Site Review - About.com's Chess History bookmarks
Mark Weeks
bookmarks, is for About.com's Chess History by David Dunbar. About.com,
previously known as the Mining Company, is primarily a directory. I
suppose that the name was changed to avoid confusing data mines with
gold & copper mines and to profit from the Dot.Com stock market mania.
The list of 14 links related to chess history is at...
http://chess.about.com/games/chess/msub30.htm
...The history section is one of 26 About.com 'Subjects' which are
related to chess. The high level address for chess is...
http://chess.about.com/games/chess/mbody.htm
...which logically places chess in the hierarchy 'About.com > Games >
Chess'. In addition to the subject categories, there are general
interest articles posted twice a month. One recent article related to
chess history is titled 'The Greatest Chess Games Ever Played' and
features 64 games playable through a Javascript browser.
The home page for chess also hosts a forum, which looks very active; a
newsletter, where I couldn't find any archive of previous issues; a
search function, which returned 32 documents against a search on
'history'; and an archive of opinion polls. The first poll asks about
'matches that should have taken place but didn't -- events that were
cancelled, avoided, or permanently postponed and so will remain forever
in the minds of chess fans as unanswered question marks'. Of the five
choices, Fischer vs. Karpov currently leads with 107 of 166 total votes.
Some of the other chess subjects are also related to the subject of
chess history. [Databases] has links to 'Commercial' & 'Free Databases
and Utilities' such as Chesslab & the UPITT Archives. [Players] covers
mainly contemporary players, although Marcel Duchamp makes the list.
Current & past world champions are covered by [World Champions], while
events from 1998-1999 are covered by [Tournaments].
The difference between About.com & most other directories, like Yahoo,
is that the administrators ('guides' in About.com parlance) are visible
& identified personalities. The biography for Dunbar, who is the guide
for all of the About.com chess subjects, says, 'David Dunbar is a chess
enthusiast who has a day job working for the Canadian government as a
lawyer.' Before Dunbar, the guide was Sean Whalen. A routine search of
the Web shows that Whalen's name is still associated with the site in
many other lists of chess links. I couldn't find an independent site
maintained by Whalen.
In my last review, I dismissed four general directories -- LookSmart,
Open Directory, Snap, & Yahoo -- with the comment that 'None of the four
impressed me very much concerning chess history.' About.com is an
exception. Its list of chess sites is just as good as other directories
which are specific to chess.
I don't know where anyone finds the time or the energy to maintain chess
specific directories, although I'm certainly glad that they do. I have
trouble maintaining the ~25 bookmarks for the Chess History discussion
group. Web sites are constantly appearing, changing addresses, &
disappearing. Many sites have multiple addresses pointing to the same
pages. I usually find out about changes by accident.
An AltaVista search on 'chess' returns 'about 420,555 pages found', as
well as 'Shopping: 729 results for chess'. The phrase 'chess AND
history' returns 'about 84,575 pages found'. How one sifts through all
of this to build a list of 1000-2000 sites is a mystery to me. How one
maintains the list is an even greater mystery. Segmenting the links by
category must be another thankless task.
I suppose that directory administrators hope that site owners or other
interested users will report any changes. This is doomed as a workable
strategy. Speaking as a site owner, I have better things to do than
sending email to directory administrators, especially considering that
most of the efforts I've made in the past for this sort of thing have
been ignored.
About.com's chess topic is one of the few chess specific directories to
have a subtopic devoted to chess history. I first mentioned it, along
with several of its linked sites, in August 1999. I don't believe that
the list of sites has changed since that time. In fact, I doubt that any
of Dunbar's chess lists are maintained regularly. The 'World Champions'
subject lists two Web addresses which I maintained in the past, both of
which are now obsolete. One returns a 'Page Not Found' error message,
which an automated link checker would have picked up by now. The other
is redirected.
I had intended to discuss chess specific directories in this review, but
there is too much material to cover, so I'll come back to it in the
future. Let's take a look instead at the sites which Dunbar has
categorized as chess history.
Unfortunately, there is a small problem to be overcome. The links open
in an About.com frame, a technique I've never liked. Its big drawback is
that it reduces the available page viewing space, which is already small
enough, in the browser. The frame adds nothing but an unwanted ad to the
content of the target site, gives the impression that all sites are
somehow associated with About.com, and assumes that visitors won't find
their way back to About.com. A lesser evil would be to open the target
site in a new window. To overcome About.com's restricted viewing space,
I accessed the sites by copying & pasting the links into my browser.
