Checkers & Draughts Wiki

[Palomino]

Way kool John, I want to check it out more when I have more time. (just took a peek)

..."Pal"

[Alex_Moiseyev]

John, you tough !

[liam stephens]

It appears the new wiki site:

1. Categorizes players outside of the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom, in the main, as non-serious.

2, Has deleted any reference to Ireland, ( possibly the No 2 ranked country at present in terms of tournament playing strength ) that was inserted.

3. Removed the edit facility that would allow any of these slighting omissions to be corrected.

[liam stephens]

Thank you John, I see it now has been corrected.

[Alex_Moiseyev]

Just registered. With my perfect English I do not pretend to create a common articles. I plan to update only "Alex Moiseyev" session with list of short biography facts.

[liam stephens]

John Acker wrote:

Incidentally, would you be interested in working on a section on Ireland's contributions to draughts? I'm sure you know more about the subject than I do.

Thank you John for that offer, but I must decline. That would be a major undertaking requiring significant research. With my current involvment as editor of the Irish Newsletter and co-editor of the OMOCH together with my other draughts activities, I just do not have the time available to do it at present.

[Palomino]

Hey,
Doesn't have to be a big commitment. Just register and if you want to add something once in a while, you can.
I register just so I could edit Alex Moiseyev's page. (added to his birth date > February 19)

[Lindus Edwards]

What an absolutely wonderful idea. It must be said that you do everything excellently John. Well done.

[Alex_Moiseyev]

John, many thanks for editing my biography ! I will continue and finish it soon. I have a document on Russian - 50 biography facts in 50 years which I created in the beginning of this year and all I need - just translate it. This document also includes my most recent activity in the past few years in 10x10 composition.

Beijing event also is on this list and we can give here a proper link to WMSG site.

[Alex_Moiseyev]

Someone has definetely to contribute to Checkers Wiki with mail play info ... maybe Mac, Tommy, Jim, Dennis ... ?

[Alex_Moiseyev]

You stated that the Lowder match had 19 draws, but other sources say 17. Which was it?

17, it was typo on my side.

Someone has put a few capsule biographies of online-only players on the site. Should we have a policy about what type of players may have biographical pages on the wiki?

Thats a good question which can ruin everything if not handled properly.

Here is my personal view ... we should allow ANYONE to post biography info, but moderator should create a proper category system ... something like CHAMPIONS, PLAYERS, PROMOTERS, AUTHORS, OTHER etc . Online players can be placed under OTHER. In this case we'll be honest with readers and they have enough information who is who.

Someone can include here online achievements ... why not ??? The Russian proverb says - "who has eyes can see !"

[liam stephens]

An editor in charge is essential.

The world wide web Wikipedia has an unenviable reputation for errors and unreliability in the contents of its site. It is never safe to take anything written there for granted without first checking it against an independent source. Indeed many of the entries are tagged “Citation needed” A good example was the early page on draughts computers. The first draughts computer programme to be written was invariably credited to A. L. Samuel, an error which I corrected many times only to see it revert . The same error occurs in most of the references appearing in articles about “ Chinook solving of the Game” Well guys, it simply ain’t true. The first draughts programme was written by C S Strachey of the University of London (Reference – Proceedings of the Association for Computing Machinery Meeting, Toronto, 1952 – Logical and non-mathematical programmes by C. S. STRACHEY)
I believe someone once said “ Most good ideas originate from this side of the pond “ !

The following is from Wikipedia. –

In his spare time Strachey developed a program for the game of draughts, which he finished in February 1951. The draughts program ran for the first time on 30 July 1951 at the National Physical Laboratory (NPL). When Strachey heard about the Manchester Mark 1 , which had a much bigger memory, he asked his former fellow-student Alan Turing for the manual and transcribed his program into the operation codes of that machine by around October 1951. The program could "play a complete game of draughts at a reasonable speed".

John, you are welcome to put the above information in the wiki if you wish. It is the limit of what I am able to provide at the moment.

[Palomino]

John wrote:

Someone has put a few capsule biographies of online-only players on the site. Should we have a policy about what type of players may have biographical pages on the wiki?

Well, I agree that we can legitimately recognize the importance of online checkers, and I do plan to have a section on it. However, I don't really see the point of just posting online aliases (as opposed to legitimate real names) and saying that so-and-so is a strong player.

My thinking is that a separate category for online player bios would be great but it should also identify them by their real name, location and such.

Some thing like:

checker_guy @ yahoo.com
Real Name:
Jon Doe
His - city, state, country and such.

With some online players changing their IDs every time the wind changes we could end up with several different online player bios and they all might be the same person. I know they could make up fake real names for each online ID but I believe it would be good to include them as long as it doesn't turn out to be some unforeseen problem.

..."Pal"

[Alex_Moiseyev]

Pal, I like your idea - it is a nice development of my thoughts. I think it will be great if online players somehow comit to real life. They can even display honorably their online rating. If they put a fake name, they only punish themselves, because they can't show it to their friends and buddies.

[Alex_Moiseyev]

As online checkers veteran in good standing, with more than 10 years (since spring 1997) experience, I am going also to add soon my nick to ONLINE PLAYERS and write something about online play, compare different online generations, specifics, strength and weakness of online play.