User talk:Sappyduck

Per WP:CHESSENGINE, you can't cite Stockfish evaluations on Wikipedia, because it constitutes original research. What you can do is cite a source that supports your position. The best sources are books from established chess publishers like Gambit, Everyman etc. There are some very good internet chess pages, but also a lot of crap. Use with caution. The more recent the source, the more likely they are to agree with Stockfish. It would be excellent if you become a regular contributor to chess articles, but Wikipedia policies are a bit of a learning curve. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 09:00, 1 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

I understand finding reliable human-written resources, and I am perfectly happy to search for and provide them. I'll do a deeper dive on what I should know to contribute positively to articles before I do so, as I've found myself asking dumb questions quite a few times and suggesting things in good faith that I was kindly informed would violate existing policies. It appears evident to me that there is a lot to understand before making meaningful contributions.

One quick question, would using a database of precalculated positions with reliable cloud computing, such as ChessBase, be an acceptable third-party source? I assume it would be hard to cite a given position in a tree, and it may fall under original research again, and the databases are closed-source and paywalled so I imagine that could also pose a problem. Sappyduck (talk) 13:35, 1 August 2026 (UTC) Reply

Paywalled sources (e.g. New York Times) are acceptable. The issue with using databases as a source is you're putting an interpretation on raw data. You have to use a source that explicitly says what you're claiming, otherwise it's WP:SYNTH, one of the most common forms of original research. MaxBrowne2 (talk) 20:30, 1 August 2026 (UTC) Reply