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What is the purpose of this website?[Subject Thread] [Add Response]

H. G. Muller wrote on Fri, Mar 27, 2015 06:56 AM UTC:

I am all for the democratic process, but the problem is that it seems to
lacks accessibility. I know no other way into the variant descriptions on
this site than the alphabetical index, or occasionally the comments
listing, when someone happened to comment on one of the variants. The
alphabetical index just floods you with variants all presented on an equal
basis, except for the old, undemocratically chosen recognized variants, which are more prominently listed.

It would be nice if there was a sort of summary page where one could see an
overview of the results of the democratic process. Like "Hottest
variants". Where some 50 variants are ranked by the appreciation they
received, according to some formula that pays attention to average rating,
number of ratings, number of ratings/time. That would also encourage the
democratic process, as variants that attract more attention through an
unjustly high rating are more likely to see this corrected by people
disappointed in them.

To this I can add that it is not an uncommon phenomenon that designers of
Chess variants think their own variant is the best invention since
chocolate. And that I would never bother to even look at a game description
that does not even show a diagram of the initial setup. And that my own interest in Chess variants is mostly triggered by what the capabilities are of pieces with unorthodox moves. So I would quickly discard a variant that only used orthodox pieces as 'just another FIDE'.