Talk:List of female chess players

List creation
This list was created from articles that were in Category:Female chess players which was listed on WP:CFD. The consensus was to place the articles in a list and delete the category. See discussion. RedWolf 01:24, Mar 25, 2005 (UTC)

Category talk:Female chess players
You removed the chess player category for Gresser. I thought the female chess player category was always used in parallel with the chess player category. That's the way for all others.--Sonjaaa 02:08, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)
 * The following was from the talk page of Category:Female chess players and should not be modified.
 * First of all, categorization policy states that if an article is in a more specific subcategory, it doesn't need to also be in the parent. Every article in the female chess players category is considered a de facto member of the parent chess players category. (See Categorization.)
 * Second, while we're on the subject, I'm not sure that a category specifically for female chess players should even exist. Categorization of people states, "As a general recommendation for categories on people, prefer to have the category names as gender-neutral as possible (unless, of course, there is a distinct reason to otherwise: please mention that reason on the category page in that case)." There is some argument, for example, that it makes sense to separate Category:Deities by gender because gender is such an important descriptive quality for deities in most cultures. Category:Actors, on the other hand, was ultimately chosen as the catch-all for all actors, male or female (since an actor is not intrinsically different from an actress in terms of occupation). Chess players seem to follow the latter example more closely. Of course, that's not what you asked about. -Aranel (" Sarah ") 03:49, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Interesting! Well thre are so few female chess players that I find it useful for them to have their own category where you can see them at a glance and explore them. I guess the same could be said for any sport or domain where women are still making progress, like female presidents or whatever. Do you have any other suggestions?--Sonjaaa 03:55, Feb 17, 2005 (UTC)
 * A list would be great in this case. Since it seems to be a pretty small group, a list wouldn't be hard to compile. Also with a list, you could include female chess players who don't have articles yet. :) -Aranel (" Sarah ") 03:57, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Let's keep the category as is. As has been mentioned above, there's few female chess players, so it will aid people searching for these people. There's no great need to remove this category. Dysprosia 04:07, 17 Feb 2005 (UTC)

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Chiburdanidze, Polgar, Xie Jun
Susan Polgar is regarded as the first woman to achieve the GM title in the traditional way, while Gaprindashvili and Chiburdanidze won their title by winning the Women's World Championship (WCC), according to this source, on which the list of female GM is primarly based. But looking carefully, this is actually quite nonsense: Gaprindashvili lost her world title in 1978! (I corrected the way she get the GM title, according to the info in her page) And I read somewhere that in the past the winner of the WWC got the "male" IM title and I strongly suspect that the practice of awarding the Women's World Champion the GM title started with the KO championships. Xie Jun, according to OlimpBase, appeared in the FIDE rating list as an IM in 1992 and a GM for the first time in 1993 — and not 1995 as the abovementioned source claims (this should tell you how reliable actually it is...) — so 2 years after she won the WWC! Maybe Chiburdanidze is actually the first woman who earned the GM title in the traditional way, because I find rather odd that FIDE awards her the GM title at her third (!) WWC match victory, but awards "only" the IM title to Xie Jun. Sophia91 (talk) 06:16, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

We can discuss what we mean by the "traditional" way, but Susan Polgar was the first to achieve the title by the normal route in straight competition with men. PatGallacher (talk) 17:54, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

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Editorializing violates Wikipedia guidelines
I removed this comment from the article again:
 * Note that even those titles earned by "norms" need not have been achieved on a gender-neutral basis; e.g. Hou Yifan gained one of her three GM norms by reaching the final of the Women's World Chess Championship 2008.)

This requires a reference to show that it is relevant in this context. Without a such a reference it falls afoul of WP:NOR, WP:SYNTH, WP:NPOV and WP:UNDUE. Articles can't "note" such things in an encyclopedic editorial voice without a citation. If someone has actually noted this, it can be cited and the article and specifically ascribed to that person: "So-and-so has noted that ..." Quale (talk) 04:21, 25 May 2017 (UTC)


 * The official reference that Hou Yifan gained her third GM norm in the WWCC is given in her article: I'll gladly add it here as well, and  remove the "Note that" part if that's what bothers you about the comment. Otherwise, if it's relevant that "Susan Polgar became the first woman to earn the Grandmaster title on the same basis as the men, by earning Grandmaster norms", then why isn't it relevant to mention that Hou Yifan did not earn hers on the same basis as men, although the table just says "norms" for both? (BTW, talking of references, all post-2004 entries in the "Earned" column are currently unsourced, including Hou Yifan's.) --Roentgenium111 (talk) 13:40, 26 May 2017 (UTC)


