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Charles Gilman wrote on Fri, May 6, 2016 06:41 AM UTC:
The following files that I created on these pages can be deleted as their variants have all either been deleted or had their actual single array images replaced with virtual ones:
3playrDQ.gif
3psvh.gif
BrkrH.gif
cornwell.gif
CSHR_v2.gif
DabbaRea.gif
DchflrH.gif
DeanKenn.gif
DeanVCT.gif
DukeH.gif
fidewell.gif
fipcooey.gif
fipglins.gif
HE4pL1.gif
HE4pL2.gif
HE4pL3.gif
HE4pL4.gif
kennet.gif
MidVCT.gif
RlyfsH.gif
DchrkrH.gif
Honey3Ba.gif
Honey3Wi.gif
MixRadGl.gif
MixRadWe.gif
PntH.gif
RlyrH.gif
Rlyrs.gif
RlyfsH.gif
SprntfrH.gif
SprntrH.gif
SprntrsH.gif
SprntfsH.gif
VeCoTha.gif
xcata169.gif
xcata196.gif
yoto.gif

Charles Gilman wrote on Tue, Jan 12, 2016 08:14 AM UTC:
I have realised since my last posting on this thread that Anglis Qi Modified has already gone, and I have decided to get rid of the following variants next: Pawn the Brain, Sextuple Besiege, VeCoTha. Gateway Chess I will retain as a page, but plan to change into a 3d, but nevertheless more Chess-like, variant.

Charles Gilman wrote on Tue, Jan 5, 2016 07:51 AM UTC:
I am adding <a href="../index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSvecotha">VeCoTha</a> to the list of variants which I am considering discontinuing. It got hostile reviews from the start, and it would give me an excuse to eliminate the Halter from Man and Beast (assuming that I can edit the relevant pages). I do not recall anyone else taking up this method for limiting Nightrider and Rose strength. <p> The final straw was when the tabulation that I originally used to display the array diagram had stopped working properly by the time that I reviewed it. I did not fancy writing out 113 images required for a ffen-lookalike diagram, and so decided to resort to a 2kb single image. My attempt to post this failed so I had to resort to Ascii Art, and it then occurred to me that if the best way to represent a variant was by an actual single image it might be a sign that the array is too complex. If ffen could display Rivers, between files as well as between ranks, it might have been a different matter. If a virtual single image generator could display them it would be even better but it seems that the first such system cannot. <p> So my list of up-for-deletion variants currently stands at: <br><a href='../index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSanglisqimodifi'>Anglis Qi modified to add Cannons and Arrows</a>, which makes for quite a cramped 8x8 board. <br><a href='../index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSemperorsnobili'>Emperor's Nobility 3d Latrunculi</a>, a not very Chess-like 3d variant with a complex chain of promotions. <br><a href='../index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSgatewaychess'>Gateway Chess</a>, another one-off microregional like many of those that have already gone and with awkward not-very-Chess-like extra rules. <br><a href='../index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSpartnershipmit'>Partnership Mitregi</a>, an 8x8 promotion-free Shogi variant. <br><a href='../index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSpawnthebrain'>Pawn the Brain</a>, originally a showcase for divergent-piece names that I have replaced with a simple prefix for the original Take the Brain pieces. <br><a href='../index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSsextuplebesieg'>Sextuple Besiege Wellisch</a>, a hex version of my Quadruple Besiege variants and hard to illustrate. <br><a href='../index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSsquareversushe'>Square Versus Hex</a> and <a href='../index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSxiangcata'>Xiangcata</a>, two variants whose mixture of geometries forces my Man and Beast to qualifying some pieces "only avaliable in 3d" with "usually". <br><a href="../index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSvecotha">VeCoTha</a>, for the reasons given above.

