Talk:Parallel worlds chess

GNL and terminology suggestion
My last edit to this page made two changes:


 * 1) The hypothetical chess players are referenced with the generic "he". This is unnecessary and changing to "they" is under the purview of WP:GNL, and I will be submitting another edit to amend that shortly
 * 2) My previous edit also moved to change "man" and "men" in the context of the chess pieces to "piece" or "pieces". I did this because, although "chessman" and "chessmen" are common parlance within the chess community, other chess pages such as Chess do not use these terms, simply referring to the pieces as "pieces" as this is more common as far as the casual reader is concerned

IHTS reverted my edit because "'man/men' are board game terms and not under purview of WP:GNL". I never claimed to be making my second change under WP:GNL – only the first. I certainly cannot argue that they are board game terms. "Piece" is also a board game term, as it turns out

In my view, Chess can be considered a standard for how to describe chess on Wikipedia. Bringing the terminology in line with that used in other, similar, articles seems fair to me – Rhotias (talk) 14:10, 16 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Thx for your patience re my response. I've no problem w/ "On his first move, White may ..." → "On the first move, White may ...". (I just changed it back to your preference.) The wholescale change of "men" → "pieces", however, leads to issues. (Please see both Glossary of chess and Chess piece. "Piece" has three different meanings. "Man/men" is short for "chessman/chessmen" and has one meaning, covering all including pawns. [Which is why I specifically chose the term when composing this article. For clarity & simplicity.]) Re the single remaining occurrance of "his" in the article, I think it's clearer than "their", which can be ambiguous here (as at Losing chess; per Talk:Losing chess). Ok, does this satisfy (for now)? Thx for your consider. IHTS (talk) 22:40, 18 August 2016 (UTC)


 * Very well, I'm prepared to wait and see how the discussion shakes out on Talk:Losing chess, or wherever else it may go. Clearly this is a significant topic and changes can't be made on smaller articles until it's clear what direction they should go, if indeed it is concluded that there are grounds to make any change to pronouns at all. As for your point that "piece" has three different meanings, I'm still not convinced that there is any way a reader could be confused into thinking a meaning besides "any piece including pawns" applies in this context, as the clear absence of specific move rules for pawns would imply they cannot be moved at all. Flicking through some of the other articles which describe rules for chess, I see that the choice of using "chessmen" or "pieces" globally seems to vary fairly arbitrarily. For now I'm fine to leave the article as it is – Rhotias (talk) 13:18, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
 * Re your "the clear absence of specific move rules for pawns would imply they cannot be moved at all.", I don't see how you get there, seeing that pawns move as normal chess pawns is covered by: "Moves, captures, and pawn promotions conducted on levels 1 and 3 follow the same rules as in standard chess." So I don't know what you mean when you say there's no potential for ambiguity w/ "pieces" replacing "men". (Again, the inherent ambiguity potential is explained at both Glossary of chess and Chess piece. If you like to discuss that more, okay, but please be more specific by quoting article text and explaining what you mean.) As editor on many variant & game articles, I never use term "man" unless there's reason to do so. Your view that all chess-related articles s/ use terms consistently is a different topic, complicated by the fact that different articles have different needs based on different contexts re their rules presentations. Also, what's more vital (and for which WP guidelines already exist) is that there's consistency intra-article. (Am unaware of any guideline re inter-article consistency re term use, that'd be a topic for Wikipedia talk:CHESS; I doubt there'd be much interest there though, based on experience w/ other inter-article convention-making opportunities passed up.) Ok, IHTS (talk) 16:18, 19 August 2016 (UTC)


 * p.s. Oh, I don't totally buy that changing "men" to "pieces" had nothing whatever to do re gender neutral. (No bad faith intended. Both "he" and "man" were eliminated in the same edit. It's hard to imagine that gender neutral couldn't have been part of the impetus for the entire edit.) Ditto the ongoing resistance to term "men" in lieu of "pieces". IHTS (talk) 17:07, 19 August 2016 (UTC)


 * The reason article Chess does not use "man/men" is because it goes out of its way to avoid ambiguity by defining what "pieces" means: "Each player begins the game with 16 pieces of the specified color, which consist of one king, one queen, two rooks, two bishops, two knights, and eight pawns." (Obviously, I could've done similar for this article, Parallel Worlds, but chose not to. For simplicity & brevity, as long as a perfect board game term for the purpose existed. [Somehow I get the feeling that "men" as well as "chessmen" is wanted to be contended w/ by passionate supporters of gender neutral language. But are afraid to stipulate that at this time. But in future!?]) IHTS (talk) 17:46, 19 August 2016 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Three-Man Chess which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 05:32, 28 October 2019 (UTC)