Talk:Checkmate pattern

Chess Start‑class Mid‑importance

	Chess portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Chess, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Chess on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ChessWikipedia:WikiProject ChessTemplate:WikiProject Chesschess
Start	This article has been rated as Start-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

discussion

This article was created from individual stubs of the checkmates.

Epaulette mate may need to be moved here.

This article needs some cleanup. There is monotonous redundancy that isn't needed. It may be better to organize the mates into sections and subsections somehow. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 05:02, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

It certainly reads poorly saying "is a common method of checkmating" so many times. I would prefer seeing a section heading: "Common forms of checkmating" and then list all common mates under it. Also, I doubt how many of these are actually that common, especially since the list doesn't include the mate of two rooks (or queen), where the king is on the back rank, and rooks occupy ranks 7 and 8. 192.131.177.19 (talk) 12:47, 26 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]

The given Queen mate is actually a special case of the support mate which can be given at any juncture of the game where mated King is on the side of the board and the square opposite the side can be reached by an unattacked Queen which is covered by any piece - pawn, knight, bishop or rook, as well as a King. Murrel (talk) 18:47, 26 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Merge

I think there are a few Merge things to do to comply with Wikipedia's licensing requirements. Regards, SunCreator (talk) 15:42, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

I got tired last night - I'm finishing it up now. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 15:43, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

If I didn't make any errors, all of the articles are now redirects and the project tags have been removed from the talk pages. Next: remove them from index of chess articles, but I can't get to that right now. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 15:59, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Completed. That was more work than it seemed like it would be (22 articles I think). I'm now glad that it is an article by itself rather than being part of checkmate. I thought there were 6-8 of them, instead of 22. The article is about 14K, which would have mate checkmate too large. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 16:48, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Another reason for the merge is that I doubt that many people will type in "Cozio's mate" or "double bishop mate". Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 17:42, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Bubba73. I didn't like those checkmate articles, so you are one of my heroes today. If only they hadn't been created as separate articles to begin with, it would have saved you a lot of work. I griped about them, but you actually fixed it. That's much better than my approach. Quale (talk) 22:16, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you! Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 23:36, 21 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

references

Note on references - all of the sections that currently have no inline citations were referenced to the book by Schiller in their stub articles. Bubba73 ^{(You talkin' to me?)}, 05:36, 22 March 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Checkmate Patterns - Backlinks

I added backlinks to all the section headings in the Checkmate Patterns page. Quale removed them. I wrote him/her the following:

Quale - why did you remove the backlinks? What is the rationale for removing functionality?

I use this page a lot, it's a pain to navigate without the backlinks. With them, I can just click on heading, go to toc, and look up another mate. Often chessplayers need to do this, e.g. to distinguish between dovetail vs. swallowtail. It's quite standard to backlink to toc when pages have dozens or more lists of entries.

(Note: please don't say to use Home key, I want to click to entry, use the mousewheel to read, click to go back and lookup a new entry without having to take my hand off the mouse)

Refer me to a wiki guideline for practice prohibiting this if you could be so kind.

Is there a reason not to use them? There are about 30 entries, and navigating back and forth is tedious and more cumbersome than it need be.

I offer a rationale for adding functionality - what could the reasons for removing it be? None was offered in the edit.

A quick link to the backlinked version: [[1]]

Let me reiterate the problem and the solution...

The webpage has 30 different mates, and a text download of the page has over 1000 lines. This is so large as to be unwieldy, and navigation through the page is difficult and tedious.

Generally speaking, most users will come into the page and look up one entry. The current navigational structure is adequate, i.e. the TOC located at the top of the page.

However, a substantial minority of users will come to the page with the intention of looking up more than one mating pattern. There is also another category of users intent on looking up the name of a pattern they know, who might then need to reference several entries until they find the name of a pattern that matches.

For all of these categories of users the current navigation of the page is problematic for looking up multiple entries. If they already know the name of the mate, they might consider doing a text search which is far from optimal and won't be considered as a solution. Instead, users wishing to look up multiple entries will have to return to the top of the page to rescan the TOC for each new entry.

The crux of the matter, is the problem of returning to the TOC from within the webpage.

How is this done currently? Scrolling to the top of the page in such a large file is prohibitively slow, and so the wheel of the mouse is useless. A better solution is use the cursor to grab the window's scrollbar and drag it to the top. Or perhaps the HOME key on the keyboard could be used. Both of these solutions are suboptimal for a user wishing to navigate the page strictly with a wheel mouse. The keyboard requires user to switch hand positions; whereas the scrollbar solution requires the mouse cursor to make wide swings between the TOC on the left, and the scrollbar on the right.

How would it be done with backlinks? The user is already using the mouse to navigate the TOC to click on an entry. The TOC can be navigated easily by the wheel as can the short content of each mating pattern entry. Once an entry is read the user is but a wheel click or two from a section heading which can be clicked on to return to the TOC. The mouse cursor makes the minimal excursions and is ready to use to click on the next TOC entry just as it is readily positioned for clicking on a backlink. Just rinse and repeat for the lookup of each new entry.

It is a far superior method and is widely used in many HTML documents containing large lists (e.g. glossaries, etc.). I've laboriously expounded on the details in case some are not familiar with the utility of this technique.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.49.75.241 (talk) 17:16, 31 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I am not sure that the back links are needed. In the browsers I use, I can click on one of the sections. Then click on the back arrow in the upper left corner and it takes me back to right were I was in the TOC, even if I have scrolled in between. Bubba73 ^{You talkin' to me?} 03:46, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I replied on the user's talk page. It's an interesting idea that I haven't seen used before, although I'm really not fond of links in section headings. Now that he or she mentions it, I have seen that technique used in other HTML documents like FAQs. I don't think it is an accepted style on wikipedia.