Charles Gilman wrote on Sun, Nov 8, 2015 01:37 PM UTC:
I have reached the point where I particularly wish to decide what to do with Anglis Qi modified to add Cannons and Arrows, and therefore seek the guidance of other contributors. I could de-tabulate the page leaving the variants as they are, drop some variants and keep the rest at the same time, or just discontinue the entire page. Enlarging the board would encroach too much on other contributors' variants. As it might be difficult to judge before the page has been edited, I include the arrays below in alphabetic form, where A=Arrow and C=Cannon:
Anglis Taijitu
rnbqkbnr
ac----ca
--------
--------
--------
--------
AC----CA
RNBQKBNR

Yanglis
rnbqkbnr
pcpaapcp
-p-pp-p-
--------
--------
-P-PP-P-
PCPAAPCP
RNBQKBNR

Anglis Eurasian
rc-aa-cr
-nbqkbn-
pppppppp
--------
--------
PPPPPPPP
-NBQKBN-
RC-AA-CR

Anglis Hindcannon
-c-aa-c-
rnbqkbnr
pppppppp
--------
--------
PPPPPPPP
RNBQKBNR
-C-AA-C-

Anglis Midcannon
rnbqkbnr
c--aa--c
pppppppp
--------
--------
PPPPPPPP
C--AA--C
RNBQKBNR

Anglis Forecannon
rnbqkbnr
pppppppp
-c-aa-c-
--------
--------
-C-AA-C-
PPPPPPPP
RNBQKBNR

Charles Gilman wrote on Sun, Aug 30, 2015 02:02 PM UTC:
Having had a positive response to Crooked Board Chess I am happy to retain it - with the removal of both an erroenous reference to Pawn reduction and a Notes section referruig to a very old comment. As my criteria for considering deleting Intrusive Squares were similar I am inclined to retain that one as well.

Charles Gilman wrote on Wed, Aug 26, 2015 01:07 PM UTC:
Well, over this Spring and Summer I've got rid of the seven variants that I felt least measured up to my usual standard. It made me feel a bit better about ading two new ones over that same period. For the record the casualties are the two Dabbaba Qi pages, Epping (and New) Forest Chess, Half Shoxiang, Kamil Crater Chess, Maharajah's Well Chess, and Sultan's Elephant Chess. I have deleted all record of the content of these pages, so they are gone for good. I am retaining Neutral Subject Chess as well as I'm a Wazir... as other contributors have given such positive responses to them.

The next tranche of variants that I am considering discontinuing are as follows:
Anglis Qi modified to add Cannons and Arrows, which makes for quite a cramped 8x8 board.
Crooked Board Chess, unwittingly covering ground dealt with by other people's older variants.
Emperor's Nobility 3d Latrunculi, a not very Chess-like 3d variant with a complex chain of promotions.
Gateway Chess, another one-off microregional like many of those that have already gone and with awkward not-very-Chess-like extra rules.
Intrusive Squares, unwittingly covering ground dealt with by other people's older variants.
Partnership Mitregi, an 8x8 promotion-free Shogi variant.
Pawn the Brain, originally a showcase for divergent-piece names that I have replaced with a simple prefix for the original Take the Brain pieces.
Sextuple Besiege Wellisch, a hex version of my Quadruple Besiege variants and hard to illustrate.
Square Versus Hex and Xiangcata, two variants whose mixture of geometries forces my Man and Beast to qualifying some pieces "only avaliable in 3d" with "usually".

I would therefore be interested to know what everyone thinks of getting rid of them, and whether anyone rallies to their defence. Crooked Board and Intrusive Squares, in particular, I feel are overdoing what the two Dream Chess pages and L-shaped Chess do relatively well. Pawn the Brain escaped the first tranche of deletions only because it takes up so little memory. Gateway Chess escaped because I am thinking of reusing the name for a cubic-cell variant - still with concavities but with no shopping-related rules - and would be interested to read what others think of my new idea.

The new Gateway Chess would be based on the fact that one large and two small Xiang Qi sets are a good way to get 1 aside of 1 piece type, 2 aside of 6, and 4 aside of 6 more - I have in mind Emperor for the first, Queen/Duchess/Governor/Oberon/Samurai/Churchwarden for the next group, and Rook/Bishop/Unicorn/Ninja/Sextojn/Knight for the last group. Unfortunately it has only 10 aside of whatever Pawnlike piece I would choose, which is why I would envisage the front rank of each camp as a relatively narrow "Gateway".


Ben Reiniger wrote on Sat, May 30, 2015 12:36 PM UTC:
I did respond to your question, by email, a few days ago.

Charles Gilman wrote on Sat, May 30, 2015 11:14 AM UTC:
Having not had any response to this wquestion, I shall try anyway. You can probably guess which varianth is going first by the updates that I make to other variants first.

