Comments/Ratings for a Single Item

I was there when I checked. It is there as "No Castling Random Chess", not as "Random No Castling Chess".

@ Fergus (or H.G., or others):

Is this the best 'thread'/place (assuming only just one such place is all that is needed) for discussion/complaints in a (mostly?) general sense, about issues/process/speed/(etc.[?]) regarding the topic of how a given CVP item (such as Rules Page) goes through the process of being published on CVP site by editor(s)/(aspiring authors), from start to the (hoped for) last step of publication?

For example, I see that there is a 'Graphics' (i.e. has documentation that may apply to any policy discussion) sub-section on this thread's Page (a digression: I tried clicking on that 'Graphics' link, but in my case did not reach that sub-section at all, a minor detail). That would be a good place for you and H.G. to post (possibly copiously) about such stuff on, rather than on the Page for one of my submissions waiting for approval to be published for example. Then note right below that sub-section on Graphics there is a sub-section that includes [pc] 'Shortcuts' documentation; again you and H.G. might prefer to carry on any debate about that here, too.

I may, meanwhile, choose to merely wait out any/most discussion that arises, even if not written here in this thread, on such general policy matters for CVP editor(s)/contributors.

A feeling I have about 'process', though, is that there may be an elephant in the room. A rather humungous one, in fact. It relates to any unsuccessful attempt to get a given item published relatively speedily, if said item is thought by editor(s) even to be just a shade less than 100% clear that the item would be normally be perceived to be virtually flawless. Then, the possible said humungous elephant in the room is: is there a concern that, after a given item by a given author is published, if only with just close to minimal due diligence by editor(s), that said author, after an indefinite length of time just might not visit CVP for quite a while (or perhaps even by chance events, nevermore), and editor(s) in place on CVP at a future point in time desire that a change be made to an item previously published by said author?

Well, if such a (hypothetical!?) scenario does indeed happen now and again, well, is that such a horrific tragedy for CVP site, in a significant number of instances? Even if it seems so, I'd guess there'd typically be so few changes wished of said absent author of a given published item by editor(s) that they just might, you know, make it themselves with relative ease, rather than waiting for it possibly to be done instead, in the fullness of time, by any said (i.e. possibly long absent from CVP site) author? At least that sort of relative quick fix as needed would probably be the case for virtually any items that have been published in, at the least, the last several years (pick a number of years for a rough estimate, if any prefer to), I'd also hazard to guess.

To conclude, especially re: a relatively recent pet peeve of mine (re: CVP) that is still applicable: namely, the timely publication of a given CVP item that seems to be fairly polished being quite possibly heavily hindered by what I'd perceive as mostly 'nitpicking' (that perhaps may be one [relatively small?] reason that CVP site just might be short on the number of Members who have visited recently at this time, judging by the number [over a given period of time] recent CVP Game Courier logs and [for the same period of time] recent Comments on CVP, in terms of total number of Members' names that pertain, excluding any duplication of said names in adding up a total).

Perhaps, for example (though I may underestimate technical difficulties), striving for any necessary perfecting of chess-server-like time controls that smoothly support blitz games (ideally on Game Courier[?]) might be one possibly more productive use of time in terms of popularizing/improving CVP site on the whole in the eyes of at least some potential CVP Members, alone. I know this probably is only a one-person task that might be taken care of in due course, if in fact possible/(not yet perfected), but if I have time, I may later have some suggestion(s) on how editor(s) in general might spend any time that they could possibly free up rather than striving for perfection, a philosophy I have learned brings, over time, diminishing returns, from my career as a chess master (reinforced after reading the words of one chess grandmaster who thought along such lines, in his, as a guideline, rejecting the philosophy of searching doggedly for a perfect move to play at the chess board in a tourney, but to choose instead a relatively reasonable move, sparing himself time and energy, leading frequently to better results in the tourney, compared to those of a typical perfection-seeking rival grandmaster, [if curious, read V. Hort's chapter in an old book titled something like 'How to Open a Chess Game', if you can locate a copy]).

Anyway, as I alluded to much further above, I may well wait for any further discussion on CVP policy between editor(s) to settle down (perhaps even while chewing on some popcorn at times, if I can easily stomach it while reading). Anyway it's past my bedtime. I'd best try to get a significant amount sleep way more often than for several nights of late, lest I eventually need a sanity hearing for that reason, alone. Good night.