Thanks for leaving me a message. Normally links aren't used in section headings. The first relevant guideline that I know of is MOS:HEAD, which says
Headings should not normally contain links, especially where only part of a heading is linked.

There is also Help:Section, but as far as I can see it doesn't address linking in headings. I don't see any mention of exceptions for articles with large numbers of sections and in fact I had never seen anyone link a section heading to the TOC before. My first thought was that I don't like it, primarily because I dislike links in headings, but I admit that I haven't given it much thought. It is an interesting idea, and your edit summary indicating that this is a "de facto" practice intrigued me. Is there a guideline or essay that suggests this linking, and do you have any other similar pages in mind to show as an example that link this way? I wouldn't suggest using the Home key, but I use the Backspace key frequently to go back. It seems to work well in this case as long as you jumped to the section by first selecting it from the TOC. Quale

(talk) 04:42, 1 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I remembered my wiki login, and am using it this time (I was anonymous before). I do apologize for not discussing the issue prior to implementing it, but I infrequently update wikipedia pages.

I am still trying to remember where I encountered lists with backlinks before. It is a little difficult for me to find the references, since glossaries and other such pages which use them are somewhat unmemorable. It is not as common as I originally thought for several reasons.

1) They are necessary only for very long lists.

2) They are not used where list entries are links to individual pages for each item (in other words, in pages which are not all-in-one lists, such as Checkmate Patterns).

3) Many pages which have a need for such navigational aid instead utilize frames, so as to have the TOC always available, typically on the left side of the page.

In lieu of an optimal reference I will cite an interim page, found on [Microsoft Glossaries]. Please note that Microsoft does not adopt a universal convention. But on the [Excel 2007 glossary] we have an example which is very similar in spirit. It is a rather extensive glossary, of the all-in-one page I alluded to. The TOC is just the letters of the alphabet, which form the sections (there are subitems within each section obviously). Each section header is not itself a backlink, but there is a "TOP OF PAGE" backlink immediately to its right. This is functionally equivalent (a bit more intrusive and not as streamlined, see below in the discussion of printing), and would be an acceptable compromise though not preferred.

I agree with Bubba73 that I have probably encountered this technique in FAQ's. I will try to find other references.

[Update] One cannot find a better example to emulate, in so many ways, than Python (the programming language). Their FAQ indeed uses backlinks, I am most gladdened to report. The Python 2.7.3 FAQ (forget that 3.0 stuff!) can be found here [Python 2.7.3 General FAQ]. The backlinks they use not only link to the TOC, they actually go to the specific line in the TOC corresponding to the specific section, which is most excellent!

Another example can be found in the [Adobe Digital Editions FAQ].

I also looked at the MOS section on Section Headings [1.3 Section Headings] as Quale quoted above. It certainly suggests that section links are allowed, albeit not encouraged. But Checkmate Patterns, and if I might add the MOS itself, could certainly benefit from using backlinks.

Next, I want to the use of the Back Arrow, which is equivalent to using the Backspace key. The first issue involves the stated objective of ease of use, especially for wheel mouse users. I would encourage you to experiment with the old version I installed to better appreciate the argument. It can be found here:

[Backlinked TOC version]

The idea is to navigate the page strictly using the mouse wheel and buttons while minimizing unnecessary movements of the mouse cursor. This argues against using the Backspace key for right-handed users, since to use the Backspace key involves taking the hand off the mouse. The use of the Back button doesn't have this problem, but does involve moving the cursor between the upper left hand corner and the center of the screen for each lookup item. With backlinks this is not necessary, as the cursor is usually with 2 inches of each link needing to be clicked (again, try the old version to verify this). And as you wheel down the text of an entry, the next section heading is there to be used to return to the TOC, you need not even scroll back. It is quite convenient, and obviously motivates its fans towards prophesying its benefits! (And it might be very useful in the touchscreen world, which is similar to using just the wheelmouse for navigation).

There is another, more subtle, consideration to be mentioned. Using the Back button causes the history to be forgotten the next time the TOC is used. Now, the user may or may not desire that. But it could be that they would like to use the Browser's History dropdown list to see the entries they looked up. More likely than wouldn't, but the backlink technique does allow them to keep their history within the page, unlike the Back button. The user gets more options, which is normally a good thing, in other words.

Next, what are the arguments against? It is somewhat unconventional - agreed, but many good ideas were once. It might confuse users. Perhaps the very first time they click on a section, maybe with the expectation of going to a nonexistent detailed page. But returning to the TOC is actually self-explanatory and a logical place to return to anyways. The last point to be made is that the section heading backlinks are unobtrusive for printing, and invisible when printing a page in B&W (unlike the technique of putting TOP OF PAGE for the backlink).

Well, enough for now (and maybe even too much!)

Interlist-wiki (talk) 05:40, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My problem with the idea is that the blue link is undifferentiated from a regular wikilink. I think that would be inherently confusing to a reader. (You click on the link and what ... wonder what you get? Wait and see what you get? And how then would anyone know, without looking in the HTML code, whether it is working correctly/as intended, or, if they are encountering a software bug?) Ihardlythinkso (talk) 10:17, 2 February 2013 (UTC)[reply]