 * I think Susan Polgar has herself made the claim that she was the first woman to earn the GM title with tournament norms on the same basis as men. That gives it some noteworthiness, but like all claims in Wikipedia it needs to be verifiable.  If it can't be verified, the claim should be removed from this article.  Sourcing for the article can and certainly should be improved, but do you think any of the information in the table is not correct?  I think the table entry for Hou Yifan is essentially correct, although ratings.fide.com says she became a GM in 2009 and the table says 2008.  It's a little unclear how the title date is determined.  Often I think the date the final norm was earned is used, but I believe FIDE records the date that the title was ratified by a FIDE conference. I think those conferences only happen two to four times a year, so the official title can be issued several months after the title requirements were fulfilled.  (The date of the final norm is always used when computing the player's age when the GM title is earned, which is relevant to the claim that Hou was the youngest woman to become a GM.)  Anyway, do you have a reliable source that says that Hou Yifan did not earn the GM title on the same basis as men?  I'm not talking about your WP:SYNTH assembled from sources that don't say anything about how men earn GM titles, I mean a WP:RS source that makes a point of this comparison saying that it is something important we should note about Hou.  The Women's World Champion earns the GM title automatically as do the World U20 and >65, so I don't share your belief that this is a Very Important Truth That Must Be Told.  Quale (talk) 05:38, 27 May 2017 (UTC)


 * Note that saying "note that" (see what I did there?) is WP:EDITORIALIZING, and is specifically discouraged by the Manual of Style. MaxBrowne (talk) 10:01, 27 May 2017 (UTC)

Reading this in 2020, let us simply conclude a grandmaster is a grandmaster. If individuals want to cast shade on how others gained their GM titles, let them. That sounds more like slander than encyclopedic quality content. Now I'll have to reread the article to weed out any ideas "my GM title is worth more than your GM title". CapnZapp (talk) 11:26, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

GMs: "Earned" and "Peak rating" columns
I propose to delete the columns "Earned" and "Peak rating". The vast majority earned the title by scoring norms+2500 rating, as to those who earned by winning the Women's World Championship or through "special ways", "WWC" and "special" can be added to the "Notes" column (currently empty apart from 3 players). The peak rating requires frequent updates, and anyway the peak rating of each player if just one click away. Sophia91 (talk) 13:44, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Your proposal makes sense to me. Cobblet (talk) 17:22, 28 July 2019 (UTC)
 * Yes, please do this. Gaprindashvili and Chiburdanidze earned their titles through norms, so the designation "special" in the "earned" column is just vaporous. Bruce leverett (talk) 19:26, 10 August 2019 (UTC)

Grandmasters
Okay, so we should probably stop talking about "current" grandmasters.

Even after one has died, we should definitively still list her. And some are retired.

CapnZapp (talk) 15:57, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * I agree, the word "currently" was never necessary in that sentence.


 * In List of chess grandmasters, there are a couple of sentences about GM's who are deceased being kept in the list. None of the women has died yet, but when one of them does, we would probably want to have similar sentences in this list.  Bruce leverett (talk) 19:08, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
 * Good idea to look there. There's a whole table column dedicated to "Died". I note they don't keep tabs on whether the GM is active or retired there. If our consensus is we want to list status, then I suggest a Status table column. [Empty] = Active. "Retired" = Retired. [Date] = Dead (at that date). If our consensus is "if they don't track active status, so shouldn't we" then we can simply add death to the Notes. Myself I quite like Retired/Active status, but I can understand if that's too much work for male GMs (since we're talking two orders of magnitude of a difference) CapnZapp (talk) 11:23, 20 November 2020 (UTC)
 * It is not always easy to determine whether a player is active or retired. Not everyone announces their retirement as J. Polgar memorably did.  Also, sometimes people "come out of retirement".  So I don't think it would be a good idea to try to keep track of that in this list.  But keeping track of death, certainly.  Bruce leverett (talk) 14:16, 20 November 2020 (UTC)

Timeline of women in chess
I guess that since it's a major US holiday, in the middle of a huge pandemic, people are sitting at home with time on their hands and nothing to do but make random edits to Wikipedia.

