflattering to Staunton, I added "falsely" to this sentence: "Just after the tournament a letter signed by "Anti-book" appeared in Staunton's column in the Illustrated London News, falsely alleging that Morphy did not actually have the money for his share of the stakes." Now "falsely" has disappeared, I assume at your hand. Do you seriously think that "falsely" is not correct? Edge wrote of his astonishment at the Anti-book letter, and that "Without mentioning Englishmen, there were Americans in London and Paris who asserted that Morphy could be backed against Mr. Staunton for [10,000 pounds -- i.e. ten to twenty times the proposed stakes], and the money be raised within twenty-four hours." Edge, The Exploits & Triumphs in Europe of Paul Morphy the Chess Champion, p. 93. I know it is Edge, whom you hate, writing this, but do you really doubt it?

I agree with the second part of "published by Staunton and widely presumed to have been written by him," including "presumed". Is there evidence that Staunton published it,or is that also a presumption?

I haven't stopped researching. If you'd taken the time to read some of my other recent posts, you'd have noticed points that I found on both sides. And you'd have noticed evidence that "Anti-book" may have been right: Morphy's letter of October 7 told the St. George's Chess Club that he had deposited the money and asked them to provide seconds for him. It's odd that a day earlier on Oct 6th Morphy wrote the famous open letter complaining about Staunton's conduct, including the publication of the "Anti-book" letter. Of course the letter of Oct 7th can be interpreted in more than one way - for example Edge's letter of Mar 25 1859 to Fiske describes Morhy as lazy and poor at handling details. But it undermines the idea that the "Anti-book" letter, whover wrote it, was an outright lie.

And there are other reasons to be less sure about Morphy's financial status when the "Anti-book" letter was published on Aug 28: Maurian's letter to Fiske on 27 July 1858 recounts the refusal of Morphy's family to provide the stake, and his request to New Orleans Chess Club to raise the money. I've found nothing about when New Orleans Chess Club actually sent the money - have you?

"... Edge, whom you hate ..." I've never had any contact with the man, why should I hate him? I've reported concerns raised by chess historians about his reliability as a historical source.

Your compatriot Mark Weeks describes the whole affair as "factually controversial" - with good reason, it seems. -- Philcha (talk) 19:25, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

The following lengthy section that I wrote (it appears in versions a month ago) has disappeared, I assume at your hand:

Yes, the section that stood out like a sore thumb and made another editor suspect an edit war. Philcha (talk) 19:25, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Sorry I'm such a bad writer. Krakatoa (talk) 21:02, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

I used the parts of its content that were credible and did not duplicate points already covered. -- Philcha (talk) 19:25, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Modern reputation

Despite his many contributions to the game, Staunton remains controversial. His unspectacular style of play, his combative personality and writings, and the widespread perception that he treated Morphy shabbily have combined to make him an unpopular, even reviled, figure to many. The British International Master William Hartston wrote that Staunton's many achievements were all done "with the full weight of an arrogant and pompous nature which has scarcely been matched in the history of the game."[81] Hartston wrote of Staunton's avoidance of a match with Morphy, "Sadly, this blemish on Staunton the man also did considerable harm to the reputation among later generations of Staunton the chess player."[82] The American International Master I.A. Horowitz was particularly scathing, writing that "it is just too incredible that anyone seemingly so weak as [Staunton] could have achieved such success and exerted so much influence for so long", and that his real forte was journalism "because only in that field could he exercise to the full the genius for self-aggrandizement and bombast for which he is today chiefly remembered."[83] Saidy and Lessing, somewhat more sympathetic, wrote that, "He can hardly be blamed if the struggles and privations of his youth warped his character so that he became a jealous, suspicious, and vitriolic man."[84] Fred Reinfeld, an American chess author, asserted that he had not bothered to include a single Staunton game in his compendium A Treasury of British Chess Masterpieces because "it takes too much time to find a game by him which one can enjoy."[85]

See start of "Playing strength and style" re his style - quotes Morphy.

