Talk:Magnus Carlsen

Two different birth years

1989 in the introduction and 1990 later. 76.236.30.55 (talk) 02:53, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

Girlfriend

Under the personal life section there should be something about his girlfriend. Briaboru (talk) 06:55, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

See talk:magnus Carlson/Archive 2#Love life. Bruce leverett (talk) 21:35, 13 May 2024 (UTC)

Tata Steel Chess Tournament

Is mentioned at the start of the 2004 and 2006 sections. In the 2005 section, it is missing.

The phrasing at the start of the 2006 section can be mistaken as his first group B was in 2006. His finish in the 2004 group C allowed him to play in group B for the first time in 2005. Tbuonodono (talk) 04:27, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

Article size

At over 12,000 words, WP:TOOBIG recommends that the prose be spun out or removed. After skimming the article, I think lots of the "Chess career" section can be reduced, so that each individual year is 2-4 paragraphs. I also think the "Notable games" section should be removed entirely, and if they are notable should be included in the "Chess career" section.

Is a subject-matter expert willing to go through the article to determine what can be removed and spun out? Z1720 (talk) 18:42, 22 December 2024 (UTC)

Since Carlsen is still alive and still active in his chess career, people are still appending things to the section about his career in almost journalistic fashion. This isn't good for an encyclopedia, but it's really impossible to control it until the dust has settled. I don't think we should lose any sleep over the size of this article until then.

I have argued elsewhere in favor of having a "notable games" section in a biographical article about a chess master. This is/was also the general practice in print encyclopedias, most recently Hooper and Whyld's Oxford Companion to Chess. I admit that it's not easy to choose notable games from the oeuvre of someone who is still active in his chess career, and the current selection in the article about Carlsen is far from ideal. But we are getting far afield from the issue of article size. Bruce leverett (talk) 05:03, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

@Bruce leverett: It could be several decades until Carlsen finishes his career, and readers are accessing his article now. While editors are constantly adding things to the article, I think it is also prudent for some to start trimming the information now so that it can be accessible to readers. I am happy to do this myself, but other editors have undone these undertakings in the past and I do not want to have hours of work undone. For the notable games, while other encyclopedias might do this I do not know if it should be done here, especially since this article is already so long. Also, since Wikipedia has its own definition for notability, my opinion is that only games that have their own article should be included in this section, if it remains. Z1720 (talk) 16:28, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

WP:N does not require that everything mentioned in an article must be notable enough for its own stand-alone article. For a game to be included as a "notable game" in someone's biography, there should be significant coverage of the game in reliable sources, i.e. one should find the game in many or most published biographies of the person, or in anthologies of historical games. For modern players, the published biographies and anthologies haven't come out yet, so it's more difficult to judge notability. A good example of a notable historical game is the last game between Lasker and Capablanca in the St. Petersburg tournament of 1914. I would never dream of writing an article about this game, but everyone who studies chess learns about it.

I do not have a solution to the problem of long biographical articles about modern players such as Carlsen. Most likely, I would not have any more success trimming the article than you would. Looking at articles about Grishchuk, Mamedyarov, and Vachier-Lagrave, I see different approaches; none of them are quite as long as the article about Carlsen, but they aren't under nearly as much scrutiny as the Carlsen article, so what works for them might not work for Carlsen. Bruce leverett (talk) 20:54, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

I did an example edit for 2010 of what cutting the prose might look like. Things that I cut include who Carlsen's opponents in every tournament were, results from preliminary rounds other than the finals, and information about other competitor's results. This cut about 300 words: doing similar edits in other sections might yield similar results. Since this was 14 years ago. these sections can be further trimmed to keep only the most important tournaments, and to emphasise career highlights and lowlights. Z1720 (talk) 21:48, 24 December 2024 (UTC)

I have no problem with what you have done for 2010. (I will make some minor corrections when I have time.)

For the World Blitz, since he didn't finish first, it was probably helpful to give the names of the people who finished ahead of him. Likewise for the Grand Slam final, it was better to give the name of the winner, Kramnik. This is sort of a tradition in chess literature (as far as I can tell). Readers tend to judge the strength of a tournament by who won it.