Dunbar's 14 sites are:-
- Automaton Chess (3)
- Battle Royale (1)
- Brief History of Chess (1)
- Chess Archaeology (2)
- Chess History [Bill Wall] (2)
- ChessMate.com: Rare Chess History Books (1)
- Computer Chess History (3)
- Deja News: Chess History (2)
- Morals of Chess (1)
- On the Origin of Chess [Josten] (2)
- Origin of Chess [Sloan] (2)
- Today in Chess History (1)
- US Chess History (2)
- Weinheimer, Jim (1)
In this review I'll look at the six sites marked (1). Sites marked (2)
are already covered by the bookmarks for the Chess History discussion
group & were the subject of previous reviews. 'Deja News: Chess History'
is the discussion group itself; I appreciate the mention.
Sites marked (3) are not accessible. 'Automaton Chess' has a new address
at http://www.cowderoy.com/graphics/ac.htm, which is already a
discussion group bookmark & will be reviewed sometime in the next few
months. 'Computer Chess History' returns an error message 'The server
does not have a DNS entry' -- I couldn't find the page anywhere else on
the Web.
---
Battle Royale by Steve Lopez
http://www.chessbaseusa.com/NY1924/ny1924.htm
This impressive site covers the 1924 New York International Chess
Tournament, an event which is on most lists of the greatest chess
tournaments of all time. It's a mixture of fact (the moves of the games)
and fiction (the introductions to the rounds & games), which is being
serialized. 'This week's installment' is the Em.Lasker vs. Marshall game
from the last round. I couldn't find any other chess history links on
the chessbaseusa.com home page.
---
Brief History of Chess by Edinburgh University Chess Club
http://www.ed.ac.uk/~chess/Chess/History/
This is a small site of 4 paragraphs on the main page plus 5 additional
links:-
- Chess in Arabian Countries
- Lewis Chess Pieces in Edinburgh.
- Edward I and Chess
- Medieval Chess Rules
- Mir Sultan Khan
It credits 'The Game of Chess' by H.Golombek.
---
Rare Chess History Books by ChessMate.com
http://www.chessmate.com/rarehist.html
The page lists five books. More interesting is the 'Rare Books Index' at
rarebks.html. Network Solutions lists David Weinstock as the
administrative contact for chessmate.com.
---
Morals of Chess by Benjamin Franklin
http://truth.wofford.edu/~kaycd/CHESS-GO/bf-moral.htm
This is a two page site maintained by Prof. Charles D. Kay of Wofford
College. The comments page, which has additional links for Franklin,
says 'This page is still under construction', but the page is dated 30
March 1996 & was last modified 8 August 1999.
---
Today in Chess History by Peter Kadyszewski
http://www.users.interport.net/~ramses/calendar.html
This is a calendar of chess history. The last time I looked at this
page, I thought it covered 1 January to mid-April or thereabouts. Now it
covers 17 March ('Born: Oscar Roberto Panno, 1935 [...] Died: Semyon
Abramowich Furman, 1978') - 6 May ('Died: Martin Severin Janus From,
1828 - 1895').
The page mentions the Stuy Town Chess Club. I discovered elsewhere that
'Stuyvesant Town [is] a private residential community on Manhattan's
East Side'. The page is peppered with links to other sites, most of
which are broken. In my opinion, the page, which is full of useful
facts, would be even more valuable if the entire year were available at
all times. I doubt that many people check 'today in chess history' on a
regular basis.
---
Jim Weinheimer Home Page
http://www.princeton.edu/~jamesw/chess.html
This site 'serving up reprints from the Princeton Chess Collection' has
three main sections. [Games] covers nine historic games with biographies
of the players. [E.B. Cook] is a biography of the famous problemist --
'His efficiency in finding errors in problems entered into chess
language: to "cook" a problem.' [Opinion] bemoans 'a conspicuous lack of
modern annotated tournament books'.
---
Why aren't these sites listed with the Chess History bookmarks? I have
no good answer to this question & I'll probably link some of them some
day. In the meantime they are linked indirectly via the bookmark for
About.com. Building lists of bookmarks is a personal choice & there is
no reason why different lists have to be identical. It is this diversity
of opinion which makes the Web such a valuable source of data,
information, knowledge, and wisdom.
Bye for now,
Mark Weeks
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.