WMF wikis cannot provide interactive chess content which makes it difficult to convey information. Unlike other websites which allow readers to see pieces move on the board or automatically show a game move-by-move, WMF wikis are limited to static content or less-interactive video/gif content.
Who would benefit:
Wikipedias, WikiBooks, and Wikiversity would most immediately benefit. The featured book b:Chess has openings and example games, and providing an interactive board would improve learning by allowing readers to see the pieces move on the board as they would in a real game. Many Wikipedias have articles on famous chess games such as the w:Evergreen game and the w:Opera game. Adding an interactive chess viewer would provide a critical piece of content for understanding these games that is currently missing, and it gives readers greater control over the pacing of movements than a video or GIF. For Wikiversity, which currently has limited chess content, the new functionality would encourage collaboration on v:Chess and other teaching materials. Future versions could incorporate Stockfish, a free and open-source chess engine, which could be used on Wikiversity for automating chess puzzles or writing quizzes. Development would also benefit the wider wiki-community by providing a high end, freely licensed extension for chess wikis like Chess Programming Wiki and WikiChess.
Proposed solution:
mw:Extension:ChessBrowser is a community-developed MediaWiki extension which reads w:Portable game notation (PGN) and displays a board with arrows to progress through the moves of a chess game. It is based on a javascript gadget used on the Hebrew and Russian Wikipedias, but unlike the gadget, most of the extension's code is run on WMF servers so that it reduces the load time for readers. As a community developed extension, developer time is limited and the deployment process is complex. Support by the community development team would ensure that the extension is well designed and that the deployment process runs smoothly and efficiently.
in lieu of demo page for the extension (see stalled request phab:T244075), please view the "demo page" for the script used on hewiki and ruwiki, which i set up long ago - w:he:משתמש:קיפודנחש/ארגח 1. hopefully, a real demo for the extension can be set up soon. also, see this hewiki article and ruwiki article, and compare each with its English interwiki, to judge the effectiveness and value of showing games interactively. peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 18:23, 30 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
We've been talking about this for several years at this point. It just keeps hitting snags and losing momentum as far as I can tell. Maybe the wishlist will get it across the finish line. — Rhododendritestalk \\ 01:48, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Implementation of this would almost immediately make almost all of our chess-related content on all language Wikipedias and WikiBooks useful to several times more readers and go from incomprehensible to understandable for those without high expertise in chess. It seems like this is not a big task for Comm Tech or something that would interfere with existing projects or interfaces, so I'd ask that it be considered even if it's a bit lower payoff than some larger-scale tasks. — Bilorv (talk) 15:41, 29 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Voting
Support Would be useful to have, volunteer created extension is a good start but could use some WMF support for review and deployment DannyS712 (talk) 18:04, 8 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support as it provides engaging interactivity in a manner that will degrade gracefully for readers using browsers with fewer features/resources. Isaacl (talk) 04:32, 11 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support There is a dedicated volunteer community of people who produce and publish chess content in other platforms. If we did this, then that community would migrate to the Wikimedia platform because we would meet a lot of needs. The chess community is international, multilingual, highly collaborative, and enthusiastic about data and archiving. Chess articles which could better show boards would translate very well. This is a small technical development which can attract a large volunteer publishing community which needs a multilingual data friendly home. Blue Rasberry (talk)16:24, 12 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
User:Bluerasberry: actual storage is somewhat a different issue. currently, wikidata hosts several games such that the pgn of the game can be extracted, but i doubt this method is appropriate for large number of games. see, e.g., d:Q936161 and d:Property:P5286. you may want to propose another wish (next time around, maybe) to allow storage of chess games, and optionally "game sets", e.g., for tournaments, in a common repository, either commons, a new one, or some better way to do it in wikidata. see this module on hewiki: he:Module:Chess, which pulls the pgn from wikidata, and can feed it to other templates or modules, either for drawing chess diagrams of any or all positions in the game, or for interactive display. see he:User:קיפודנחש/ארגח 2, and look at its source. peace - קיפודנחש (talk) 19:42, 13 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support Would be useful to have, volunteer created extension is a good start but could use some WMF support for review and deployment DannyS712 (talk) 18:04, 8 December 2020 (UTC)