Site review - Full circle

It's hard to believe that it's been almost three years since I posted
the first of these site reviews. I'd opened a discussion group for
chess history and developed a short list of sites dedicated to chess
history. Looking for a way to keep the discussion group alive, I
wrote...

'In the interest of keeping a guaranteed supply of fresh material
flowing into this group, I decided to review each of the sites
bookmarked on the main page. Six months ago, the first list had 9 or
10 sites, and now there are 21. If I review one site every week or
so, there will be six months of this, allowing time off for vacation
& sloth.'

... in June 1999. One site per week was too ambitious and I settled
into a more comfortable rhythm of two reviews per month. My idea was
to post on the discussion group a review that would generate a
(huge!) wave of discussion about the site, but only a few reviews
generated a response. Most comments were sent to me directly via
email. A few months after starting the reviews I began distributing
them using a free, automated email list, which is described on a page
attached to my main site...

World Chess Championship : Email list
http://www.mark-weeks.com/chess/wcc-mlst.htm

...This gave me the option to close the discussion group but to
continue the reviews. Today there are 169 subscribers to the list,
some of whom know more about chess history than I do. I enjoy reading
every message that I receive in response to a review. Although I've
just recently given up on the discussion groups, the list of chess
history sites survives at...

Chess History on the Web : Recommended sites
http://mark_weeks.tripod.com/Chs-hist/chs-hist.htm

...For this review I again looked at each site in order to bring the
list up to date and to plan for more reviews.

I also maintain a Web archive of old reviews. This is not because
they deserve to be preserved for posterity; it's because I
occasionally read old articles when I need to refresh my memory on a
certain point. For some reason I can never remember how to conduct a
catalog search at the Cleveland Public Library. I described the
method in 1999, when I reviewed the John G. White Collection, and
refer to that article whenever I need to search the catalog. The
three archive summaries are at...

1st summary of reviews (through 2000-08-15)
http://mark_weeks.tripod.com/Sit-rvws/sit-rvws.htm

2nd summary of reviews (through 2001-06-15)
http://mark_weeks.tripod.com/chw01d15/chw-1d15.htm

More recent reviews
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Chess_History/messages

...Because chess history sites deal with the past, they fall into a
category that I call static sites; this sets them apart from dynamic
sites, like news sites. Even with static sites, some evolve more
quickly than others. In each review I've tried to document the
content of the site to be able to track any later evolution. This
helps me identify candidates for a followup review.

What's changed? Popups! The biggest change I noticed has nothing to
do with chess -- popups are everywhere. Many chess history sites run
on free services, like Yahoo's Geocities. It's no secret that these
services rely on advertising to pay their own bills.

In the past the free services were usually content to attach a 468x60
advertising banner at the top of every page. Now, along with the
easily ignored banner, they spawn a new popup window with additional
advertising. These are not so easily ignored since they require an
action to close. Closing them is like swatting flies -- they keep
appearing from nowhere.

Besides the proliferation of popups, what's changed? Any site on my
list which is not mentioned below has not changed since I reviewed
it. Some sites, of course, were reviewed recently (like World Chess
Network two weeks ago) and not enough time has passed to measure the
pace of evolution.

---

The following sites have seen substantial changes since I reviewed
them. All appear to be updated frequently.

Chess Composition Books by Anders Thulin
http://www.algonet.se/%7eath/

Chess Curiosities by Tim Krabbé
http://www.xs4all.nl/%7etimkr/chess/chess.html

Chess History Center by Richard Forster
http://www.chesshistory.com/

Chess Variants by Hans Bodlaender
http://www.chessvariants.com/

Cleveland Public Library John G. White collection
http://www.cpl.org/010012/chess/Index.html
The site was redesigned, but it's not updated often.

Two million games online by ChessLab
http://www.chesslab.com/
The look of the site hasn't changed, but the games are updated
regularly.

World Champions Open Directory
http://www.dmoz.org/Games/Board_Games/C/Chess/People/All_World_Champio
ns/
The broken links have been culled. Sultan Khan has joined the list of
world champions!

World Chess Championship by Mark Weeks
http://www.mark-weeks.com/chess/wcc-indx.htm
I update my own site after all world championship events, and I
occasionally add new historical material.

I've never reviewed the next two 'Preprogrammed searches'. Both offer
a lot of material, perhaps too much:-
- Google groups 'chess history'; 'about 15,700' results
- Amazon.com Search book titles 'chess+history'; '88 results'

---

The following sites have seen some changes since I reviewed them...

Chess Archaeology by Nick Pope
http://www.chessarch.com/
In [Excavations], the last article ('Conserving the Past: Chess Life
as a Historical Vehicle...' by John S. Hilbert) was added in April
2001. [Journal] says, 'This section of the Chess Archaeology website
is being remodeled'.

Chess Archives University of Pittsburgh
http://www.pitt.edu/~schach/Archives/index2.html
Is UPITT no longer being maintained?

Culture et Curiosités by Gérard Demuydt
http://www.mjae.com/reyes/culture.html
Two articles have been added since I reviewed this last June.