Even the lead metions that S was controversial form his own time to the present.

2nd para of "Personality" gives examples of his combative personality and writings, inlcuding his volatile relationship with Walker.

Following para cites contenporary criticisms of S.

Hartson quote and Saidy & Lessing quote incorporated. Reduced Horowitz and Reinfeld to one-line summary because their historical accuracy has been questioned. I even threw in Fine for good measure.

Horowitz's comment ""it is just too incredible that anyone seemingly so weak as [Staunton] ..." is also directly contradicted by almost all contemporary comments on Staunton's playing strength, including Morpthy's, and by Chessmetrics, which has no POV and has been described by academics as the best predictor of results. -- Philcha (talk) 19:25, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

However, modern chess historians have severely criticized the "prolific" chess writers, including Reinfeld, Horowitz and Fine,[53][61] for lack of historical accuracy,[53] particularly as concerning the Staunton-Morphy controversy.[61] Other modern writers have given Staunton more credit. Former World Champion Garry Kasparov wrote, "The scale of his chess activity is impressive!" Kasparov explained that Staunton "by the early 1840s was superior to all his rivals"; he "founded and edited the magazine Chess Player's Chronicle (1841-54), wrote a chess column in the Illustrated London News (1845-1874), studied opening theory ... , published four remarkable books ... . He endorsed the famous 'Staunton pieces', which for a century and a half now have been used throughout the world, organized the first international chess tournament in history and was the first to try to set up an international chess organization..."[86] Kasparov concluded that "Staunton was not properly recognised by either his contemporaries, or chess historians."[87]

Beginning of "Personality". -- Philcha (talk) 19:25, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Kasparov ended his discussion of Steinitz by quoting the assessment of former World Champion Bobby Fischer, today generally regarded (like Kasparov) as one of the greatest players ever. Eight years before becoming World Champion, Fischer wrote in a 1964 article that Staunton was one of the ten greatest players in history. Fischer explained, "Staunton was the most profound opening analyst of all time. He was more theorist than player, but nonetheless he was the strongest player of his day. Playing over his games, I discover that they are completely modern; where Morphy and Steinitz rejected the fianchetto, Staunton embraced it. In addition, he understood all of the positional concepts which modern players hold dear, and thus—with Steinitz—must be considered the first modern player."[88]

See below. -- Philcha (talk) 19:25, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

You also deleted, without admitting that you were doing so, my lengthy quote from Bobby Fischer's article in Chessworld (January-February 1964). I bought Chessworld on eBay just so that I could cite Fischer's article, I did so, and then you deleted it without having the integrity to admit that you were doing so. And now you want me to write spend hours more writing material so you can bowdlerize and/or delete it?! Get real. Krakatoa (talk) 17:31, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Do you mean "Staunton was the most profound opening analyst of all time. He was more theorist than player, but nonetheless he was the strongest player of his day. Playing over his games, I discover that they are completely modern; where Morphy and Steinitz rejected the fianchetto, Staunton embraced it. In addition, he understood all of the positional concepts which modern players hold dear, and thus—with Steinitz—must be considered the first modern player." It's currently the 2nd para of "Playing strength and style". -- Philcha (talk) 19:25, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Yes, that is the quote I inserted, you deleted without admitting that you were doing so, I reinserted upon discovering that you had done so, and you grudgingly permitted to remain after I pointed out that it had also been quoted by Kasparov. Krakatoa (talk) 19:36, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

I sometimes listen. .... -- Philcha (talk) 20:16, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

(Unindent) Let me return to my main point: that the section on the Staunton-Morphy controversy is POV. Here is the structure of the section:

• Statement that Winter and Diggle trace much of the 20th century animosity against Staunton to books by Sergeant, who in turn relied on Edge.
• Collection of attacks on Edge, including by the well-regarded "A review of his book in the USA". Note that the section does not bother setting out what Sergeant or Edge actually said. Nor, of course, does it mention that Winter considers Whyld unreliable on Edge and everything else, or that Winter’s 2000 call for four or five thumping examples of Edge’s purported mendacity has met with no response.

