r2qk2r /pp1bppbp/3p1np1/n5B1/3NP3/1BN2P2/PPPQ2PP/R3K2R b KQkq - 0 10

works fine for me. (Space before the first slash was inserted intentionally.) It should also work if you pare off some of the stuff at the end, but it works as shown. I believe the only thing the FEN lookup absolutely demands is the board position and who's move it is (the "w" or "b").

Si Narsar

Link: http://www.chesscafe.com/text/urcan...

He says Narsar played a series of games with H D B Meijer. I found some games and uploaded them. I found a couple of games played between Narsar and a certain Meijer/Meyer in 1931. Which is interesting because H D B Meijer died in 1925. Narsar's opponent is (Ir.) H. Meyer.

Who would be better off if chessgames.com wouldn't have gone online for another 30 years (give or take a decade, what it would have taken to launch the "perfected" product)? Not to mention the simple impossibility of reaching this state of perfection without any help, feedback, and interaction... and not to mention the part that our admins would then meanwhile be working on something else for their day jobs?

You can be as confident as you like: it ain't the point. The point is that if you publish material, you are responsible for its accuracy. Not your visitors. Not people who notice its inaccuracies. You.

2. So glad that LMAJ was mentioned, maybe the author have a vendetta against him, since 'any site that have AJ Goldsby is not worthy' (paraphrasing here)

3. Photos, I have many of them on here are not (ac)credited to me, and personally, I do not care, I am glad to have taken the photos and submitted them to CG.

My only gripe, is that someone else used a photo of mine in a youtube vide, without asking me first.

4. Date, player was Black/White, Site errors, yes, they are to be considered to be <BIG>, in my opinion, if and only if other writer(s) or site(s) consider CG.com to be the (de-facto) site for 'facts'.

The fact that, (was brought up in the article) that many people had these facts (and/or mentioned these as posts/correction slip) and CG.com did not correct them, should be addressed, first and foremost.

5. Biographical (slant/grammar), that, is nit-picking, in my opinion. Yes, members here have editing 'privileges' and being an International Community (another thing the author brought up), I expect to see imperfect English.

Yes, certain GMs have a longer biography than others, and I know there are more books written on George Bush than Ghanghis Khan, the point is??

6. GM R. Keene and post deletion, I really don't know the story, or what happened, or what the plagiarism article/charge/accusation was.

But if I am to act as an ombudsman, this should be address immediately, even before item number 4.

7. I was not paying too much attention when the time that R. Keene came onto this site, I do not know if he was 'anointed saviour' or was granted special favours.

Ceegee.. I've deliberately put a space in this fen, but it's fens like this that I copy and paste from the clipboard in my engine that the OE doesn't recognize. Why the b hyphen hyphen 1 39 at the end of a fen anyway? It's unnecessary, surely?

And about the Urcan article. This is my take on it. He knows this site very well because nobody writes such a scathing article on any website unless he's very familiar with it. As Wannabe says, it's nitpicking! He either has something very personal against the people that own this site or he's come here and made a genuine effort to fit in, only to be met by the nauseating cronyism from certain regular kibitzers (who I'll not name) who go on "site patrol" and refer to themselves as "the old guard", making things worse and not at all better! I can relate to some things he says and he does have some valid points, but he comes across as a jilted lover with an especially defamatory axe to grind. This is still the best site on the net for chess, and it is now social media whether certain people like it or not. I think the moral here is don't let the inmates control the asylum (metaphorically speaking!). I won't and don't want to name names, but you must know after reading the article who he's talking about? Anyways, the site isn't perfect but it's still the best on the internet.

<chessgames.com: Also note that FEN searches only work for positions in the Opening Explorer, you can't use it to locate some pawn ending.>

More details at http://www.newzealandchess.co.nz/Ve...

It is tempting to go point by point, illustrating numerous misconceptions that Urcan maintains about Chessgames (and to a lesser extent, copyright law) which he repeats throughout the article, but that would be both tedious and unnecessary. Instead, I intend to address his key points, clarify some misconceptions, and acknowledge those criticisms which have legitimacy.

I haven't been following the discussion of Urcan's article, but I understand footnotes are an issue.

I realise my lengthy bios seem short of footnotes but for the record I would like to point out that my principle source for the information that I include in bios is the FIDE database. I think it is pointless footnoting each of those as there would be dozens of footnotes linking to the same, if massive, database, although a general comment about that database as a source might be called for.

<Inevitably some links fail for all sorts of reasons. They're like leaves in autumn. Sooner or later, all online links will fail and there is little we can do about it except fix them as they come to notice.> Exactly.

These criticisms by Urcan, as I have noted elsewhere, smack of grandstanding and pettiness.