Regards, KP

Who do you think you are fooling? You obviously have no intention at all fixing anything ever to these submissions, if they would be published with these 'minor flaws'. You have had ages to do so. But instead of spending 10 minutes to address the criticism, you rather spend months of waiting, and hours of writing complaints. And now that all arguments you brought forward have either been refuted as false or irrelevant, you try it in this devious way?

If the reason for not yet being published is merely that the editors involved in approving submissions are overloaded, being patient until your turn comes up will eventually help. If such editors, however, think the presentation is inadequate, and needs to be fixed first, no amount of waiting will do you any good. Inadequacies do not disappear with the passage of time, and the desire to get the thing published fast is entirely yours; the editors would never get impatient, even if your submission sits there for a hundred years.

I looked back to the beginning of this thread, to have a look at what the initial criticism was. And it seems that what I remarked then still applies: you submit a low-effort, low quality (i.e. just a static diagram, using a deprecated piece set), and then submit some 14 other, nearly identical articles (just changing the image and description of one of the participating piece types). I called this 'cloning', and raised the question whether it makes sense to have so many nearly identical pages here. Usually such tiny variations on a variant are mentioned in the Notes sections.

Aurelian has suggested you should publish these 15 variants as a 'collection' in a single article, like he did in a similar case. You consistently ignore him. People have posted Interactive Diagrams of this particular variant, with good quality graphics, which would have taken you about 20 seconds to copy-paste into your article, to remove most of the voiced objections. You ignored that too.

I don't think there is any flaw in the submission / approval system here. The problem is entirely in the way you (refuse to) deal with criticism.

I usually leave the handling of submissions to the editors who take this on as their main responsibility. HG and I both tend to focus on programming rather than submissions. There are two main reasons a submission may go a long time without being published.

1. Editors are too busy or inactive.
2. Authors are ignoring the questions or requests for changes made by the editors or other commenters.

Remember that the primary desire to get an article published belongs to the author. As an editor, I do not have any particular investment in getting a particular article published. I’m busy working on my own projects. As an author, it is your responsibility to cooperate with the editors and make sure everything is proceeding in a timely manner. If editors are waiting for you to do something, they may just put your submission aside until you do what was requested and in the meantime turn their attention to something else.

It might be desirable, though, to come to a consensus about our policy versus 'serial publication' amongst all editors, also those not daily involved in judging submissions. If someone would submit, say, a modest variant which replaces the Queen by a Queen that also can rifle-capture adjacent pieces, but otherwise is orthodox. In itself this seems worthy of publication. But then would submit 6 more identical articles where he replaces the word Queen and the image of it by an RN, BN, KN, RC, BC, or KC compound (all augmented with the adjacent rifle capture).

Do these 'clones' all deserve to be published as well? Or should we say: "just add a sentence in the Notes section of the article you already have that mentions that the game can also be played with RN, BN, ... as the super-piece"?

@Kevin: All of us are trying to help you in our little or not so little way. I personally have offered to help,although my laptop is broken for now I will in the near future. I too like what HG calls cloning. I do though agree with HG that it is hectic (my own words) for editors and users to see the almost same article again and again. I was actually inspired by your earlier creations with frog, modern elephant, and phoenix/waffle. And I have made some new games respecting some of your own principles. You can take a look at my article with those games, to learn how to handle collections. I consider cloning to be a pejorative word in this context though, that should be used only for criticism. Collection I think should be the word for respectable closely related games. But for some reason, Kevin, you indeed, as HG also puts it, disregarded my suggestion. I know now how to do those complex diagrams with buttons and if you guide me through what you need I'm happy to help. This would also help not highlighting a certain game and give all games equal footing when read by the users. I say this as HG's method of writing about some games in the notes.

@Kevin. The only issue I foresee any is that not all the combinations are present in your variants of courier chess. For example adding an extra fibnif/lancer, modern elephant, frog, whatever the vNW would be called, phoenix/waffle, and then an archbishop or chancellor, or BWD or RFA would result in 5*4=20 collection items(let's call them this way). That is actually easier to do then an subset of them. But we can work through that though. And remember that the community helps, if you ask the right questions!