Since the title of the article is "List of female chess players", anything important in it that isn't a list of female chess players is misplaced -- readers will not find it. If Wikipedia needs a "Timeline of women in chess", or a "History of women in chess", the right thing to do is to create an article by that name, not hide the material in an article by another name.

I am inclined to just blow away the whole "Timeline", but I will pause for a while, to enable other editors to make helpful suggestions. Bruce leverett (talk) 03:33, 27 November 2020 (UTC)


 * The Queen's Gambit (miniseries) might also be a reason for the attention. Wikipedia could certainly use an article on women in chess. Cobblet (talk) 04:05, 27 November 2020 (UTC)


 * I had some questions about this possibility, but it looks like WP:SPLIT is where to look for answers. Bruce leverett (talk) 19:02, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
 * You're right that that section doesn't belong in this list article, but as you say could be a seed that might sprout into a different article on women in chess. Up to a few years ago I probably would have jumped on this immediately, with the feeling that this is the kind of not right thing that should be corrected right away.  Now I'm content to leave some things alone for a while if they seem fixable even if they aren't quite right, to give them time to develop a bit.  (Many things should be corrected right away, including false material and BLP problems, but this material seems mostly good, it's just in the wrong place.)  In another week or two we can try to transplant the timeline into a more suitable article, unless someone else does it first.  Quale (talk) 07:22, 3 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Well, I would not have waited as long as I have to formally start a Split discussion, but I've been busy, that's my excuse. Bruce leverett (talk) 15:20, 3 December 2020 (UTC)

Painting by Mowbray
I rather miss this. Having it at the head of this article seemed like a bit of harmless fun. I will restore it, but will abide by consensus, if it goes the other way. Bruce leverett (talk) 01:36, 25 December 2020 (UTC)
 * Oops, I see that the painting is not gone, it's just moved over to Women in chess. Good enough, thanks!  Bruce leverett (talk) 01:40, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Introduction
Thanks for suggesting that this should be discussed on the talk page.

There are three lists here, not just one, and before each list, there is a short explanation of its scope and other issues. Prior to the first list, the short explanation is, "This article lists female chess players that received official FIDE titles or are otherwise renowned." The three short explanations together constitute the introduction as specified by MOS:LISTINTRO.

Through late November of 2020, the lead section of this list consisted of that single sentence, followed by a short section entitled "History of Women playing chess". That short section was extraneous, inasmuch as the title of the article did not suggest any connection with the history of women in chess, and the content of that section did little or nothing to augment the list. I would not presume to say why this extraneous material was tolerated, but simple neglect may have played a role.

Two things happened after late November of 2020: some editors greatly enlarged the extraneous section; and another editor created a new article, "Women in chess". The new article did not initially include any material on the history of women in chess, but I propose that it would be quite logical and reasonable to put historical material in the new article. I note, however, that historical material in the new article would not necessarily be copied from the history section of this article, but would be integrated seamlessly into the new article.

I do not think the present, enlarged, history section of this article is anything to write home about, but one could consider keeping it in place until more historical material is added to the new article, if that does not cause even worse problems. Bruce leverett (talk) 04:39, 4 January 2021 (UTC)


 * It was better before when it was just a short summary rather than an uninformative Bill Wall-style timeline with little context. I'll at least get rid of one egregiously bad source. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 21:01, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

alphabetical listing
I see no reason to manually maintain a list when Wikipedia categorization does that for us automatically.

Not only do we avoid the inevitable omissions (making the list kind of useless), we can also enable the Table of Contents without it getting bloated by all the letters of the alphabet.

CapnZapp (talk) 12:45, 21 April 2021 (UTC)
 * There is merit to your argument, but in my opinion as long as the article title is "List of female chess players" and not "List of female GMs" it should actually contain a list of female chess players. If discussion here shows a consensus for the change you suggest I won't fuss about it.  Note that lists and categories are not mutually exclusive and sometimes there are good reasons to have both even for a single classification (see WP:NOTDUPE).  There is information in the list that isn't easy to get from the category such as biographical dates, titles and countries.  Whether that makes the list worth having and maintaining is a good question, and I don't have a strong opinion on it.  Arguably the list of female GMs is more redundant than the list of female players since you can easily find all female GMs by sorting the Sex column of List of chess grandmasters.  The list of female GMs does have some additional information here that won't be in the main list of GMs including Women's WC years and some notes.  Quale (talk) 04:04, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Well, by reverting you do sort of express a strong opinion on it, Quale... Your point about sorting the master GM list is taken, however - I hadn't noticed the M/F column over there (though one possible argument is the inability to sort on both sex and another criteria). As I see it, the options are:

Regards, CapnZapp (talk) 09:55, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
 * 1) keep article as is, despite how the list will inevitably be incomplete and out of date (even compared to Wikipedia's alternative = the category). As I see it, the existence of this article is mostly just a redundant set of data and just another maintenance burden. The question then becomes: who is prepared to stand up and argue the value of having the additional information in the list (as opposed to visiting the article of the chess player you're interested in) is worth the extra labor (and out of date data)? Are we sure that was why the article was created, as opposed to just a good-faith attempt to do what a category (and a sorted GM list) does with no work? Remember, this is not a well-maintained article such as Antiques Roadshow, an article whose episode count gets reliably updated.
 * 2) delete entirely, or maybe just have a stub directing the reader to the category and/or the GM list (with the sort advice)?
 * or, of course, something in between (which you can argue my edit counts as)
 * Look at the first two conversations at the beginning of this talk page. There is some discussion as to the desirability of having both a category and a list article.  Bruce leverett (talk) 13:14, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
 * I'm going to assume you didn't point towards 16 year old (!) discussions as relevant to the current discussion and instead thank you for providing context to the article's creation back in the day. Cheers CapnZapp (talk) 14:16, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
 * There seems to be some missing history. The older discussion refers to the talk page of the category for Female chess players, but the present incarnation of that talk page dates back only to 2017.  Meanwhile, one can look at Wikipedia:Categories for deletion/Category:Female chess players, which is 16 years old, and was never closed (perhaps they didn't formally close these things in those days); it appears that there were 6 keeps and 10 deletes, and someone thought that there was a consensus to delete, but I don't know what happened then.


 * Anyway, back to the present. I don't see an immediate crisis that would motivate removing the list of (non-titled) female players.  They're all notable; the list is reasonably close to up-to-date; it has to be maintained, but all list articles have to be maintained (as do all categories).  I would be in favor of maintaining the status quo, maybe just because it's the status quo.  Bruce leverett (talk) 15:17, 22 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Feeling that my revert was expressing a strong opinion is a reasonable view. What I really intended is that that major change should be discussed.  I also feel that if the article does not contain a list of female chess players then it should be moved to a name that correctly describes its contents.  I think I alluded to both reasons for the revert but perhaps did not make them explicit enough.  (I tend to write too much in talk and I want to be more mindful of the inconvenience and discourtesy that entails for other editors.)
 * I also think you overstate the amount of effort required to maintain the list. (As Bruce correctly notes, all list articles require maintenance.) I also think you overestimate the harm that might be caused by omission of a few names from the list.  In my view any harm is truly minimal and potentially temporary since missing players can simply be added when someone notices.  Finally, although always mindful that WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS can be a worthless argument in Wikipedia, I don't see how all of your concerns don't apply a hundredfold stronger to list of chess players.  Deleting a list of female chess players but leaving the other list would seem manifestly indefensible to me.  If these lists should be removed from Wikipedia then I think it would make sense to start there first because that list is much larger and more work to maintain.
 * As a final note, I didn't look at the 16-year-old deletion argument about the female chess players category, but I'm pretty certain I !voted delete back then. I had several reasons including that unequal treatment of male and female players should rightly require creation of male chess player categories and I thought the only good reason to create the categories is to fit them as subcategories under other categories for female athletes and in my view that was insufficient justification.  I've partly changed my mind since then.  I still bristle at the unequal treatment and I think male players should be categorized in the same way as female players so the female categories aren't seen as lesser or other compared to the main categories, but now I think that creating female chess player categories to allow subcategorization under other female person categories is sufficient reason to have the female chess cats.  Quale (talk) 04:31, 24 April 2021 (UTC)

'Deceased players noted by † symbol.' shall we omit saying that all female GMs are alive?
see the subject Thewriter006 (talk) 02:35, 7 January 2022 (UTC)
 * I know the German wikipedia uses † extensively in biographies, but I don't think it's appropriate for the enwiki to use religious symbols in that way. Instead, if this information is important I suggest adding biographical dates (birth and death years) to the entries.  At one time List of Jewish chess players tried to list active players in bold face.  I thought this to be stupid, and provided birth and death years instead. Quale (talk) 17:45, 8 January 2022 (UTC)