I realised, even before the GA reviewer started asking for cuts, that covering the issue reasonably well would require a separate article, The Staunton-Morphy controversy. There was nothing furtive about this - I advertised it at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chess#The_Staunton-Morphy_controversy.

I'm aware of disputes between chess historians - both chess and historiography are eprone to odium theologicum. That's why I'd like The Staunton-Morphy controversy to focus on documenrary evidence. The alternative is just a shouting match, and shouting matches are too often won by the loudest, coarsest voices.

The Staunton-Morphy controversy does set out what Sergeant said, including "Edge, however, is not altogether trustworthy, being bitterly prejudiced against Staunton."

I've already responded to "Winter’s 2000 call for four or five thumping examples of Edge’s purported mendacity has met with no response". -- Philcha (talk) 22:06, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Where? I can't find a response to that. Krakatoa (talk) 00:53, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

• Quotes of Murray and Lyttleton for the proposition that Staunton was justified in declining the match, although he should have done so earlier. Quote from von der Lasa inviting the reader to law the blame for the non-occurrence of the match on Staunton’s health, not cowardice. Quote from Staunton’s obituary that he was emphatically a MAN who feared no one. The intent obviously is to convey the view that Staunton was not afraid of Morphy - counter to the view of many, including chess historian Dale Brandreth.

I have to admit my recent research gives me some concern about Murray, as I said in a "conversation" with SyG.

Are you denying the relevance of the Lyttleton quote, or are you claimimg that Lyttleton was partisan?

Are you denying the relevance of the von der Lasa quote?

Staunton’s obituary was obituary was written by William Norwood Potter, who had the advantage of knowing Staunton and many of S's contemporaries. The obit is by no means starry-eyed abuot S, and I can cite further quotes from Potter to back this up. -- Philcha (talk) 22:06, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Re Lyttleton and Murray: their comments are certainly relevant, and I have no doubt they wrote in good faith, but they are also the closest thing one can find to pro-Staunton commentators on this issue. If you just quote the most pro-Staunton sources you can find, that's hardly NPOV. Re von der Lasa: yes. You have by your own admission in the article taken the von der Lasa from another context, and used it to construct an excuse for Staunton. The evidence is that Staunton repeatedly agreed to a match against Morphy, then finally begged off on the ground that he was too busy with his Shakespeare work, not that his health couldn't take a match. Krakatoa (talk) 00:53, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

• Mention that Horowitz, Fine, and Reinfeld are more critical of Staunton, but they “have been criticized by chess historians for their lack of accuracy, both in general and specifically where Staunton is concerned.” Once again, no mention of what they actually said. Horowitz, Fine, and Reinfeld are perhaps the three foremost American chess writers, but their views aren’t worthy of mention.

They are mentioned. As I pointed out above, I threw in a ref to Fine of my own accord. Nevertheless their accuracy has been criticised. In Fine's case I can point to 2 additional, non-Staunton issues on which he's unreliable. -- Philcha (talk) 22:06, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

• The Staunton-critical views of British writers Hartson and Diggle, both of which I added.

Are you complaining about their inclusion? -- Philcha (talk) 22:06, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

This seems far from NPOV to me. But I'm a "WHITEWASH!"-screaming American - what do I know?

