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At over 11,000 words, WP:TOOBIG recommends that the prose be reduced. This helps with loading the page for some readers, and helps to highlight the most important inforamtion for the reader. Some ideas on reducing the prose are:
Reducing the number of block quotes, and instead summarising them in prose.
Keeping sections within 2-4 paragraphs, to make them easier for the reader to read.
Removing extra information that has been added over time, partcularily if it is uncited.
I have taken an active interest in this article almost since I started editing Wikipedia, in 2016. It has a long history, including promotion to GA in 2014. I made a few significant changes to it at first, but for a number of years I have limited myself to watching over edits made by others.
The good news is that it is only a little larger now than it was when it made GA. (It probably set off the WP:TOOBIG alarm back then, too.) It is a little large, but it's not steadily growing, I don't think there is an immediate crisis.
The bad news is about the same as the good news. Every paragraph has been fought over, probably since at least 2014. That consideration is what has given me pause. I have sometimes felt that certain sections were overwrought or had too much detail, but I also wanted to leave well enough alone.
By the way, for better or for worse, the "definitive" biography is by Brady. (There have been three editions; in the most recent one, the title was changed, but it was only an update, not a rewrite.) Bruce leverett (talk) 22:34, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Bruce leverett: From an outsider's perspective, who only has a passing interest in the article, I would rather that the article is shorter, with the most important aspects highlighted, than longer with more specific details included. I am happy to conduct this work, but in the past I've been bold in reducing prose size and had all my work reverted: while challenging some prose is understandable, the mantra of keeping the article long is not conducive to reducing prose size. I also think that blockquotes are really not necessary, as I often skip them when reading an article. Uncited information should be removed if a citation cannot be found for it. Z1720 (talk) 23:26, 22 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Let's be clear about one thing. Fischer is one of the most significant chess players in history. He's like Muhammad Ali in the chess world. He *should* have a long article. I'm all in favour of sourcing things properly and expressing things succinctly, but not reducing articles just for the sake of reducing them just because they trigger some "too big" alert. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 14:34, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@MaxBrowne2: Nobody is suggesting that we arbitrarily cut prose. That is why I made some suggestions above. There is also information that might be too specific for the average reader to care about. The article should focus on the most important aspects, and sections that are particularly long can be spun out into new articles. Z1720 (talk) 15:35, 23 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I agree with MaxBrowne2 that our biography of Fischer must be full, not like, for example, our biography of Jonathan Penrose.
I read discussions of WP:TOOBIG a lot when working on articles about U.S. Presidents. Some of these, such as Ulysses S. Grant, have historically gotten swollen, far more so than Bobby Fischer, and it can partly be blamed on their life stories (Grant had both a military career and a political career, while Fischer only had a chess career, and it was comparatively short). For those guys, editors are frequently suggesting breaking out some sections into separate articles, leaving only a summary in the main article; so, for example, we have Early life and career of Ulysses S. Grant, Commanding generalship of Ulysses S. Grant, and so on. I don't think this treatment would be very helpful for a sports figure, such as a chess champion. When someone looks up Bobby Fischer, they don't expect to have to click around to get to some result they may have heard of.
On the other hand, Z1720's point about blockquotes is well taken. I have just looked at, and counted, the blockquotes in Bobby Fischer, and only a few of them are even remotely memorable. There are many variations on the theme of "Oh my god, this kid was really good." Observing this is reviving my interest in the possibility of making serious edits to this article. I'm not worried about the word count, but as I mentioned above, I don't like it being "overwrought", and you have put your finger on one of the major sources of that problem. Bruce leverett (talk) 01:58, 24 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Bruce leverett: Would you be willing to do a copyedit for the block quotes, and remove the ones you think are unnecessary? I think the "Legacy" section is particularly bloated with block quotes and I would like that section to instead be a summary of many source's statements on his legacy, as opposed to block quotes from specific sources. Z1720 (talk) 18:02, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I mentioned above that I was interested in the block quotes. This is a volunteer project, I am doing other things both in and out of Wiki. There are other people watching, and perhaps some of them will take an interest too.
