True chess collaboration

Intro

This is a blog post about an idea. I don't know if and when I am going to get around to it, but at least I want to make it public, so we can seriously discuss it.

The situation

... as I see it, because I have limited information and am not a chess guy.

I was talking to a GM and he told me that most of chess professionals have a routine of finding the latest serious OTB games from various places, including This Week in Chess, but not only, adding them to their private databases, analyzing them manually and with engines, hunting for novel ideas and unexpected insights. They guard their private databases, too, hide their online personas and create secret plans that work for the next tournament only - once used, it is revealed and greedily consumed by all of the others.

My first thought was: this is so stupid! Basically all of these people do the same thing, privately, to the benefit of no one but themselves, but still wasting a lot of repeated effort. I understand why they are doing it, but having thousands of people maintain databases of the same games feels wrong to a software developer.

Today I tried to find a well curated database of annotated games. I though, how hard can it be? Surely there is an archive somewhere, maybe public, maybe paid, maybe a torrent somewhere. And I searched and found a lot of people asking the same question: where can I get a list of professionally annotated games? And there were some answers that inevitably lead to missing web sites, hijacked domains or sites that have since rebranded themselves for profit and hiding everything behind paywalls. If you try to find PGN torrents, you get maybe a handful and many are dead.

The idea

Well, there are two ways of proven information sharing: Wikipedia and StackOverflow. The first is based on unbelievable dedication from people who want to share truthful information, the second is based on voting up and down answers to questions. The first works for static knowledge that rarely changes and may eventually need additions, the second is an adaptation to a highly dynamic environment of knowledge that changes often and may become obsolete in just months.

So here is what I envision: a database of games and moves, not unlike the Lichess Explorer database, but for each all of the games are tagged, rather than split into distinct categories. For each move and resulting position people can comment with their own annotations and up/down vote the annotations of others, comment on them, engage in arguments and discussions.

The comments and annotations would have different weight based on the author. Verified titled players would be valued most, but dedicated amateurs or people who were not masochistic enough to go through the FIDE ladder of trials have their chance to gain reputation, just like for StackOverflow.

Pros

The most obvious pro for me is humanly curated information about moves, plans, pawn structures, typical positions and so on. When one explores a position, he is surrounded by passionate people who are discussing it, rather than deal with an AI that lacks training data or a mindless Stockfish god. Also, this will make for great training data, BTW.

Can this be monetized? I know chess people are kind of jealous of their hard earned knowledge, so maybe there could be some payment/donation system implemented, although personally I loathe the idea. But hey, I am not dismissing the effort such people make in training their brains to understand chess, so if that's what it takes, so be it.

How wonderful would it be if you analyzed your game or studied a repertoire and you would get comments from the greats of chess, rather than the random AI messages we get now, if we get anything?

Cons

Any online platform can and will be abused. Trolls, idiots, political activists, children looking for friends, angry chess people who believe their ideas are the only correct ones or mad people will pop up all the time. This would not be a simple thing one codes in a few weeks and releases it to the public. Once you consider all the implications of exposing yourself on the Internet like that, you get to appreciate the immense effort Lichess, for example, has to make continuously just to stay afloat.

This will require security, authentications, mods, title validations, a dedicated mass of people who care about the truth and quality of chess, keeping people on topic and on track. A true community. Yet that has been done before, so it's hard, but not impossible.

Conclusion

For the moment I am just publishing my thoughts. I would love to hear from people regarding this, even if you believe it's a dumb idea.

Obviously, doing this in the context of Lichess would be great, but I don't want to impose anything on anybody. At the moment we're discussing hypotheticals, but I truly believe that this is a must for the chess world, a true open space where people can discuss and learn and collaborate together.

What do you guys think?