Comments by FergusDuniho

Although I disagree with his solution, I share some of the same concern
that Derek Nalls has over the recommended variants list. In its present
form, continued expansion of the list would eventually dilute its value.
Instead of proposing to cap the list, I propose to break it down into four
tiers of recognition. These would be Classic, Vintage, Popular, and
Acclaimed. Classic would be the most exclusive tier, reserved for games
that are old, time-tested, and massively popular. In our lifetime at
least, it would be limited to Chess, Xiang Qi, and Shogi. Vintage would be
reserved for games that have remained popular well past the deaths of
their creators. Some examples of Vintage recognized variants would be
Alice Chess and Glinski's Hexagonal Chess. Popular would be for
relatively recent games that have attained a high degree of popularity.
Signs of this would include being sold as a commercial variant, being
played in tournaments held by CV organizations, such as AISE or NOST, or
being played by many people on PBM sites, such as Brainking. Some examples
of Popular recognized variants would be Gothic Chess, Ultima, and Smess.
Finally, Acclaimed would be used for relatively recent games that have not
attained such a high degree of popularity but which have at least won some
critical acclaim and general approval among members of this site. Some
examples of Acclaimed recognized variants would be Crazy 38's and
Wildebeest Chess.

By dividing the recognized variants into graduated tiers, we would
preserve the distinction of being a recognized variant while allowing
uncapped growth of the list. The more exclusive tiers would be harder for
games to reach, and new games wouldn't even qualify for the first two
tiers. Thus, the greatest growth of the list would be in the less
pretigious tiers, and this would preserve the integrity and usefulness of
the list. Beyond this, the four-tier system would make the list more
useful by giving more guidance to people who are new to Chess variants.

After I came up with the names for the four tiers, I noticed a nice bit of
serendipity. The initials of the four tiers, listed in order of prestige,
are CVPA, which can be used as an acronym for Chess Variant Pages Awards.
Thus, with the addition of the four-tier division of the recognized
variants, it might be fitting to rename this endeavor the Chess Variant
Pages Awards.

For now, I will ask for discussion of the merits of this plan and for
opinions on how the current recognized variants should be classified.

In going through the list of recognized variants, I noticed that some games
made the list for reasons of historical interest rather than because they
were popular or well-regarded. For example, the text for Tridimensional
Chess (Star Trek) says, 'The variant of three dimensional chess as it
appears in Star Trek may not deserve a recognition for its playability.
However, it is probably the most widely known variant three dimensional
variant of chess, due to its exposure in several episodes of the popular
Star Trek science fiction television series.' If the purpose of the
recognized variants list is help newcomers find games they will probably
like, it doesn't seem so useful to include mediocre games that are mainly
of historical interest. Short of editing the list myself, two solutions
come to mind. One is to create a fifth tier, which would be for games that
are mainly of historical interest. This tier might be called Noteworthy.
It might be suitable for Shatranj, Chaturanga, and Tamerlane Chess. The
other solution is to establish a procedure for weeding the list through
group consensus. It might be worthwhile to implement both solutions.

Here is a procedure I propose for weeding the list. When the members of a
tier exceed ten, hold a ranked ballot poll to completely rank the games in
the tier. One purpose for this would be to create a top ten list for the
tier, which would be displayed on this page. The other would be to
identify which game in the tier is held in lowest regard. This would be
the game that ranks at the bottom of the ranking established by the poll.
A second poll would then be held on whether to keep this game in the list.
This would be a simple 'Aye' or 'Nay' poll. If 75% or more of the
voters favored dropping the game from the list, then it would be dropped.
If there were still more than ten games in the tier, then a new poll would
be held for keeping or dropping the new lowest ranked game in the tier.
This process would repeat until the lowest ranked game had enough support
to stay or until there were only ten games left in the tier. Also, if a
game had survived this procedure the last time, or at least survived it
within the last year, and it found itself at the bottom again, it would
receive a temporary reprieve from being weeded out. The procedure would
not be used for weeding the list unless the bottom-most ranked game had
not been through this procedure the last time and had not been through it
within the past year. This is similar to Derek Nall's suggestion of
capping the list, but it allows the list to grow as long as all games in
the list are sufficiently well-regarded.

Again, comments are welcome. These are offered as suggestions, and I am
not yet saying that these are how things will be.

I don't think the categories should be watered down as Antoine has
suggested. Let me attend to the meanings of the words I chose for the
categories. A classic is something whose popularity has survived a
considerable passage of time. It is part of the definition of classic that
its value has been time-tested. Thus, a classic variant must be old enough
to be time-tested. This would immediately rule out such recent games as
Ultima and Fischer Random Chess, whose inventors are both alive. In
general usage, vintage is roughly a synonym of classic. As with classic,
time-testedness is an essential measure of what has vintage value. I chose
to use both Classic and Vintage, because there is a huge gulf between the
popularity of the top three and the popularity of other CV's of
time-tested, enduring value. The classics are the CV's that are so
massively popular and well-regarded that they serve as the standards by
which we judge other CV's. As for the Vintage games, I consider remaining
popular past the death of the inventor an important benchmark, because
sometimes a game will be popular largely through the activity of the
inventor. When this can be ruled out, and it can be seen that a game
remains popular on its own merits, then it has passed an important test of
time-tested value. The definitions that Antoine proposes for Classic and
Vintage make no reference to the significance that age and time-testedness
have in the meanings of these words.

His proposed definition of Popular is more watered down than what I
intended. I kept it stricter than this, because I would not presume to say
that my own games are popular just because several people are playing them
on Game Courier. Also, Antoine has left out Acclaimed, yet he hasn't
watered down his definition of Popular enough to cover such already
recognized variants as Crazy 38's and Flip Chess and Flip Shogi, which
aren't being played on Game Courier at all. One of the reasons I came up
with the tiers I did was to exhaustively categorize all the games that had
already been recognized. For this purpose, it is important to distinguish
between Popular and Acclaimed.

Ancient is one of the terms I considered for the tier I suggested calling
Noteworthy. What I have against the term Ancient is that it is purely
descriptive rather than normative. The terms I have suggested are all
normative, which means that they refer to the worth or significance of the
game. The term Ancient just refers to the age. I suggested the term
Noteworthy, because it can simply mean that a game is worth taking note of
for some reason. This would typically be for a game's historical
importance, but it would leave open the option of being noteworthy for
some other reason. Noteworthy games whose significance is not strictly
historic might include games from science fiction novels, such as Jetan,
or games that break world records, such as Charles Fort's Super Chess,
which may be the largest CV anyone has ever attempted to play.