Note that I am not saying that all Kevin's unpublished submissions are so similar that they should be in the same collection. But Centaur Spiel and Janus Spiel only differ from Accelerated Courier Spiel in that there are two C or two A instead of A + C, and that seems worth hardly more than a footnote.

Kirin, Waffle and Lancer Spiel are a bit less similar, because these start the pieces in different locations. But they are still very similar in character because of the presence of Guard and Centaur. Perhaps more than a footnote, but a collection that treats them on equal footing (like CwDA) would be a better solution, I think.

Horse-Wazir Spiel is sufficiently different in character to warrant an article of its own, I think. Unlike the others, which add super-pieces, it only adds minors.

Indeed!

Maybe there should be a separate Collection template to select when submitting a series of games.

I added some support for collections in the Interactive Diagram (betzaNew.js only). This was fairly simple. There now is a new parameter set=N, with default value 0. This can be used to sub-divide the piece definitions into sets; all definitions that follow a set=N line would be considered to belong in set N, until the value of the set is changed again.

By default only the definitions in set 0 would be considered; definitions of the other sets will be ignored. But it is possible to call the function SwitchDiag(active, W, B) with the extra parameters W and B, to add white pieces from set W and black pieces from set B. The piece-definition lines in the specified sets would be parsed, and included in the piece table, but the pieces of the 'wrong' color in the setup field would be ignored.

Note that you would need symmetry=none for this to work in a different-army context. The other symmetries only mention the white pieces anyway, and then automatically place the corresponding black piece in the symmetric location, so that both colors are controlled by the W parameter.

Note that you would have to create the buttons with the desired names for the variants in the collection yourself in the HTML code for your page. In this comment I put the HTML code

<input onclick="SwitchDiag(active,1,1);" style="width:150px" type="button" value="FIDE"/>
<input onclick="SwitchDiag(active,2,2);" style="width:150px" type="button" value="fairy"/>
<input onclick="SwitchDiag(active,1,2);" style="width:150px" type="button" value="FIDE-fairy"/>

This is great!

There still might be an issue with the promoChoice, when that should be dependent on the selected sets. I fixed the parsing of promoChoice such that an empty string now results in all non-royal, non-promoting pieces that end up in the table. (This had always been the intention, but was not working because promoDepth was not set to the zone depth in that case.) This would be sufficient for CwDA, but cannot handle collections with different complex promotion rules.

Perhaps it should be made possible to specify a promoChoice within the sets, which then could also be ignored if the set was not selected. This would still be problematic when two sets are selected in a different-armies context, because the second would overwrite the first. Perhaps the values should be appended, with an initial empty string (which then also would be the default).

Currently morph can also not be used within a set > 0, because when the set is not selected the morph would still be parsed, and count for the last piece that was accepted so far. Even if that was from another set. So I suppose morphs must also be suppressed depending on whether the set these are defined in is selected or not. That would offer the opportunity to give different sets pieces with their own promotion rules. By defining a promoChoice with multiple promotion sets in set 0, and then have the morph in the set refer to the applicable one.

[Edit] I now set it up that way. The promoChoice values in selected sets (or set 0) are accumulated, and morph instructions in inactive sets are ignored.

Look, H.G. (and Fergus),

I've been a CVP contributor for quite a few years. H.G., please be a little bit kinder. If I may though, I'll repeat something I mentioned elsewhere. You, H.G., do not (as is stated elsewhere) have any responsibility for the actual approval (regardless of speediness) of publication of any item on CVP site. You've (as is also stated elsewhere) modestly denied yourself that particular honor. You do, though, Comment (even heavily, at times) about any members' submission awaiting for possible approval by editor(s) who do in fact have that honor. However, as I alluded to elsewhere, your Comments about aspiring authors' items (that are as yet to be published on CVP site) seem more often harshly critical, rather than nearly as often giving even minor praise (or leniency, i.e. at least refraining from commenting, when there might be reasonable doubt), it seems to me, though I am not certain of how to weigh all of that.

