Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

In the section titled Fairy Chess, it reads "and organizations for correspondence games didn't exist". Shouldn't that be "did exist"?

Unless you know of some really old organizations for playing Chess variants by correspondence, it should be "didn't exist." Fairy chess goes back to at least 1918, while NOST was founded in 1960, and AISE was founded in 1975.

In rewriting the second part of this page, I was putting in too much history, then trying to edit it down, because this page is not supposed to be about history. So I think I will completely revise the second part to be about taxonomy, not history. History can be saved for another page, which fits into my general scheme, which is to create pages on the 5 Ws (Who, What, When, Where, Why) plus Which and How. This is the What page, and history is the proper subject for the When page. I'm conceiving of the others as

• Who is responsible for this site?
• Where can I play Chess variants?
• Why should I play Chess variants?
• Which Chess variants are best?
• How can I create a good Chess variant?

I might include multiple questions under some question words, such as "How can I help out with this site?"

As for the text on the homepage, I would like a short description of the site with a brief mission statement. What I currently have is too wordy and covers material that is being covered in more depth on this page and will be covered on some of the other pages.

I rewrote the second section, focusing on ways of modifying Chess to make Chess variants.

You say "There are no Monopoly or Risk problems, because they aren't that kind of game." I have seen retroanalysis puzzles for Scrabble and Bridge.

You say "Some Chess variants do introduce elements of randomness." Yes, also some (e.g. Kriegspiel) introduce elements of hidden information.

Does anyone know the earliest use of the term Chess Variant? I have found it used as early as 1990 in the first issue of Variant Chess. It is also used in 1992 by R. Wayne Schmittberger in New Rules for Classic Games, and in 1994 by D.B. Pritchard in The Encyclopedia of Chess Variants. In 1968, John Gollon used the term Chess Variation to mean the same thing. In 1961, V. R. Parton used the expression "variants of Chess" in Curiouser & Curiouser. In the 1972 100 Squares for Chess and Damante, Parton uses the expression "Decimal Chess variants." Then in the 1973 Enduring Spirit of Dasapada, Parton uses the expression "chess variants" without modification and gives Shogi as an example of one. So, the term goes back at least to Parton, who seemed to have it in mind even when he wasn't using it explicity. Is there any older literature on Chess variants that also uses the term?

@Glenn Nicholls: Xiangqi is just as much a Chess variant as western Chess is a Chess variant. Neither of these is the original form. They are all particular realizations of the grand idea of Chess, i.e. a two-player board game of perfect information, with many different pieces that can be captured by replacement, where loss of a designated royal piece decides the game.

To H.G.M.

Yes, I think what you have said is as good a definition of the classic or traditional Chess idea as is likely within a few lines of text.....I did know that neither the current Western game nor the current Chinese game is in its original form. 

Re: "Changing the pieces":

Two points:

1) The Piececlopedia and Piece Articles CVP main index pages currently have no option available to leave any comments. I could start a new thread to do so for general piece-related comments, but for now I chose to post in this particular existing thread what follows, namely:

2) Googling 'Most popular fairy chess pieces' gets a surprisingly high number of relevant search results. My question to Fergus, other CVP editors, or CVP members, is, maybe we are missing something by not having a members' favorites list of fairy chess piece types. I know there are an infinite number of possibilities for piece types in theory, but the Piececlopedia and/or Piece Articles pages narrows them done to a manageable number (like there is a finite number of CVs on CVP). I'd personally be curious to see which piece types are actually popular, based on CVP members' votes cast, and which are surprisingly not so much so. Some pieces may well have a built-in advantage, in that they generally work well on a very large number of board sizes and/or shapes. Anyway, such a list might also help those trying to deliberately invent CVs that are more likely to be popular (even though some popular games may have included some unpopular or then-novel piece types).

A small detail: this article uses the word "heterdox" many times, except once it uses "heterodox". Is "heterdox" an English word valid in this context or just a typo here?

Is "heterdox" an English word valid in this context or just a typo here?

It's a typo. I've now made corrections.