Notable tournaments by Eric Delaire (Echecs Quimper)
http://perso.wanadoo.fr/eric.delaire/Palmares.htm
Last update 2001-03-26. Many of the internal links now produce an
error message.

On the square (column) by John S. Hilbert (& others)
http://correspondencechess.com/campbell/artindex.htm
Hilbert's last article is dated 1999-12-05. The most recent article
('Playing by the Rules' a commentary by Russell Black) is dated 2001-
11-02.

Origin of Chess by Gerhard Josten (& others)
http://www.netcologne.de/%7enc-jostenge/
There are five new articles since I reviewed this more than two years
ago.

Schach-Datenbank by Wilfried Günther
http://www.schach-datenbank.de/
The most recent updates were on 2001-10-21.

Schach-Ereignisse by Erhard Frolik
http://www.reutlingen.netsurf.de/%7efrolik/index.htm
[Turnierindex] has added 2000 August Polanica Zdroj; [Weltmeister]
has added Anand & Kramnik.

---

I updated the addresses for six sites...

!Home page : Yahoo! Clubs Chess History
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Chess_History/
This is the service I use to distribute the reviews.

Alphonso X Book of Games by Christian J. Hartmann
http://games.rengeekcentral.com
'Site undergoing a major reconstruction! Expect some typos and broken
links'

Chess Downloads by Lars Balzer
http://www-user.rhrk.uni-kl.de/~balzer
'In the next weeks our web-server is renamed. Therefor this page is
moving'. Since download sites are often dynamic, this site should be
reviewed again.

The Game Is Afoot by Terry Crandall
http://starfireproject.com/chess/
This site had disappeared when I reviewed it. It's back again.

U.S. Chess Hall of Fame by Jerry Lawson
http://www.chesslinks.org/hof/
This site has many new biographies. It is better maintained than the
official site:-
http://www.uschesshalloffame.com/

Full page language translation
http://www.google.be/language_tools?hl=en
I'll look at this tool the next time I review a foreign language site.

---

I deleted links to five sites. There are few WWW experiences more
annoying than clicking on a link and getting a message like 'The
requested URL was not found on this server'...

Caxton Chess Encyclopedia by Eric Schiller
http://www.chesscity.com/HISTORY/history.html
This was originally listed against a Chessworks.com domain, but that
address eventually produced a 'URL was not found on this server'
message. The Chesscity.com address that I used as a replacement is
only of limited interest and the content hasn't been refreshed in a
long time.

Chess Collectors Worldwide by Stephen Mendiola
http://www.axnet.net/chesscollectors/
'The requested URL was not found on this server'. I searched the Web
for a good Chess Collectors Worldwide or Chess Collectors
International site, but found nothing of substance.

Chess Records Management by John Pope
http://users.imag.net/~lon.jpope/
This now returns a page titled 'Index of /~lon.jpope' which is almost
empty.

Encyclopedia Britannica 'Chess' by Andrew Soltis
http://www.britannica.com/eb/article?eu=108173
Britannica is now a subscription service.

Historia Ajedrez (column) by Ricardo Calvo
http://www.terra.es/deportes/ajedrez/historia/portada.htm
This disappeared some time ago, but I was hoping that Terra.es was
simply being reorganized and that the Calvo articles would reappear.
They haven't.

---

Finally, I added seven new sites. I also intend to add some of the
more interesting commercial sites like ChessCentral.com, but I'll
leave that exercise for a future article.

Another view on Chess by Jean-Louis Cazaux
http://www.chez.com/cazaux/index.htm

Chess art and culture by Coco & Crispi
http://carmelo111.supereva.it/

Chess Encyclopedia (see 'Who, When and Where') by Maurizio Mascheroni
http://maskeret.com/mecca/index.shtml

Chess Notes by Edward Winter
http://www.chesscafe.com/winter/winter.htm
It's great to see Winter back at ChessCafe.com after an absence of
two and a half years.

Chesmayne by Raymond Reid
http://www.chess-poster.com/english/chesmayne/chesmayne.htm

Old in Chess by Oscar Alfredo Zaiko
http://www.geocities.com/oldinchess/index.htm

Schach-Zettel by Harald E. Balló
http://www.ballo.de/

---

It's clear that, thanks to the many experts who offer their time and
talent free of charge, chess history on the Web is alive and strong.
And -- I have lots of new ideas for future Chess History on the Web
reviews.

Bye for now,
Mark Weeks

---

[Send comments to...

Chess_History-owner@yahoogroups.com

...The bookmarks for the sites reviewed in 'Chess History on the Web'
may be
found at...

Chess History on the Web : Recommended sites
http://mark_weeks.tripod.com/Chs-hist/chs-hist.htm

...The list archive is at...

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Chess_History/messages

...and contains copies of previous reviews. To subscribe:-
- by email, send a message to
Chess_History-subscribe@yahoogroups.com, -or-
- by the web, go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Chess_History/join

All subscriptions are confirmed with a verification message.]