Your not being eligible to approve for publication an item on CVP site might be something Fergus may have overlooked, in stating his two points about possible reasons as to why at times submissions in waiting are not published as yet, H.G. Either that, or Fergus himself did not emphasize enough to me (or to other potential contributors who were viewing a given Comment of his, way back in time) much earlier that he absolutely agreed with you, H.G., i.e. many months earlier, that my waiting submissions at the front of my 'pipeline'. That is, if Fergus agreed with you much earlier, months ago, that they (i.e. my submissions at the front end of my pipeline) must first have diagrams using SVG set figurines to have any hope to be published, at all, rather than (in my case, besides those of any other possibly affected aspiring items' authors, I guess) my using certain set(s) I may prefer to choose. As it happens, the diagrams were in fact already done by me, in all cases, and did I chose such set(s) that could well be deemed unsightly by comparison to SVG ones. Thus I may well be (yet again) S.O.L., to some degree, in terms of my personal luck on CVP site as an aspiring author of a given item. That could well be the case for all of my (9) submissions waiting in the front of my 'pipeline' (though just for starters), as in all of my submissions diagrams I happened to choose set(s) that could well be deemed unsightly by comparison to SVG set(s).

Note however that at this time it is still not 100% clear to me that Fergus is dogmatically requiring that preference of SVG sets over certain set(s) be absolute for a contributor to follow as a rule, as an all-but yet to be rubber-stamped official policy for CVP site (most notably of me, for starters). In any case it was not clear to me, which, if any, editor(s), were assigned to examine some/(all of) my (9) submissions waiting for approval. That is, I did not know who were the assigned editor(s), if any, on my 9 cases, in each of those long months I waited (at times I visited this CVP site less than hour, and less than every day of a given week, I admit). I was not being a smart-aleck in waiting during those months, in fact. I had something like a then horrifically hectic life to live, often complicated, and even literally painful at times, as unforeseen events arose in it. Pretty busy, anyway. In some ways my life is still all of that, to a degree.

Also, H.G., you commented something to Aurelian, whom I may have gotten back to myself eventually by way of a reply (albeit which might then, I still fear - as if my being once bitten, twice shy - by way of chance events, somehow spiral out of control by way of unforeseeable ramifications developing on CVP site alone, such as exchanges of Comments on CVP site, in a long-drawn out manner like the present discussion has, with the final number of posters involved being unknowable, too - I hope I can soon set such fears aside, when I have more time to spare, beyond participating in this thread alone). Anyway, H.G., in your Comment that I am replying to, you wrote to Aurelian to the effect that (more specifically than before, in a reply of yours to me), just some (i.e. certain sub-groups!?) of my (9, for starters[!?]) submissions might, just might, be 'cloned' together, rather than your earlier apparently (though I am going by recent memory alone) rather sweeping generalization (it seemed to me) about why don't I just clone them all (first 9 in my 'pipeline', for starters[!?]) as if all 9 (for starters) together.

If my memory serves more or less correctly in that regard, that in fact may be indicative of a tendency you seem to have, that I think I have discerned now and then, over the years, though my opinion is of course subjective, and in my case I admit I may not have all the relevant instances (or read carefully enough in places, at times) to fully back up my observation. Anyway, the tendency I feel I have observed, over the course of years (though it's good advice, I have learned, not to generalize too frequently - marriages and friendships can be weakened, if not destroyed, by such a thing) is that now and then you (and this seems applicable to Fergus, too) have 'moved the goalposts', in regards to your Comments (and/or standards that are expected of others to notice/follow, in Fergus' case) on this CVP website; such movements of said goalposts, as I perceive them to be, are at times breathtaking to me (though that may not quite be the best way in general to describe them, in the case of some such movements I myself learned of, at a particular moment).

Maybe it's just me (noting first I could be especially prone to feel any grief that is a result, my often not keeping up with the latest hardware/software/internet developments - that is, sometimes I feel marginalized, similar to, perhaps, at least some who lack in health, wealth, literacy, etc., in any particular walk of modern life), but it seems many a time that around the very time I want to get some submissions published (I've been a CVP member since 2015), some general contributors' requirement(s) for CVP have very recently changed, or happen to change while any of my submissions (if not all) are still waiting in my own 'pipeline'. That's just my bad luck, I thought, as every instance of policy change(s)/additions, that I had no inkling about, arose. On top of that, there were (at times overlapping) instances of, say, new Diagram Designer features, or a relatively recently prominently[?] displayed 'Tools' list of Menu options to click on (such as for making Interactive Diagrams) being perfected right around such time(s) I made a 'batch', of the at the least several submissions, that I more or less submitted about at the same time, in such cases as if my habit, perhaps.

