In the past, "Daring Defences to 1. d4" was split into "Mainstream Daring Defences" (Gruenfeld, Dutch) and "Maverick Daring Defences". Perhaps it is an idea to reinstate that split for the forums?

BTW, the Old Indian used to belong to Daring Defences, but not anymore it seems? Where on chesspub can I find the Old Indian now?

Since a few weeks, the section 1.e4 e5 of the forum has been split in 2 categories: Spanish, and non-Spanish. I don't know who did it (Tony, Markovich?), but I find both the idea and result excellent. Congratulations for doing it.

Splitting each section into 2 sub-sections (or more?) could be an option to help navigate through the forum. For instance, the KID section could be split into Classical and Non-classical, the Flank Openings into 1.c4 and Others, and so on.

I'll speak from experience: I have tried in the past to research for a repertoire against the Dragon (proper), I have also decided what I would play when reaching the main junctions of theory (e.g. Yugoslav setup, then 9. Bc4, then the 'elastic' Bb3 & Kb1 system). I thought this was enough to find the truth here and not revert to a (probably dated anyway) book. But the sheer amount of info, the difference in timing of, depth of coverage and chess experience included in each thread, made the whole thing very difficult. I was not even able to understand what was going on in the relatively 'redundant' Qa5 systems.

The moderator there has helped a lot I think by creating a sticky thread with a walkthrough of the main variations, but imo this is as far as we can go. After all, this is a forum and not an organised book. As the forum expands it is quite normal to see things repeated amongst other problems.

The only solution I see so far is for the moderators to include or correct the title of each thread so to include the name of the variation(s) discussed.

And let's face it when it comes to concrete variations, it is better to properly study and play an opening before coming here to discuss or research for the details.. (as you can tell I don't believe in quick fixes)

Smyslov_Fan wrote on 04/14/10 at 17:21:26:


It is not easy to check for instance 25 pages of non organized material. We need more detailed classification. 

And who is going to enter the ECO codes? Believe it or not, I pay absolutely no attention to ECO codes. I cannot tell you the ECO codes of any opening I play and I certainly could not be bothered to look it up if I start a thread on a particular opening.

While I agree with TN that the search engine is quite good, there may be some way to help the newer members to find existing threads.  It's mostly the newer members who post the redundant threads, so if we could make it easier for them, it will unclutter the site.

I see two problems with attempts to unclutter the site: the first is that material has already been deleted by accident as moderators move threads.  The second is that by combining threads, it may make it harder to find the original context of an idea.

So, while I agree with TN that adding subsections may be suboptimal, we may still be able to improve the site. I just don't know how yet.

I think that moderators should consider creating sub-forums for better organization of the material.

There are so many similar threads about same variation. It would be much better to put them together.