You did use the term "WHITEWASH!" As Winter advised, I'm trying to get away from the transatlantic national bias and focus on the facts. ... -- Philcha (talk) 22:06, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

As you well know, my "WHITEWASH!" reference was to your earlier comment about how Americans (that means me, I assume) are prone to scream that in discussions of the Staunton-Morphy controversy. Krakatoa (talk) 00:53, 18 August 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, as Winter himself indicates, just calling Edge "biased against Staunton" proves nothing ("That he was anti-Staunton is incontestable, but was being anti-Staunton a sign of mendacity, prejudice or, for that matter, clear-sightedness?"). As a friend of Morphy, Edge had plenty of reason to have become biased against Staunton. This is a hyperbolic example, of course, but it's a little like sniffing that Roman Polanski is "biased against Charles Manson". Of course he is. But Edge sets out a series of facts about the Morphy-Staunton affair that paint Staunton in a very unflattering light. Are any of those (purported) facts false? Winter's unanswered call for "thumping examples of mendacity" suggests that the attacks on Edge are not well-founded.

As I wrote before, you have failed to prove "thumping examples of mendacity" on my part but your ... "WHITEWASH!". Either your objections are not well-founded, or there are ways of mis-representing without actually lying. You choose. Meanwhile I'll continue trying to find out the facts. -- Philcha (talk) 22:06, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

To sum up: I think it's fair to set forth the views of various writers, and to note criticisms of those writers. I don't think that chess historians' views are necessarily the be-all and end-all, and don't think everything said by respected writers like Fine, Horowitz, and Reinfeld, or by an important eyewitness to the relevant events (Edge), should be suppressed simply because certain chess historians are critical of them. This is perhaps especially true of Edge, given that Winter, probably the preeminent chess historian, has called into question the validity of those criticisms. Nor should it be the role of Wikipedia or its editors to be weighing competing criticisms of credibility ourselves -- e.g., trying to evaluate whether to cite Edge or Whyld given that Whyld says Edge was a liar, but Winter says Whyld is unreliable on Edge and other matters. Krakatoa (talk) 20:45, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Kingston finds the writing of "Edward Winter, Jeremy Gaige, Ken Whyld, Bernard Cafferty and a few others" more reliable than that of "... Reinfeld, Horowitz, Fine and Evans." Do you think Kingston is qualified to comment on this? If so, can you provide sources for the opposite opinion? If not, I can show you some reasons for taking Kingston seriously.

"Winter, probably the preeminent chess historian", does not name so many names, but makes the same point more emphatically. Which of his categories do you think Fine, Horowitz, and Reinfeld fall into? -- Philcha (talk) 22:06, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Winter, as you tacitly admit, says nothing about Fine, Horowitz, or Reinfeld. But I have no doubt he would throw them into his "Class B" bin. However, he does call Bernard Cafferty, whom praise by Kingston you cite, that "the important thing is not to be a sloppy pedant like Bernard Cafferty". As I noted above, Winter says of Whyld, whose praise by Kingston you cite, "By that time we had, in any case, all but given up with K.W., on account of his persistent muddling and distortion of many matters, quite apart from the Edge-Fiske letter." [www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/edge.html] So is Kingston or Winter our "official" authority on reliability? As I noted above Dale Brandreth, who gets a semi-seal of approval from Winter in the article you cite (he calls Hooper and Brandreth's The Unknown Capablanca "a top-notch Category B work"), wrote: "the fact is that the British have always had their 'thing' about Morphy. They just can’t seem to accept that Staunton was an unmitigated bastard in his treatment of Morphy because he knew damned well he could never have made any decent showing against him in a match." (again from www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/edge.html, quoting Brandreth on page 141 of the July 1985 APCT News Bulletin). Even those who (unlike Brandreth) are not chess historians can look at the facts and plausibly conclude (as, for example, British IM William Hartston did in The Kings of Chess, p. 46) that Staunton dodged a match against Morphy because he was (rightly) afraid of him.

You still haven't explained why everything Edge said should be ignored. Nor have you explained how "A review of his book in the USA" is a reliable source. Nor, IMO, have you explained how a section written the way this one is (quoting Staunton defenders, making up your own defense of Staunton using the von der Lasa quote, and heaping scorn on Staunton's many detractors without actually setting out what they said) can be considered NPOV. Krakatoa (talk) 00:53, 18 August 2008 (UTC)