Then, at times the CVP site crashed on a regular basis, though the last case of it that I knew, vaguely as a memory, was quite a few years ago, to add to any misfortune I may have had, in even beginning the process of posting to CVP site, for editor(s) to examine, just one submission I had ready on my drawing board, though I assume that was both my bad luck, as well as everyone's misfortune (to a lesser or greater degree). Not even counting any unforeseen minor/major glitches re: affecting albeit temporarily how fully functional CVP site was, that happened over the years at times. Though that's perhaps just long ago since the last case I might vaguely recall, that sort of thing just might (possibly heavily) delay some/any one's hopes of publishing item(s), alone.

That's another reason to publish items swiftly after minimal editor(s) due diligence, as a rule for CVP editor(s), lest some potential gem of an as yet unpublished CV invention not see much light of day, indefinitely. I'd note that's opposed to a seemingly significant number of apparently outright howlers that I've seen that are denoted as CV inventions - though I may be biased, as a chess master - that seem to sail right through to publication on CVP site, since I first joined as a member here in 2015, as if in such cases of swift publication of such howlers, it is perhaps mostly due to their being invented by an aspiring author on CVP who happened to have especially good skills/stamina applicable to CVP site.

Again, as I noted elsewhere, perhaps there's reason(s) why the number of CVP members who post on the site, or play on Game Courier, on a regular basis, seems to me to be steadily dwindling (may be an inaccurate description of the decline, for those who care about it). I now offer one analogy, to start with, that may be applicable and or useful, to illustrate one of the possible reasons I alluded to here and there in my previous paragraphs (or perhaps posts, in case[s]): my father as a rule tries to stay away from stores that have their aisles radically re-arranged, especially if far too frequently, in regards to where any particular kind of merchandise is to be found. Never mind his attitude about malls that are sort of like a game of Snakes And Ladders, in terms of how to access a given store (on a given floor) that could be reached in a far more direct manner, instead of the allowed choices of routes in terms of the escalators, stairways or elevators that are on offer. Plus, don't get he or I started on stores that are similarly tedious to navigate, as though trying to get through a maze with only one solution, like the IKEA chain of stores, it seems as a rule, last time I went through one such store - perhaps the case for IKEA stores worldwide[?].

Contrary to some of H.G.'s earlier assertions, note I am objecting (though so far it's just for the time being, or maybe the foreseeable future, that I balk), re: the notion of my re-touching all 9+6=15 my submissions (15x2 in a way, roughly, if to count possibly re-touching my Settings Files for them, if it is required later that they look the same way as their rules pages' diagrams, if such pages are ever published), on more consideration(s)/principles than he may have more fully worked out, or perhaps even imagined, concerning where I am coming from. As an aside, I am trying my best to ignore my somewhat high blood pressure (as I imagine it to be), while trying to imagine various sides of this 'debate' re: CVP editorial policy, and more, in this thread.

As a second, somewhat more lengthy, aside, bear in mind that I do care (at least at present, still) about the welfare of this CVP site, and CVs in general, and such altruistic considerations/principles weigh in significantly enough, in my thought of (at least at this time) not quite yet caving in. That is, to whatever further sort of arm-twisting, etc., that might possibly arise in this thread alone - or, alternatively, I may begin to think of my visiting CVP site less often each week, and perhaps only briefly so on a given day, for at least a while. I am relatively new in learning the possible effects on someone who is increasingly advanced in age, in person. Also bear in mind I (albeit mostly long ago) volunteered to serve in three governance bodies/levels of rated organized chess in Canada, sometimes three at once. Thus, I am not altogether unfamiliar with the concept of being altruistic and thoughtful, in regard to at least giving some input concerning how to try to further popularize a given CV. Albeit, that's just for the single CV I then concentrated on (i.e. FIDE Chess, itself), and mainly concerning possibly increasing the frequency with which it is played over-the-board, and/or written about, in a national, provincial or regional setting, in a perhaps fairly typical nation on earth in many respects, as perhaps Canada is. Plus, I am not altogether unfamiliar with the need, and performance, of sheer hard 'grunt' work, when justified, at least when I was significantly younger/healthier.