Even with what you have done, there is sometimes far more detail than one would expect in an encyclopedia biography article; but this is certainly a promising start. Bruce leverett (talk) 02:14, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

"I have no problem with what you have done for 2010." I have some problems with it. It is true that people judge strength of events by their participants, but that doesn't only apply to tournaments Carlsen didn't win. People judge the strength of tournaments Carlsen won by his opponents too. Although I would agree that it is more important to list the winner of a tournament when Carlsen finished second or third, it can also be important to list the second and third place finishers when Carlsen won. This is common in chess literature. The edits also removed many tournament scores and I expect those to be included. The edit "Carlsen won the Bazna Kings Tournament in Romania in June, finishing two points ahead of the second-place finishers." is simply worse than the barely longer original text "he finished with 7½/10 and a 2918 PR, winning the tournament by two points ahead of Radjabov and Gelfand." as it manages to both erase mention of the other strong players in the tournament and omit Carlsen's score. Some of the edits are definitely improvements, but the goal of making the article smaller is misguided and won't in itself make it better. The focus should be on quality, not length. Mentioning that some people thought Carlsen's performance at Bilboa 2010 was affected by distractions outside of chess but then cutting the text that explains that Carlsen did not agree with this view is odd. If the distraction theory is included then Carlsen's thoughts on it are clearly relevant and important and should be kept, or the entire thing could be struck. (I don't see how removing it would improve the article in any way other than to reduce hand-wringing over the article length.) On the whole, I don't like the changes. Quale (talk) 06:11, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

I emphatically agree with Quale that the emphasis should be on quality, not on word count. But if you can get a good handle on improving the quality, word count will take care of itself. Just tightening up the prose, as you have done in several places, is important. Regarding the discussion of why Carlsen had a bad result at Bilboa, this is the sort of thing that journalists have to talk about, but that is irrelevant to an encyclopedia entry, so the right approach was to remove all of it. Regarding the London Classic, I like that you removed a lot of detail, but I definitely agree with Quale that you have to mention the names of at least the other contenders. Another thing that was important to journalists in 2010, but has lost its luster for encyclopedia editors since then, is fluctuations in Carlsen's rating and whose rating was higher than his or lower. Bruce leverett (talk) 07:15, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

@Quale and Bruce leverett: Per WP:SIZE, a large article negatively affects "attention span, readability, organization, information saturation". If there is too much information, the reader will not be able to find the most important highlights from Carlsen's career. Also, large articles make it less likely for readers to read the article, which is the goal of Wikipedia articles. I think there is enough commentary about Carlson's career that much of this information can be spun out so that readers who want more specific information can go to those pages, while Calsen's main page remains an overview of his biography. I removed the opponents because, while chess enthusiasts will know who these people are, the average reader may not care who other tournament participants are. If the reader wants to know who competed in the tournament, they can go to the tournament's Wikipedia article. Z1720 (talk) 16:14, 25 December 2024 (UTC)

Both Quale and I referred to "Bilboa", but of course that should be "Bilbao".

We are trying to tell you that, in chess literature describing the result of a tournament, standard practice is to mention names of the contenders. You can verify this by reading some chess literature. In writing chess literature for Wikipedia, we should not be blazing new trails, but should follow standard practices, insofar as they are compatible with the encyclopedia milieu.

I don't want to get into a stalemate here arguing with you, and I don't want to leave unfixed the problems that Quale has pointed out, and I don't want to lose the valuable changes that you have made. When I have time, I will get in there and make some corrections, unless someboday gets in ahead of me. Bruce leverett (talk) 03:09, 26 December 2024 (UTC)

The fundamental concern I have is from the first comment: "lots of the "Chess career" section can be reduced," This could be a problem. Carlsen is a professional chess player. He is notable for his chess career so the article must cover his chess career in some detail. This was much easier for historical chess figures as there were many fewer top level tournaments and matches up to the 1970s and even 1980s than there are today. Modern chess GMs play in many more events today than they did in the past and I don't think we have yet found a good way to manage this in chess biographies. Most chess bios aren't greatly affected because only a handful of players play in the top tournaments and even fewer win them, but Carlsen is the extreme example. Carlsen has been the top-rated chess player for a long time and he plays a lot of the strongest chess tournaments and he wins a lot.

That said, I agree that the current organization of the article isn't good and we should try to improve it. Having a section for every year of Carlsen's chess career is not the best presentation. Small trims in the chess career section won't substantially improve the article and large removals will make it worse. Rather than eviscerating the description of Carlsen's chess career by removing all detail, I think it would be better to find a superior way to organize the article to make it read better. My opinion would be more helpful if I could offer some concrete suggestions how to improve the organization of the article, but I don't have any winning ideas yet. Quale (talk) 06:16, 26 December 2024 (UTC)