Ok so apparently there's been quite a discussion here since I was last active (it's been a busy semester) and it's taken me a few days to catch up, but for what it's worth, here's where my current thoughts are on all this:
For the most part, H. G.'s position makes sense to me; my own tendency has been to be perhaps a little more lenient (in hindsight, an argument could be made, f. ex., that the accelerated Constable games might be folded into the main articles), but even there, there really ought to be some sort of limit. I have to agree that in particular the latest set of CourierâSpiel variants Kevin is anxious to get published are similar enough to be worth condensing into fewer articles.
Whilst I appreciate Kevin's desire to give people the option to rate/favourite/comment on different pages separately, the overall tendency on this site (even without editors explicitly asking for it) has tended to be for multiple similar games to be described on one page. Betza perhaps took this a little further than would in retrospect be comfortable (often his articles would tend to focus more on general CV ideas, the games coming almost more as an afterthought in some cases; which did occasionally lead to duplication (at least two completely unrelated games called âNick Danger Chessâ) and makes finding specific things difficult sometimes), but most other authors who do/did so have tended to find a good balance; for all the controversy(?) around Gilman's prolific output, the actual quality of the writeâups (perhaps excluding some of his earliest) I've always considered a bit of a model.
And whilst it's true that separate articles make indexing/categorisation easier ([this page] features only one subvariant among many that features exclusively standard pieces + compounds thereofâââdoes it deserve the relevant tag? I deemed the answer to be yes, but a case could be made otherwise), in practice this tends to be a minor issue. Even when considering such apparently fundamental things as board size, we have pages (including one of myÌ own) that discuss multiple games with different sizes.
If I might offer a positive argument for considering multiple games on a single page, besides merely avoiding clutter: it gives you an opportunity to compare and contrast the various options, making it easier to highlight any differences/peculiarities you feel makes each one worth presenting. That's much harder to do if you're describing each one in relative isolation.
A case in point: the presentation as individual pages of Mats Winther's series of games that each add a single bifurcating piece to the orthodox array makes it very difficult to get an overview of them (especially since they look very similar to his pages for less closelyârelated games). On his own site he has a separate page which introduces bifurcators in general, which is probably the most valuable page of the lot imo. And it obfuscates, rather than making clearer, the fact that he's put some effort into figuring out for each piece what he feels is the most suitable board, starting position, approximate value, âc.
Addressing some of the issues raised in this comment particularly:
Staying silent can have a variety of causes, not just tacit agreement. In my case, I've simply been very busy with life outwith CVP for the last few months, and the last week or so at least has been spent catching up on (among other things) this discussion. That I also agree with many of H. G.'s points, at least on originality, is a separate point. I'd also note that he often articulates those views I agree with better than I do, and once articulated there seems little point in repeating them; CVP comments aren't the most lightweight among ways to communicate.
I'll admit, at least for myself, to often being quite conservative with respect to publishing things that have had (potential(?) ) faults pointed out by fellow editors (or indeed other fellow members, depending on the nature of the fault). Often these are things that either I outright agree with and have simply missed, or things where I don't really consider myself to have the expertise to judge standards (where admittedly I would in isolation tend to be lenient, but would defer to someone I feel is perhaps more authoritative in that respect)
It might be worth making a distinction, if partially due to the way contributions to this site are structured, between originality with respect to other people's submissions, and originality wrt one's own. In particular, an author who feels like they have an interesting variant of another existing game has little option but to either add it as a comment (which in sufficiently trivial cases would be plenty) or make a whole new page for it. Lev's recently published set is perhaps the closest thing to a middle ground here, in the case of having multiple proposals (though I myself had misgivings about the originality of any of these, before the present iteration of this discussion came up). On the other hand, a single author with a set of similar ideas is very wellâplaced to discuss them all together, highlighting the similarities and differences between them (and indeed, perhaps, relative importance, if some might be considered subvariants of others rather than all on equal footing). H. G.'s original comment regarding Kevin's âSpiele refers very much to this latter case; the former deserves arguably a bit more leniency.
@Kevin:
I'll probably take a closer look at your submissions (and the various others that've been languishing over the past couple months) in the next couple of days, though I fear there may have to be some giveâandâtake involved on your part; on a cursory assessment I'm inclined to agree many of them are similar enough that they'd be better off being described together.
Ok so apparently there's been quite a discussion here since I was last active (it's been a busy semester) and it's taken me a few days to catch up, but for what it's worth, here's where my current thoughts are on all this:
For the most part, H. G.'s position makes sense to me; my own tendency has been to be perhaps a little more lenient (in hindsight, an argument could be made, f. ex., that the accelerated Constable games might be folded into the main articles), but even there, there really ought to be some sort of limit. I have to agree that in particular the latest set of CourierâSpiel variants Kevin is anxious to get published are similar enough to be worth condensing into fewer articles.
Whilst I appreciate Kevin's desire to give people the option to rate/favourite/comment on different pages separately, the overall tendency on this site (even without editors explicitly asking for it) has tended to be for multiple similar games to be described on one page. Betza perhaps took this a little further than would in retrospect be comfortable (often his articles would tend to focus more on general CV ideas, the games coming almost more as an afterthought in some cases; which did occasionally lead to duplication (at least two completely unrelated games called âNick Danger Chessâ) and makes finding specific things difficult sometimes), but most other authors who do/did so have tended to find a good balance; for all the controversy(?) around Gilman's prolific output, the actual quality of the writeâups (perhaps excluding some of his earliest) I've always considered a bit of a model.
And whilst it's true that separate articles make indexing/categorisation easier ([this page] features only one subvariant among many that features exclusively standard pieces + compounds thereofâââdoes it deserve the relevant tag? I deemed the answer to be yes, but a case could be made otherwise), in practice this tends to be a minor issue. Even when considering such apparently fundamental things as board size, we have pages (including one of myÌ own) that discuss multiple games with different sizes.
If I might offer a positive argument for considering multiple games on a single page, besides merely avoiding clutter: it gives you an opportunity to compare and contrast the various options, making it easier to highlight any differences/peculiarities you feel makes each one worth presenting. That's much harder to do if you're describing each one in relative isolation.
A case in point: the presentation as individual pages of Mats Winther's series of games that each add a single bifurcating piece to the orthodox array makes it very difficult to get an overview of them (especially since they look very similar to his pages for less closelyârelated games). On his own site he has a separate page which introduces bifurcators in general, which is probably the most valuable page of the lot imo. And it obfuscates, rather than making clearer, the fact that he's put some effort into figuring out for each piece what he feels is the most suitable board, starting position, approximate value, âc.
Addressing some of the issues raised in this comment particularly:
@Kevin:
I'll probably take a closer look at your submissions (and the various others that've been languishing over the past couple months) in the next couple of days, though I fear there may have to be some giveâandâtake involved on your part; on a cursory assessment I'm inclined to agree many of them are similar enough that they'd be better off being described together.