Getting back to what was a major thought in my second last paragraph, of my all but vehemently objecting in general re: re-entering things for a given item by an aspiring author, due to what I dub as 'nitpicking', at best, by way of any CVP editorial policy (or even by possible subjective views held by CVP editor(s)). Again, a very relevant example is the so far depressing/nightmarish case (as I see it personally, anyhow) of my, at present, as yet unpublished submissions, still in my personal 'pipeline', the last time that I looked. That's while the possibly(?) still not yet settled critical issue, that's hanging over me like a big and dark cloud, may continue to remain a topic for editor(s)' discussions that are on and off, concerning SVG sets being absolutely preferred to certain piece sets (among them unfortunately may be ones I happily chose 'big time', long ago) that are not SVG sets. If I ultimately feel a need to re-enter FEN fields for many items (or even Settings Files) of mine, I could indeed do that (albeit with a somewhat crestfallen look on my face, perhaps).

It goes against what was formerly a relatively minor principle of mine I did not stick to often enough in the past, i.e. to try to not give in too much too often, perhaps even if to mollify those members who might nitpick any time later, after an item of mine had even been already published long ago, at least if it was over something that seemed trivial to me, such as only concerning my diagram(s) involved. Such giving in a bit much at times may well still continue for me all the same, maybe especially if rules pages I make were to be published expeditiously, never mind the relative few members who might nitpick at best, in my view, in a possibly vociferous manner, even perhaps a.s.a.p. as a rule for them, i.e. prior to publication, if ever, of a given item of mine.

Anyway, in fact I have given in, big time, in what seems a lot of cases in hindsight, over the years, to what I see as 'nitpicking', at best, even if I know my efforts to re-touch such items of mine will be quite time consuming for me, even before I begin to re-touch any given item still unpublished. That trend, in my case, kind of kept going over those years, to my seemingly unending frustration, with my being all but forced to comply (lest I risk wasting the time I invested up until then, in working on any given item earlier) over the years to make time to do such what I see as nitpicking stuff, at best, that eats away at my free time, and perhaps that of others who normally take little pleasure in that sort of stuff too (if any doubt, by 'others' I mean just applying to the aspiring authors, of the items).

In the event that my waiting submissions are expeditiously published as they are, intact, that is without any re-touching by me, I can do such re-touching later, say, oh, a year from now or less, even, when my personal life may be significantly less complicated, in spite of the absence of any faith whatsoever, of my ever possibly doing such re-touching (that is, if left until after such a happy event, for me, as the expedited publication of all my CVs as they stand right at this time, on CVP site) of any published stuff of mine, that you, H.G. are presently displaying with such emphasis. Anyway, for now at least, give me a bit of a break, such as from talk that I may be a bit too lazy.

Another anecdote: when on a chess message board, I once learned of a chess master out west who in a relatively low level chess tourney replied to the first move (i.e4) by White (by a much lower rated opponent) by offering a draw as Black, which was quickly accepted. Said chess master was steamed just by being paired against that opponent in the final round, but the tournament director was unyielding to the requests of the master to change the pairing. So, to sort of protest at the pairing, the master offered the draw, as I related. Anyway, references about that act of protest somehow made their way around Canadian chess message boards in short order. At one point, on one such message board, I wrote a somewhat bland post re: my disapproval of that master's way of making a 'protest'. That master eventually saw my post on that Canadian chess message board, and titled his reply directed at me as something like: 'Blah-Blah-Blah'. Well, to make a long story short, my reply to that reply of his was to include the phrase 'You showed your true colours'. He apparently didn't like that part, and titled his reply, to my own latest one, by the words 'True Colours', and then... well, at least we both knew where we were coming from. So, I tried at first being faultlessly civil on that chess message board, as far as my original post's entire tone went, but that master was apparently not in any way impressed. That's a possible lesson that I just may have to re-learn, apparently, even on this CVP site, at least now and then. Once again, H.G., I respect your skills, altruism and work-ethic, nonetheless (similarly so, for Fergus). Note though that in a Comment much earlier, elsewhere, H.G., you opined to me that I gave a rant in a Comment of mine that you replied to. I didn't think so, at all. Well, I think I showed you just now what a possible rant of mine (at least at some points in this Comment, if not all of it) might look like, in the form of a typed Comment on CVP site, albeit I think I am relatively a novice, concerning the art of ranting, either spoken or written. Good night, H.G. (and Fergus).