This list is short
Another editor has pointed out that Category:Chess woman grandmasters has many more links to articles about WGM's than this list, List of female chess players, has links to any women chess players at all. I suppose that means that this list is not being maintained as well as that category. What do you know. Bruce leverett (talk) 04:27, 3 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Bruce, I think at least we should put a (fairly prominent) non-pro-user friendly link on this page to the Category:Chess woman grandmasters page. (Currently the link can be found without description at the bottom under See Also, which doesn't imply that it's a Far More Examples Here page.) Speaking from my own non-pro user experience, I found this page very easily, whereas even using the Search bar I didn't find the Category page. I was left wondering why Wikipedia's information was so incomplete, or whether there was some unstated qualification filter being used that resulted in many other female "people who are primarily known as chess players" not being granted a presence here. When I finally did stumble on the Category page (did I mention I'm not a pro user?) my wonderment then changed to "why is this good information so deeply hidden, when it's actually all here?" Ranger86 (talk) 21:27, 3 August 2023 (UTC)

Descriptions for acronyms important?
I find it fairly easy to understand GM, IM, WGM, WIM, based on other info on this and other pages. But what is a WFM? Woman Female Master? Woman FIDE Master? I can think of nothing even slightly plausible that is not internally redundant. And it's also possible that non-chess-fan readers might stumble on WIM, for example. Ranger86 (talk) 21:34, 3 August 2023 (UTC)


 * So actually I find the information on the previously hard to find Category:Chess woman grandmasters page. 'Woman FIDE Master' it is—which seems silly to me. Why not WM? It's not WFGM or WFIM, after all. Ranger86 (talk) 21:39, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Agree, acronyms should be introduced when they are first mentioned. Greenman (talk) 22:18, 3 August 2023 (UTC)
 * WFM corresponds to FM as WGM corresponds to GM. But I agree that this should be explained. Bruce leverett (talk) 02:32, 4 August 2023 (UTC)

Do we need this article at all?
It's a pain to maintain and we already have Category:Female chess players with multiple subcategories (by nationality or FIDE title). The whole article looks redundant. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 05:08, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I don't see the need for theses kind of lists either. They add no additional info. -Koppapa (talk) 05:19, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
 * OK WP:CLNT doesn't support deleting this article, but I for one can't be bothered keeping this list up to date. By the Viktorija Cmilyte is a GM, not an IM. She's also the Speaker of the House in the Lithuanian parliament.MaxBrowne2 (talk) 09:15, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
 * There's a comment above where someone states that they found this page more easily than the categories, which speaks to the "each method of organizing information has its own advantages and disadvantages" point on WP:CLNT. I personally prefer lists (everything is on one page), but a downside is maintenance. There's obviously no requirement on anyone. This page would be more useful as a sortable table (where one could then sort by any combination of name nationality, title, year, much like List of chess grandmasters), but I'm unlikely to implement that myself. There's some duplication in lists too, for example the poorly-maintained List of chess players. Greenman (talk) 10:18, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Contrary to what I said in another thread, this list is indeed actively maintained, as one can see from the history.
 * Besides the advantages mentioned above, this list provides convenient access to birth dates, titles, and nationalities. The category for Female chess players provides nationalities, but only by separating into subcategories by nationality; one has to know the player's nationality (or title) to find the player.
 * Comparison with List of chess grandmasters is natural. That list has about 2000 entries, this one will have (if/when the WGM's and others are complete) around 1000, so it will be comparable in size.  One might expect that it would be comparable in problems, as well.  For instance, looking at the talk page (and talk page archives) for List of chess grandmasters, one sees frequent difficulties with nationalities and spelling of name, and occasional questions about birth year.  Even the most trusted sources are sometimes found to be getting things wrong.  Maintaining that list requires true dedication, and if this list becomes equally popular, it too would require such.
 * Thinking more about this, I realized that since entries in List of female chess players must be notable, you don't have quite the same problems with nationalities, spelling of name, and birth year, and general sourcing, that List of chess grandmasters has had. Those problems have to be solved by the biographical articles to which you link. You just copy from those articles; the only problem is updating your table when the articles to which it links are updated or corrected. Bruce leverett (talk) 22:33, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
 * To make it a sortable list, each item of information on which you want to sort it must have its own column. Thus, a column for title, a column for birth year, and a column for nationality.  Once the columns are in place, adding sortability is trivial. Bruce leverett (talk) 17:35, 4 August 2023 (UTC)