Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Greatest chess player of all time


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result was keep and cleanup, source, and remove OR. ··· 日本穣 ? · Talk to Nihon joe 21:16, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

Greatest chess player of all time

 * — (View AfD)

Personal essay. Speculative, inherently unencyclopedic article topic. Ryan Delaney talk 17:26, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Merge the factual content into another chess-related article or articles. The article name isn't an official title and some of it seems speculative – it might even fall under WP:OR or WP:NOT – but a lot of the article past the "Possible criteria" heading might be well-suited to a more scholarly and less tentative article or articles. – ipso 17:37, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep, but it needs some work (the "personal essay" part). It gives several possible critera and then gives ones according to the various criteria.  Bubba73 (talk), 23:50, 2 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep but needs work. Parts are personal essay, but other editors have added parts and the article is gradually improving. The fact is numerous notable chess players and writers have speculated on who is the greatest, and this deserves to be documented. Rocksong 00:56, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Comment Perhaps this should be moved to something along the lines of Films considered the greatest ever? Night Gyr (talk/Oy) 08:33, 3 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Keep, per Rocksong, providing all editors agree that it is Mikhail Tal. Squiddy | (squirt ink?)  14:19, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Comment on the comment above: I think it is a good idea to change the title, and put in "considered" as suggested above. Bubba73 (talk), 14:44, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Very strong keep. I have personal familiarity with this topic, although I had not seen this article before. It is a notable subject among chess players and fans.  Among the several hundred articles in the Chess category and its subcategories, this one certainly belongs.  The first part of the article reads like an essay, but the later part about computer analysis of human moves comes from a chessbase.com article, which I think is cited, and the chessbase.com article in turn cites an article from the ICGA Journal, a serious scholarly publication specializing in chess and other computer games.  I would recommend some cleanup.  Perhaps the title should be changed to "Historical Ranking of Chess Players," and the article will begin by explaining why such intergenerational rankings are difficult, then it will go into the greatest player ever debate.  YechielMan 17:15, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep but rename to something like Top Ranking Chessplayers by ELO standards Alf photoman 17:29, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep This article outlines some metrics used to decide the best chess player, and offers some suggestions that have made by published sources. Since it doesn't make final statements like "X was the greatest ever, end of story.", I don't have a problem with it. No objection to a rename in principle, but we can take that up on the article's talk page. Quack 688 02:37, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep, and I think this might be aiming towards qualifying per WP:SNOWBALL as well. Cheers, Lankybugger 00:01, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Strong keep - obvious keep. All the key facts are verifiable. Nominator's statement "inherently unencyclopedic article topic" is wrong. BlueValour 13:45, 11 January 2007 (UTC)
 * Keep but it should be reorganized pjahr 21:27, 24 March 2007 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.