Regards, KP

Well, as an editor I consider it my task to guard the quality of this website. I don't comment because I am bored and looking for a pass time; I comment for a purpose. Whenever I see something that could be improved with reasonable effort, I point it out so that the opportunity to fix it would not be missed. Praise serves no purpose; it would just leave things as they are, which is the same as what would happen without it.

I am sorry if that conflicts with your intentions, which seems to be to present things as quickly as possible in a sub-optimal form. Which in practice of course is not quickly at all, but just delays publishing, possibly indefinitely. I hope that you realize that every action you have taken so for in this matter is aimed at delaying publication. Flaws in a submission don't go away by arguing about them, so all time you spend on arguing just adds to the time it needs to get published. Especially when the arguing consist exclusively out of bullshit arguments.

Normal, and thus expected behavior is that authors care about their publication, and do everything in their power to make it flawless and of high quality. So if small flaws and imperfections are pointed out to them, they typically have those fixed the next day. It doesn't matter much who pointed out the imperfections; a typo remains a typo whether an editor, an ordinary member or a gueat points it out, and editors are unlikely to repeat a remark about an obvious flaw. So ignoring criticism in the hope the editor will let you get away with it usually just leads to a deadlock where author and editor are waiting for each other.

That goal posts can move is known as 'progress'. Obviously we cannot require use of PNG or SVG graphics when these do not exist yet. Requiring people to create their own SVGs, even though possible, might no longer be 'reasonable effort' when the same glyph is available as GIF. But at some point in time better quality images were created, and made available at this site. There was a time when we accepted even diagrams in ascii art.

I wouldn't consider it an unreasonable request that you improve your diagrams in all your submissions by using the Auto Alfaerie PNG set; most people would be glad that they now have the opportunity to present their variants in a more glamorous way, and it would only take 15 x 1 min or so. About 100 times less than the time you have already spent on arguing.

A more serious problem might be the 'serial-publication issue', though. I don't know if we have an official policy for that, but I have seen several times that editors rejected submissions because these were only marginally different from already published variants, with the remark: just add this tiny rule variation in the Notes section. I am pretty sure that when I submitted a page for describing Wildebeest Chess with the only change that stalemate was a draw, it would be rejeced on those grounds. And some of your new submissions are awfully similar.

So how about working on trying to achieve publication for a change, instead of going to extreme lengths in order to delay it further? E.g. how do you feel about merging the submissions for Janus Spiel and Centaur Spiel into that of Accelerated Courier Spiel, and letting Aurelian create an Interactive Diagram (using Alfaerie PNG, of course) that can be switched between the three of those through buttons, to be used as main diagram?

Before anything else, please take a look at my article here: https://www.chessvariants.com/rules/frog/hannibal/waffle-chess-with-gryphon/manticore-and-falcon .Just tell me if you are satisfied on how it looks! Kindly, Aurelian

I have not read all of your very long comment. But I will address some misconceptions I read in it. Editors are not assigned to work on particular submissions. Editors work on a voluntary basis, because no one is paying them, and individual editors choose which submissions they will work on. While we do have a script that can sort submissions, there is no official queue for when someone will get to your submission. There is no bureaucracy behind this website, and I do not direct what the other editors do. Whether other editors choose to publish your submissions comes down to whether your submissions meet their standards.

As a quick experiment I took the Accelerated Courier Spiel article, to see what would be required to upgrade it to PNG graphics. Turned out it was sufficient to replace the set name alfaerie-many by auto-alfaeriePNG (2x), end the labels .ef and .ngu by e and knightguard, respectively (3x or 2x in lowe case, 2x and 1x in upper case). Typing 54 characters in total.

It is truly absurd that you make such a fuss about doing that.

Is it obvious somewhere that these were the required changes?