Regarding the Legacy section in particular, it is not easy to write about the "legacy" of a strong chess player. This section made up entirely of quotations, and I am not sure that any of them, possibly excepting the one by Müller, would be helpful to someone who didn't already know anything about the Fischer era. Fixing this section to be something better is a more serious project than hacking away at overzealous use of quotations in the rest of the article. Bruce leverett (talk) 19:39, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
No, it doesn't (responding to: "At over 11,000 words, WP:TOOBIG recommends that the prose be reduced.") What it recommends, is that most articles *probably* should be, but that is just a kind of general consideration for *most* articles, without considering the specific case. This is not *most* articles, as Fischer was the most important player in a generation, and some would say longer than that, and with greater legacy and influence, so this is not an "average" article to which "average size guidelines" apply. First of all, studies quoted all over Wikipedia show that the majority of readers never read past the lead of an article, but no one is suggesting across-the-board drastic cuts due to those readers' average reading habits. Secondly, anyone willing to read 9,000 words about Bobby Fischer doesn't need to be told that they can't read 15,000 words because their attention is likely to wander. If they can handle 25,488 words at the (also non-average) Magnus Carlsen article (excluding top templates, Infobox, bottom matter, and references), then they can handle 15,000 at Bobby Fischer. I don't see anyone else favoring pruning this, and until there is consensus for it, I would hope we do not. Mathglot (talk) 04:34, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
@Mathglot:WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS is not an acceptable argument in deletion discussions, and I avoid those types of arguments on talk pages, too. A WP:GUIDELINE is "sets of best practices supported by consensus. Editors should attempt to follow guidelines, though they are best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply." I do not think this article is an occasional exception, especially because efforts to WP:SPINOUT the article's contents have not been made yet. Since there has been much coverage of Fischer's career and playing style, including academic coverage, I think those articles would pass WP:GNG and should be created, with some of the information from this article moved over there. I also think the above suggestion above to remove the excessive block quotes is helpful, and I see lots of instances where the same concepts can be stated in fewer words, thus tightening up the language. Would you like me to try conducting a copyedit of one section, to see what the article might look like if conducted? Z1720 (talk) 16:16, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Maybe adding a tag about him being a fascist far-right conspiracy theorist and also adding "was a far-right conspiracy theorist and American chess grandmaster", would be more accurate and to the point since people need to be warned about his bigotry. JasGRE (talk) 15:55, 25 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
I don't think he was necessarily "far right", more paranoid. He actually got on quite well with many Jewish players like Mikhail Tal (only player to visit him in hospital at Curacao 1962) and the Polgar family. I wouldn't equate him with the modern alt-right movement. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 01:35, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
JasGRE, the sentence you propose is non-neutral and should not be added. I believe Max may be right, but whether he is or not isn't the point; more to the point is that regardless whether Fischer was far-right or not, the whole idea that "people need to be warned about his bigotry" represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what Wikipedia is about.
As laudable a goal as warning the world about bigotry of all kinds is—and godspeed to anyone who helps out off-wiki in that effort—Wikipedia is an online encyclopedia which aims at neutral coverage of all topics, from Florence Nightingale to Adolph Hitler. Wikipedia isn't in the business of warning people about anybody, or engaging in WP:ADVOCACY of any kind, pro, or con.
We certainly are not going to "warn anybody" about Fischer in this article; what we are going to do, is describe him neutrally, both as a chess grandmaster and world champion (very clearly what he is most famous for) on the one hand, and on the other also his numerous ignorant and objectionable beliefs, all of which will be presented neutrally and in proper balance. Readers can then decide on their own if they think he was a good guy, a bad guy, or something else. We don't tell readers what to believe; we just present a summary of the facts, well-cited, and the rest is up to them. Mathglot (talk) 04:50, 26 December 2024 (UTC)[reply]
level-4 vital article is rated GA-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