Charles Gilman wrote on Sun, May 24, 2015 07:24 AM UTC:
I have just reused the 3 to the 5 page for a variant idea to which the numbers 3 and 5 are still relevant, a changeover that I had been planning for some time, and while I hope that it will eventually appear under the new title the old one will not be that misleading in the meantime. There is, however, no obvious substitute for any of the other eight pages that I am currently interested in withdrawing. In any case, it is easier for someone remembering anoter member's post-your-own to find it if it has a page address based on the current title.

While planning the changeover I read on this thread that editors could mark a page as hidden, or even as deleted, even if pages really cannot be actually deleted. Now I am not asking for anyone to do this to any of my pages just yet, but am interested to know how easily it could be done to order. It does not appear possible to do this in "edit indexing", but were I to put in an update text along the lines of "variant withdrawn - editors please mark as deleted" could I rely on an editor to so mark them?

There is one variant with which I am especially inclined to do this as it will allow me to get rid of an otherwise unused entry in my Man and Beast piece articles. If I get the go-ahead I will take this approach.


danielmacduff wrote on Mon, Apr 20, 2015 10:17 PM UTC:
Thanks for the assist.  I tried itemid=lycanthrope, =rockyhorror, etc.  It
seems I did indeed forget a few words of the title!

Ben Reiniger wrote on Mon, Apr 20, 2015 04:08 AM UTC:
@Daniel: this one?

http://chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MS2queenrockyhor

One of the downsides to having pages pulled from the database is that Google doesn't find those pages.  I might move the Google search on the Gindex page to a less prominent location.  

You'll likely have better luck with the Advanced Search's regular expression function.  I found the above link by searching for
.*Lycanth.*
where .* is the regexp version of a wildcard.  [Or so it seems; I don't know much about regexps yet actually.]

danielmacduff wrote on Mon, Apr 20, 2015 02:17 AM UTC:
Now Rocky Horror Lycanthropic Chess is missing.  I'm not quite sure what
to try to look up, as it has quite a long and complex title, but even a
google search on the site for lycanthrope onyl returns Halloween Knight
Court.

Charles Gilman wrote on Mon, Oct 6, 2014 06:03 AM UTC:
In that case the information at http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MLminixiangqi needs updating. I have updated my own links.

Ben Reiniger wrote on Sun, Oct 5, 2014 07:21 PM UTC:

Neptune does not show up in searches because it has been specifically flagged "deleted", and these do not appear in the index. I'm not sure why this game is flagged as such. Since we have a separate flag for "hidden", probably msdisplay should be modified to not show such variants at all. But, uncertain of the original intent, I'll just punt the issue until I hear from the author of Neptune and/or a more senior editor.

As for the 403 error, that is external to this site. It used to be M. Winther's site, but that has since moved. Presently you can find it at
http://mlwi.magix.net/bg/chessvar.htm
and more specifically
http://mlwi.magix.net/bg/minixiangqi.htm


Charles Gilman wrote on Sun, Oct 5, 2014 11:24 AM UTC:
In case anyone's wondering, the Man and Beast pages with links to Neptune are 01, 09, 19, and 21. Incidentally, I have recently had trouble accessing a different variant. When I go to http://hem.passagen.se/melki9/minixiangqi.htm (for a mini Xiang Qi with no actual "Xiang") I get a 403 error. As Man and Beast 16 has a link to this address it slightly concerns me.

Charles Gilman wrote on Thu, Oct 2, 2014 06:09 AM UTC:
It is still available if you enter the address directly (http://www.chessvariants.org/index/msdisplay.php?itemid=MSneptune) and it can also be reached from links from some of my Man and Beast pages. I agree that it is odd that it is no longer appearing via the index pages.

danielmacduff wrote on Thu, Oct 2, 2014 12:31 AM UTC:
Dear Everyone,

First of all, this is not fiction... I hope.

There was a large hex variant on the pages called neptune, featuring pieces
such as princesses, crooked bishops (not what they were called), and
"space eaters" that swallowed squares.  Does anyone else remember this? 
What happened to it?  And, perhaps most spookily, why has every trace of it
disappeared like squares in the Space Eater's path?

Thank you for your thoughts, theories, answers, comments, etc.

Daniel MacDuff

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