I see mostly three issues here.

1. Graphics. I can sympathize with both sides here, but I wouldn't personally withhold publication just on this point.

2. Collections, clones, minimum novelty. The threshold for publication has never been stated explicitly as far as I know, but I think all editors have some sense that this is necessary. To the games in question, I agree that they don't meet my threshold, and that's why I haven't reviewed the games very closely.

3. The perennial issue of too few (active, reviewing) editors. I don't know about the other editors currently listed as active and self-described as reviewing, but I've not been reviewing submissions for months, being much busier in real life, until last month when I went through a handful. To add to Fergus's point: the queue is sorted by recent activity, but there are games toward the back that I've already reviewed and not been interested in publishing, so I kind of have to pick a point in time that I think is where to start. I don't recall if I saw the games in question, but if I had I probably would've skipped them for that reason. I recognize that the queue has gotten very long, but I just can't commit enough time to fixing that. I'm not sure how active the other editors have been, or what their criteria for review and/or publication may be (those are not well-centralized or even discussed at length).

You mean 'required by an editor as a condition for publishing'? I guess such a condition was never really voiced.

IMO there still is the problem that some of the other submitted variants are only marginally different. And the proposed solution is to merge those into this article.

I'm sorry, in that post I was replying specifically to your post listing the changes needed to swap to the nicer piece graphics set; I should've quoted it for clarity. You were able to (pretty quickly?) discover the two places to change the set name (and what to change it to) and the places where piece names changed (and what from->to). But you're adept and code debugging and very aware of the rollout of the SVG sets; how much time would it take KP to discover those things, I wondered? (I certainly didn't know the name of the new set, but granted I haven't followed the upgrades much.)

Well, until a few days ago I was completely unaware of the feature that you could use [ set] and [ pc] tags for including piece images in an article. But I think that someone that was able to put these things in his article in the first place should have no problem in changing those later. The Diagram Designer is not very user-friendly, and to get the HTML code that you have to paste into your article to include the generated diagram you have to type the piece labels in a FEN. So he should know that the piece labels of the unorthodox pieces originally were .ef and .ngu, and that he could get the labels in the PNG set (and the name of that set, that he initially had put in a [ set] tag) in the same way as he got the original ones.

So I don't think there would be any difficulty here; it required redoing what he had already done. While I, on the other hand, first had to figure out what he did in the first place.

Your not being eligible to approve for publication an item on CVP site might be something Fergus may have overlooked

It is not a matter of eligibility. Every editor is eligible to publish submissions. HG chooses of his own volition to recuse himself from doing this.

if Fergus agreed with you much earlier, months ago, that they (i.e. my submissions at the front end of my pipeline) must first have diagrams using SVG set figurines to have any hope to be published, at all, rather than (in my case, besides those of any other possibly affected aspiring items' authors, I guess) my using certain set(s) I may prefer to choose.

HG and I already explained to you that SVG graphics are not required.

Note however that at this time it is still not 100% clear to me that Fergus is dogmatically requiring that preference of SVG sets over certain set(s) be absolute for a contributor to follow as a rule, as an all-but yet to be rubber-stamped official policy for CVP site (most notably of me, for starters).

With respect to the Alfaerie set, the SVGs and SVG-derived PNGs normally look better and cleaner than the original GIF images, and using them would be preferable. However, we have a division of labor to save me from doing all the labor, and I'm usually not even looking at new submissions. What the editors reviewing your submissions consider suitable is up to them.

In any case it was not clear to me, which, if any, editor(s), were assigned to examine some/(all of) my (9) submissions waiting for approval.

No one gets assigned to look at any submission. So no editor has been assigned to review your submissions.

now and then you (and this seems applicable to Fergus, too) have 'moved the goalposts', in regards to your Comments (and/or standards that are expected of others to notice/follow, in Fergus' case) on this CVP website; such movements of said goalposts, as I perceive them to be, are at times breathtaking to me (though that may not quite be the best way in general to describe them, in the case of some such movements I myself learned of, at a particular moment).

Different editors may have different standards. Though I have made suggestions, I am not telling the editors what standards to follow. It seems I have picked editors who pride themselves on high standards, and I consider that generally a good thing, though I do understand it may slow things down.